The Holy Ordinary with Zemirah

[00:00:01] This is Josh Reeves and you're listening to the Mile Hi Church Podcast. Hey, Saturday, June 20th, 10am, John Pierre is coming to speak to us about the pillars of health. Learn how to take care of yourself, support other people as well. It's in our community center, it'll be a great workshop, it's $20. For more information, go to milehighchurch.org.

[00:00:20] I wonder if you would consider joining me for a moment in your imagination. Going within, as we walk together in a world in the times of poet, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

[00:00:35] And perhaps within your imagination, imagine that we are walking along in the woods on a glorious autumn afternoon, the sunlight filtering through the trees, and as we are walking, we come upon a ravine. And this ravine, to our surprise, has been clear-cut to make way for the coming railroad tracks.

[00:01:03] And perhaps much like Thoreau, you might begin to feel, given that you're used to the song of the birds and the trees surrounding you, you might feel a pang of irritation as you hear the buzz of the telegraph wire that's moving along above you.

[00:01:24] And so, like Thoreau, perhaps you pause to sit for a moment at the base of the telegraph pole to contemplate, to listen. And what do you begin to hear but a slight musical strain, filtrating through the buzz of the telegraph?

[00:01:49] This vibrating wire reminded Thoreau of a wind harp. Thoreau would write in his journal about this afternoon experience. He said he would sit down on a stone at the foot of the telegraph pole, and he would attend to a communication. When all of a sudden he writes, he began to hear a voice within his head. And the voice said,

[00:02:17] Bear in mind, child, never forget for an instant that there are higher planes, infinitely higher planes of life than this thou art now traveling on. Know that the goal is distant and it is upward and it is worth all of your life's effort to attain to it.

[00:02:45] Thoreau's legacy includes some two million words written in 24-year span in journals that we now have that share his experience. And many of those words express grief over his feeling that the trees and the birds were being sacrificed and disappearing as modernity was clear-cutting a path through his beloved natural world.

[00:03:11] And like Thoreau, though, we all have a choice. We too live in a world where there is modernity that is clamoring for our attention in every moment, but we too have a choice to sit down and allow the ordinary to reveal its hidden holiness, to listen for a deeper inspiration within the wind.

[00:03:38] This experience would inspire him to write his poem entitled, Rumors of an Aeolian Harp. And an Aeolian harp was a wooden instrument with three strings that was passively played by the wind. A wind harp. And in the Romantic era literature, a wind harp became a symbol of the interconnectivity of all things.

[00:04:02] So, like Thoreau, all of us can allow the messages of the divine to reveal through the daily ordinary a deeper meaning. We can become that wind harp when we pause long enough to allow ourselves to be played by the winds of divine guidance that come through our spiritual practices.

[00:04:24] To allow ourselves to be played by the winds of devotional texts when we engage in contemplation. And we can be played by the winds of the sacred symbolism and the messages from the infinite and the higher planes that are embedded within our very day-to-day life. These are visitations of the holy ordinary.

[00:04:53] These are the touch points of grace that awaken us to a deeper reality of life. And so today we are exploring together how we can build resilience and spiritual fortitude within ourselves in times when it feels so dark. In times of tempest. In times of upheaval, change, transition. In times when we, together here, are actively calling forth a new world,

[00:05:24] but yet on the physical plane, it hasn't quite emerged, synergized, or taken form quite yet. Our walk with Thoreau illuminates our topic, the holy ordinary. And this talk was inspired by a book that found me at exactly the right moment. I was walking through the airport, getting ready to go on vacation and pilgrimage to Mexico when this title reached out and grabbed me from off the shelf.

[00:05:53] Ever happened to you? And then it had to come home with me. It had to come home with me. It was, it's entitled The Glorians, Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. And it's just been released by Terry Tempest Williams. And in this book, it is not a particularly easy read, as it brings to the forefront the ripple effects of the pandemic,

[00:06:20] of wars, of desecration of our natural beloved world, of the injustice woven through every layer of our human and more than human lives. But it's a very important read. Because Terry Tempest Williams does what the great writers do. She walks straight into the darkness and finds hidden there the light that is never extinguished.

