PREMS

Brother Lawrence 1614-1691

We become creatures of habit: night-owls, smokers, maniacal hikers, workaholics. Any action repeated a dozen times, at the same time of day, becomes a habit. Over the past few months I’ve found that I wake at around 6:30, and spend 45 minutes or so supine and relaxed before going down to make what Alan Clark called EMT – Early Morning Tea. Those 45 minutes have become extremely precious, because in a semi-awake but entirely lucid state I use them for prayer and meditation. I begin with the Our Father, then say (mostly in my mind, as I don’t sleep alone) the second Collect for Morning Prayer:

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord,

in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life,

whose service is perfect freedom,

Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies,

That we, surely trusting in thy defence,

may not fear the power of any adversaries,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And the third, which is one to recommend to anyone:

O Lord our Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God,

Who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day,

Defend us in the same with thy mighty power,

and grant that this day we fall into no sin

neither run into any kind of danger,

but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance,

to do always that is righteous in thy sight,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

After that, I open myself up to anything God may want to say to me – about the coming day, for instance, but not necessarily. Or I ponder what I have been reading, which currently is a re-reading of Pope Benedict XVI’s magnificent Jesus of Nazareth, one of the most thoughtful and intelligent discussions it’s been my pleasure to encounter. (More about this soon.) And then, EMT. Creature of habit, as I said.

In order to help improve and order habits, I’ve lately been using the acronym PREMS. The French laugh at this, because it’s the French child’s cry when something desirable is on offer, meaning “Me first!” But for me it represents the things I should like to include in every day: Prayer, Reading, Exercise, Moderation, and Service. Prayer, not just formal or at specific times, but intermittently constant, so to speak (see the 17^th-century Brother Lawrence’s delicious The Practiceof the Presence of God). Reading, which I frequently do in the loo (or john, if you’re North American) – currently Benedict – and which harnesses the brain to the faith: something many, alas, ignore. Exercise, because I am a bulky sedentary bear by nature, not given to rapid motion, and my doctor tells me half an hour’s walk a day is a damn good idea. Moderation, because I tend to excess and, while I hate killjoys, a little touch of sobriety is salutary and not always unpleasant. And service, because doing things for others – even in a domestic context – has a beauty it would be a shame to deprive oneself of.

Why the acronym? Because it helps one remember the bits one has perhaps not yet included in this particular day.

Why mention all this here? Because you never know if it might help someone. Pass it on.

FEEDING THE 5000 TODAY

IT NEEDED SAYING

My thanks to my friend Sean Henry for sending me this piece by Christopher Haley for the feast of St Maximilian Kolbe -- of whom not everyone has heard . . . 

