Light Gets In: Poland to Palestine, Littleton to Selma, spirit to politics: Light Gets In: Grace Odyssey: The Journey is Home

Monday, July 14, 2014

Light Gets In: Grace Odyssey: The Journey is Home

Light Gets In: Grace Odyssey: The Journey is Home: It's all about grace. Anneli's backstory. Everybody has one. Right? What's yours? One of very few bona fide Colo...

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Light Is In!

Forget your perfect offering; there is a crack in everything:

That’s how the light gets in.

__Leonard Cohen

Tallinn, Estonia, late May. 1982, again ’85: Nearing the Arctic Circle. Nights bleached with safely dim sun, dusky twilight a sanctuary from time measured by minutes that emptied too early into unrelenting glare of harsh exposure, daytime’s shaming obeisance to tyranny, unwelcome revelations, when all the wrong things are known and summarily judged: the vulgar and capricious, unrelenting unreal reality of absurdity is dominant; and so we sat, bow-legged, leaning on one another for warmth and strength, entirely illegally through the long hours hours hours, of crepuscular tenebrous tender time, only days away from the ultimate ‘White Nights’ of Midsommer and light got in, light from the porous place of mystery and heart.

The “verisimilitude draws up heat in us, zest to follow through, follow transformations of day in its turning, in its becoming,” (Denise Levertov, Matins)

We spoke through many nights of an entirely illegal alternative reality – in their Soviet country and, remarkably also in ours. Of beloved community, of Light from elsewhere, a beyond-belief manumission for our Soviet friends, for freedom! oh, would it ever come? --- and for the possibility of creating a common future that enters through cracks of imperfection. Life in Soviet Estonia then was entirely bleak and uncompromising (except when you were ‘compromised,’ which is another hell of its own.) Every time I left Tallinn they begged me for one thing: more Leonard Cohen. He expressed their reality like no one else. So I learned too of his deep, spooky honest analysis. And reluctant hope.

Entirely illegally, we sat out late through hours, hours, feeding soul and spirit with truth, light, such as we could conceive it, singing “broken hallelujahs,” even as we fed a pitiful, smoky campfire that barely, and needlessly lasted all night,while Juri and Patrick, Luanne, David, Heino, Muna, Paul, Kim, Tiit, Kadi, drop-ins, and me wondered this: what is possible?

In those days, it seemed Auden was right, “Nothing that is possible can save us…. we .. demand a miracle…” For everything worthy was ‘wrong,’ and the upside-down inside-out words of the prophet, Jesus, had never seemed so entirely true. We, entirely illegally – for it was forbidden for foreigners to fraternize with Soviet citizens, we together – no one offering advice, all of us humble, especially us Americans! – spoke in whispers, bare wisps of aspiration, then anticipation: for it must come, it must: the trajectory of history turns toward hope: doesn’t it, please? Doesn’t it?

We entirely illegally let the ashes of anguish gather at the bottom of the fire pit, it being unlawful for us to burn together, hearts one in expectation of future, a miracle when light would get in, when an unexpected, unimaginable – to ordinary apprehension – fissure would open, the crack allowed it – and even through the imperfection (the entirely legal illogical regulations and rules and even internal censorship that would not allow most to partake of our being together,) and so in our mystic communion even through the haze of hopefulness and our determination to struggle together against being overwhelmed, (L. Hansberry) we let the embers of one fire die, while an ever-deeper one burns within us.

Incipient warning broke our reverie: the breaking bad brilliance of dawn, a rooster crowed in the yard nearby, and the spell was broken. Still we had lived those hours of the night and nobody, nothing could steal them, or the horizon that beckoned beyond the farthest reach of light. We spent those quiet moments drawing up the heat, zest, follow through, courage-to-be, and for a transformation that brought us together to the place of turning, returning, becoming…and with early morning came bright unwelcome revelations, of course. Especially for our Estonian friends. But welcome, stealthy, awareness, also, of the horizon, coming closer. Living “already” so much as possible, in the “not yet” reality of another realm.

And so it has been. Their world changed within a decade. Heino went to Princeton. Tiit to Sweden and back. And others to the lives they had longed to live. And we, still, in community across miles, follow transformations, turning, turning, becoming, ever more grateful that, in a yet-broken world, through our broken “hallelujah’s and imperfection, LIGHT GETS IN.

honest. humbled. passionate and defiant but with humus smeared on my face. imperfection my teacher, cracked broken and light gets in.

Welcome! Three years ago I made an 11 week, 11,000 mile road trip alone from Denver to Nantucket and back. Conversations with deep and sweet old friends were mingled in with insights from folks I just met. I was covering familiar territory but it can all feel new, when moving quickly and all mixed together. It was beyond rich!

I invite you to consider this blog a long road trip around the world, from 5 Points in Denver and 'my' beloved mountains, all the way to Moscow, through a time warp of Soviet era Eastern Europe, modern Europe, my true home territory in Sweden, across the Mediterranean into Africa, especially South Africa, and back to the Middle East, especially Palestine and Israel. We travel by way of spirit and heart, conscience and engagement with the traditions and stories that I've gathered up through my desire and attempts to live faithfully according to the words of Micah, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God, and with the words and life of Jesus of Nazareth, who said without irony that the life given away for others, will be the fullest life one could ever imagine. And who insists still, that grace, grace is everything. That's a lot of ground to cover!

You are invited to ponder, wonder, and ask right along with me: is this our best work? How can we get beyond the injustices and hate, the deep fears and frightening reactions society tends to put out there? I invite your feedback, ideas, 'best practices.' .

Monday, July 14, 2014

Light Gets In: Grace Odyssey: The Journey is Home

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Grace odyssey