[00:06:50] Mythologist Michael Mead, who's known for blending ancient myths and anthropology and psychology, he teaches us that as we are living in a time where the underlying tensions of life are being revealed and becoming more evident, brought to the surface, more tension everywhere, almost any issue, he says, can divide us. We are called then to seek a deeper kind of unity under the tension,

[00:07:19] under the tension between dark and light, between time and timelessness. We are called to seek something greater, that hidden unity. He says that as we move through these times, if we haven't cultivated this deeper awareness of this unity within ourselves and understand this connection with something greater, he says when times get rough,

[00:07:45] then we tend to fall back and within ourselves, into ourselves. And if we haven't cultivated this strength, we can begin to feel lost inside as well as outside. You know, sometimes I feel this way in my own life. I wake up and I feel like my soul has been cauterized almost, as if my capacity to register, to feel, to integrate the world around me

[00:08:13] has been quietly sealed off in protection against pain, against threat. And there's so many fires all around. And my prayer often is, please allow me to feel meaning and depth, touch of grace today in my life. Tempest Williams addresses these times of darkness by heralding forth what she refers to as the Glorians.

[00:08:43] The Glorians. This book was born out of a dream she had on the eve of the pandemic, in which she was greeted by Cassandra from ancient Greece. And Cassandra approaches her and she says, Do you remember the vow that you took? And she says to Cassandra, Remind me. And Cassandra says,

[00:09:07] Your vow is to create the epic documentation of the Glorians. So awakening from her dream, she wasn't quite sure what a Glorian was. So she did what many of us do. She went to Google and she typed it in. And what she found first was a book of names from Kenya, which said that it could be for a child from either gender that means bringing forth praise and worth. And she thought, That's lovely.

[00:09:38] And then she read on. It was better than what the Urban Dictionary gave her, which was a definition, Excess user of toilet paper in times of crisis. And she thought, I don't think that's quite it. So she went to explore Glorian in her own life. And what she discovered, as she defines, A Glorian is an encounter,

[00:10:05] a moment of grace upon this glorious world that we live in. She says, A Glorian. And I would add to her definition, not just an encounter of grace, but anything in your life that brings a sense of, and an awareness of greater unity. Anything that brings you a sense of, that there is a power for good in the universe, and you are here to apply and to use it. Anything that brings a sense of swelling abundance within your own heart,

[00:10:35] an awestruck instant. Glorians are these messengers and these symbols of, that come to us through the holy ordinary. In our spiritual practice, we can use remembrance, reflection, and recognition to shape an expectation of grace within our own life. A deeper awareness of the ways that grace touches us all the time. And it's often hidden in plain sight.

[00:11:05] So the first way that we can begin to develop this expectation of grace is to remember divine companionship. A Glorian is a reminder of companionship, this companionship with a capital C. It's when, it's this reminder that even though the veil, that the veil is thin and we can reach through, it can open at any time to bring you fully,

[00:11:34] consciously aware of who you are on a deeper level. How many of you have had throughout your life, perhaps a sacred ritual, a spiritual habit, a special interest, a message, a sign that has followed you again and again, that you have been mysteriously drawn to. Something that grabs your attention, as if to say, pay attention.

[00:12:03] Something that brings you enchantment and ushers you into a deeper state of connection. That deeper meaning sometimes is suddenly revealed, perhaps in your life, through an instant of divine lightning strike, where it all begins to make sense, right? All these visitations of this symbol, this practice,

[00:12:32] that have followed you all of your life, suddenly are illuminated and you understand the deeper meaning that is meant just for you. One of those such Glorians for me has been the Blessed Mother Guadalupe. You know, I was inexplicably drawn to her. I began to put images of her all around my house before I even knew who she was. And she kept finding me. She kept finding me

[00:13:01] when I would be moving through the plains of Peru and there she was on the dashboard of the taxi cab. She would find me when I'm driving through the back roads of Illinois and she's in the front yard of someone's garden. She, you know, people began to give me statues and bookmarks, even a holy font for water that had her image upon it. And again and again, she came into my life as if to say, I am here.