The Flowers in Cell 21

I was in Kraków, and I knew I would go to Auschwitz sometime, but I didn’t know when. It was inevitable but unplanned—you can’t plan to visit Auschwitz like you plan to visit the Wieliczka Salt Mines. Then I was wandering around the streets of Kraków one morning and suddenly I hailed a cab. After I told the driver where I wanted to go, it was silence the whole way, over an hour from Kraków. He stopped across the street; I paid him and got out without a word—what do you say about Auschwitz?
It was silent. Not audibly silent, as there were plenty of people mulling about, and tour buses waiting with engines and air conditioners on, but physically silent. It felt silent. What struck me more than the silence, though, was the sterility. Indeed, the place was not only sterile; it was banal: parking lots, tour buses, a clerk, gift shops. The visitor—I hesitate to say “tourist”—is accompanied to the infamous gate by large freestanding photographs of familiar political and cultural dignitaries who have visited the site. It was inappropriate, to be greeted on my way to the gravesite of millions of helpless unknowns by a gallery of the rich, famous, and powerful.
After the red carpet row of photos I stopped to collect and prepare myself, to make myself spiritually naked before I passed beneath the gate. How to walk? Should I crawl? But there was no way to crawl low enough, so I walked—that seemed better: to stand. Imagination and sympathy fail beneath the gate; only sorrow and love, both infinite, are enough. And so, in silence, I passed under.
I wanted to weep, but weeping was out of place here—not on account of reverence, not on account of horror, but because Auschwitz was more like a museum than a mausoleum. The cell blocks had been converted into first-class exhibits, complete with tour guides and multimedia installations. It was all information, all data. No one weeps at data.
The sterility was unsettling. I wanted to catch the eye of another visitor, to empathize, to find some communion in our sorrow, but everyone was distant: reading and listening, instead of feeling and grieving. But I couldn’t blame them; their demeanor was not only encouraged, but designed. Whoever put the museum together, they wanted you to know. And for good reason, of course; so I couldn’t blame them either. But I had not come here to learn some new facts: there is no amount of information that can ever come close to comprehending the tragedy of even one lost human life, much less this place.
I was no longer sure why I had come, but I knew that I wanted to weep and to pray. And I knew that this was somehow not the place for tears and prayer. I wanted to get away, but everywhere I went there were crowds of people taking photos. It reminded me of visiting the Louvre—Auschwitz should not remind me of the Louvre. I became self-conscious of my sorrow. The place was so sterile, so lifeless—indeed, so deathless—that the visitors treated it like any other place on their list of tourist attractions. Where I expected weeping there was either silence, or worse: chatter. It was literally and metaphorically dumb.
In the far corner, near the end of the “tour,” between Block 10 and Block 11, is the Execution Wall, where tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of prisoners were tortured and killed. Many tens of thousands of people died right here—as the tour guides explained in a cacophony of languages (Press “1″ for German; “2″ for English—no option to press “0″ for Reverence).
I tried to keep my museum-etiquette composure as I followed the tour groups into the most remote of all the buildings, Block 11, the “Death Block,” which was used exclusively to torture and kill people. I tried to imagine walking down those stairs and knowing that I would not walk up again. But how can one imagine that?
This place was the horror or horrors. It was more, and worse, than killing. It was the scene of slow, meticulous, aesthetic execution. The walls were absolutely grey, infinitely grey, emphatically grey. I don’t know if I have ever felt more desperate than I did in that cell block, watching anesthetized people take sterile photos of sanitized death chambers.
The walls were hopelessly grey.
But on the lowest floor, along the outside wall, near the very end, was Cell 21. Cell 21 is architecturally indistinguishable from the other cells. But Cell 21 is where a St. Maximillian Kolbe was placed, after offering up his life in exchange for that of a condemned man who was a husband and a father.
Cell 21 was a starvation chamber. In that chamber, Father Maximillion Kolbe lived for two weeks without food or water, singing hymns with the other prisoners and saying mass every day.
But I didn’t know any of that at the time because I wasn’t part of the tour. So I was shocked when I came upon this cell. For here, in a starvation chamber in the Death Block of Auschwitz, here, at the very end of horror, all of a sudden: Flowers!
Amidst all the grey, all the death, all the sterility and the apathy, against all hope—a simple vase of flowers! I have never wept like I wept in that moment. I fell hard to my knees and I wept the tears I had been longing to weep the entire time, even if I didn’t know it: for they were tears of joy! There was beauty here, too, even here.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about St. Maximilian Kolbe. He introduced himself to me as flowers. But is that not how the saints always meet us? As stars in the night? As the splash of color against a hopeless grey? As hope, as love?
I cannot imagine a more fitting memorial for a saint, for the martyr whom Pope St. John Paul II called “The Saint of our Difficult Century,” than this simple vase of living flowers in a museum of death. This is love exalted upon the cross!
I cannot say that I left Auschwitz with a deeper understanding of death, despair and hopelessness. But I did leave with a deeper understanding of life, and hope, and love. I learned that a single living flower is more enduring than the entire Nazi machine of death; for death will die—and indeed, it has died—while love endures forever.
And I found something to say about Auschwitz: Saint Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us—and send us flowers.

R.I.P. ROBIN WILLIAMS - IN CONSECRATED GROUND

For this blog, Robin Williams provided an excellent text that may serve as one of many memorials:

TOP TEN REASONS TO BE AN EPISCOPALIAN [or ANGLICAN]:

10. No snake handling.

9. You can believe in dinosaurs.

8. Male and female God created them; male and female we ordain them.

7. You don't have to check your brains at the door.

6. Pew aerobics.

5. Church year is color-coded.

4. Free wine on Sunday.

3. All of the pageantry - none of the guilt.

2. You don't have to know how to swim to get baptized.

And the Number One reason to be an Episcopalian:

1. No matter what you believe, there's bound to be at least one other Episcopalian who agrees with you.

BRIGHT SHINING AS THE SON

Today, on the feast of the Transfiguration, I had to write something if only because my daughter was married on the summit of Mount Tabor, where we are told it occurred. And the reason I chose Giovanni Bellini's painting is because it is the only one I've seen where Jesus and the others are all on the same ground plane: Jesus is not perched high above, or floating in the air. The Gospels tell us only that as they were talking he was "transfigured": he shone brightly, and his clothes, now white, shone also. The Greek word is metamorphosein, to change form or shape. And Moses and Elijah turned up and were seen talking with him. I love to think of the three disciples as remaining on the same bit of ground, at the same distance, and suddenly stunned with the bright light, the white and gold, and those two great men, the patriarch and the prophet, in front of them, on the same level.

What does it mean? The shining white raiment, someone wrote, is that of the Angel at the tomb also: the sign of Resurrection. And Jesus tells the disciples not to mention this until he is resurrected. So it is a kind of foretaste in the story. A foretaste of the Resurrection; but also a taste of Jesus's divinity, and of his fulfilment of the Scriptures. He is speaking with the man who led Israel out of Egypt to the Promised Land; and with the greatest of the prophets, who ascended into Heaven without dying. 

It is a strange, uncanny, numinous and entirely wonderful moment, charged with meaning -- a meaning that is not explained. It is left for the disciples, and for us, to work out. It gives us furiously to think -- which is not a bad thing, in a world where too much of religion is associated solely with either feeling or good works. I used to hang out with some delightful and very devout Charismatics, but eventually left them because, as I told their leader, they behaved as if God had created every bit of them except their intelligence. We are to love him with our heart, our soul, and our mind . . .