A Tree With Lights

Today the weather here is rather serious, it demands our full attention. The temperature is hovering around 17 degrees Fahrenheit, we have 6+ inches of new snow on the ground and it is falling fast. It looks like a Dr. Pepper snow shovelin' - "shovel at 10, 2 and 4" kind of day. The excited young weatherman on the TV says temps will keep going down and wind speed and snow totals will keep going up over the coming couple of days. No school and no unnecessary driving propels us deep within, our homes if not our souls.

I spent some quality time this morning next to our Christmas tree, a fresh-smelling, "you-cut" cedar-ey thing (can't remember the exact kind) decked within an inch of toppling over with many-colored lights and sparkly glass globes. It sits in the corner of our living room like a martyred saint, like a young-tree Bodhisattva of peace, kindness, forgiveness, goodwill to all mankind and deep illuminations. It is a symbol of the Tree of Life, redeemed and reclaimed by The Numinous, with it's fruits no longer forbidden, Christ's life having healed the rift.

One of my all time favorite books (which I haven''t read in 20 years - memo to self, re-read it!) is Annie Dillard's Pilgrim At Tinker Creek. If you've never read it, get yourself a copy on the double. It is a wise and wonderful set of musings on nature, God and the examined life. She describes her experience of a tree with lights:

When the doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw "the tree with the lights in it." It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The lights of the fire abated, but I'm still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.
--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974).

Happy holidays from The Rosemary Tree. Peace.

~ Deborah

The Transfiguration

As I prepare to go to a noon holy day Mass for the Feast Day of the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ, I am doing a little personal reflecting on the day. I have always loved this day in the Church cycle. Back when I was a Protestant seminarian, I was ordained to the ministry (Holy Order of MANS/Christ the Saviour Brotherhood)on August 6th, 1976 by the Rt. Rev. Philip McCaffrey. It was a great day for me, one of the best of my life, along with my wedding day, the day my three children were born and the day our granddaughter was born. That is not dimmed by the fact that I was then not an Eastern Catholic, that day I was dedicating myself to the lifelong service of Christ, the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Lady.

Somewhere along the way I read the script on the icon of Blessed Deborah, which reads thus (From Judges 4:6 ) "Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw nigh toward Mount Tabor." Some biblical scholars claim the the very name "Deborah" is a rendition of the word meaning "one who is of Tabor." I am very happy to claim the Transfiguration as my special day on the calendar of the life of Our Lord! This is the showing forth of His true divine nature to the disciples, and a prefiguring of their own following of Jesus, ending eventually in sainthood and theosis. What a happy day! The Feast of Light, the feast of shining forth, the feast of sudden and radical illumination!

DJY

~~~

Matthew 17:1-7 - After six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Eli'jah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Eli'jah." He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Rise, and have no fear." And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, "Tell no one the vision, until the Son of man is raised from the dead." (RSV)