[00:13:30] Are you paying attention? I'm sure you have a Glorian that touches you in a similar way. You know, in Mexico, the story, the legend of Guadalupe is that she appeared after 10 years of deep grief. The land was saturated in trauma. In 1521, the great Aztec civilization, ancient, intricate, and with its own sacred order,

[00:14:00] was brought to its knees by Cortes and the conquistadors. You know, temples fell, sacred documents, texts, centuries of encoded wisdom were burned. Millions died at the sword, at the disease that was introduced. A civilization who had built these magnificent pyramids and who read the stars was made to convert to the dominant faith or die. And then,

[00:14:30] on a cold morning, in 1531, an Aztec man whose Christian name was Juan Diego was crossing this rocky, barren hill, a hill where once stood a temple in honor of the Aztec goddess Tonansin, the hill of Tepeyac. And he was crossing this hill, this ancient site of reverence for the divine mother, for the Aztec earth mother,

[00:14:59] for the nurturer of life. And on top of that hill, he began to hear a celestial music. And a radiant woman appeared to him. She spoke in Nahuatl, his own native language, and she called herself the mother. She said, Am I not your mother? And she made a simple request to him. She says, Build me a home, a sanctuary here on this hill. When he went to the bishop, the bishop wanted proof. And so he returned

[00:15:29] to the hill a few days later and the radiant woman appeared to him again and she said, Here, take these roses. Gather some roses to show to the bishop. And he thought, What roses? This is winter. And he looked over to the side and there, growing on the side of the hill, were Castilian roses. Roses from Spain. He gathered them into his tilma, his Aztec agave fiber cloak. And he went down and when he stooped

[00:15:58] before the bishop, he opened his tilma and there upon the tilma was this image of the Divine Mother and out fell these roses at the bishop's feet and he understood. In that moment, this tilma in and of itself was a message, a uniting factor for all of the civilization of that time because her cloak was turquoise, the color that the Aztecs reserved solely

[00:16:28] for gods and kings. Her cloak was scattered with stars. Astronomers later identified that these stars were arranged in the constellations that were present in the sky over Mexico City at that precise moment at 6:45 in the morning. Not 10 minutes later, not 10 minutes before, but that moment when he opened his cloak. And she wore her, the sky like a shawl all around her. In the middle, over her womb,

[00:16:56] was a Nahui Olin, a four-pedaled Aztec glyph for the center of the cosmos, announcing something new is being born here. Beneath her feet, the moon, and she eclipsed the sun in peace. She had not come to erase. She had come to remember, to unite, to weave prayers and grief into a shared faith

[00:17:26] that would make a new world in that part of the world possible in that time. Earlier this spring, I had the absolute amazing opportunity to go on pilgrimage to the beloved Basilica in Mexico City with my dear friends, Dorothy and Pete, and my beloved partner, Andrew. And unbeknownst to us, we stepped out of our taxi to meander into a parade of faith. We did not know, but this was one of the one times

[00:17:56] of the year where pilgrims would come from all over Mexico to gather together in community, elders, children, communities, marching together in progression to offer, to place their offerings at the feet of Guadalupe. They were carrying bread, sweets, statues, paintings, notes, love notes, flowers, their arms full, and they were chanting, Viva Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

[00:18:26] They were singing one voice, one song, La Guadalupana, together. And in that moment, together, thousands of voices uniting as one in this communal memory and reverence for their beloved mother that was a symbol of uniting faith, uniting humanity, uniting our beloved world. And we stood in the middle of it and I felt moved

[00:18:56] by something I can only describe as remembering because in the base of my, I felt it like in my whole body that there was this sense of in that parade of faith, we were being gathered back into something much deeper, something that we have always known. It was remembering in community. This is companionship with a capital C,

[00:19:26] not with just each other, but with the cosmos itself, a sense that the universe is always conspiring to bring us home to ourselves. Glorians support you in the companionship of your own soul. So take your heart on a walk and see what you find, what glorians are there to give you message. You are never, not for one single second,

[00:19:56] walking alone. This brings us to the second way we shape an awareness and expectation of grace, and this is through seeing that the dark times and the dark places in our life, those deep places of pain, are the greatest portals, invitations of a deeper grace where we can become greater reflectors of light should we meet ourselves

[00:20:26] and meet the challenge in the dark. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in her book Untying the Strong Woman, Our Lady of Guadalupe grows her strongest roses in the earthly ground where she is most needed, amongst the horns honking and the ambulances careening, children crying out in joy and pain. She says, she joins us amongst all the people groaning and dancing and making love, the trokey mokey every which way of humanity whose singing sounds, works, and actions

[00:20:55] are part of the exact basis for the harmonious and the music and the music of the cosmos. She does not come to the sanitized places, writes Estes. She does not wait for us to have it all together. She grows her roses in the noise, in the grief, in the beautiful, unbearable mess of human life in the midst

[00:21:25] of the ordinary. Terry Tempest Williams offers us a glorion that speaks to this very meeting of the darkness in order to begin to reflect the light. She talks about the moonflower, the datura, the datura, which Georgia O'Keeffe painted so beautifully in her garden of flowers. The moonflower does not bloom at high noon. in the midst

[00:21:55] of the light. It waits for twilight. It opens slowly and deliberately within the dark. And then at its moment of fullest opening, it releases what Williams calls a powerful pop of perfume into the night. My great-grandmother had a moonflower vine. She grew it alongside her back porch. And in the summer months, we would drag our lawn chairs out and circle around that vine.

[00:22:24] And we would sit there and wait a long time as a child, long time, for the sun to set. Because as the sun would set, oh, what a magnificent moment it was when the flower would pop open. And as a child, you'd be like, I caught it. I saw it. Did you see it? And there it was, open to the night, unapologetic, completely alive.

[00:22:52] That's what reflect asks of us. Not to rush toward the light, not to perform having it all together, but to trust the unfurling, to inhabit the dark places of our lives fully, honestly, and without fleeing, so that we can bloom more completely. So that we can become like the moon that Guadalupe stood upon,

[00:23:22] reflections of light that is always there. When we stop fighting the dark and lean in with faith and trust, loosening our grip on how we think things must be, should be, surrender to how grace is actually moving, the more we practice this, the more we let go, the more we give permission and become reflections of light to the world around us. This is the gift of reflection.

[00:23:52] Finally, we shape an expectation and a deeper awareness of grace by recognizing the divine, by recognizing. This involves honoring your very own soul for the glory that it is, for the glory that you are in the world around you. You too serve as a glorian. You know, you may think your act of

[00:24:21] kindness goes unnoticed, but it doesn't to the one on the other end of it. That smile across the train, that gift of sharing your art in just a special way, your soul has a magnificent impact on the universe. And more often than not, we can't conceive of it from this angle. I fell asleep a few nights ago reading the book Guided by Lauren Lynn Jackson. It's featured

[00:24:51] in our June book club here. And she was telling the story of an episode from the British series Doctor Who, in which the doctor travels back in time and brings the famously tormented Van Gogh forward in time to 2010 to visit the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. And I was so drawn to her relating of this story. I went on YouTube to watch this episode and I was

[00:25:20] moved to tears. Because you travel with Van Gogh into this museum and you see his face begin to come alive when he realizes it is his paintings that went largely unnoticed, unrecognized, unappreciated, and disregarded during his lifetime. They're featured on the walls of this museum. And not only that, there

[00:25:50] are tourists taking pictures, there are children learning about them with their teachers, there is a professor and curator standing by. And so the doctor goes up to the curator and the critic, who's also a critic, and he says in a hundred words or so, what do you think Van Gogh, where do you think Van Gogh ranks in the history of art? And Van Gogh is standing by and listening when the curator says, to me, Van Gogh is the

[00:26:19] finest painter of them all. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but the use of your passion and your pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificent of our world. To my mind, that strange wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world's greatest artist, but he was one of the greatest men who ever lived. Van Gogh begins to weep.

[00:26:50] Too much, says the doctor. He says, oh, no, these are tears of joy. We are called to transmute and to transform our own passion and pain, to be of service in the world, to recognize the divine, and to realize that it is always there available to us in the midst of the holy ordinary. As I was researching this talk, I was

[00:27:18] visited by several glorians. A hummingbird buzzed by. I didn't see it, but I heard it by the window. I was out walking in the hills of the Green Mountain, and my gaze was directed up to see the gaze of a deer connecting back with me. And as I was researching one quiet evening, I messaged my father, who spends time each year on my childhood farm, and he has built a

[00:27:47] wind harp that plays passively in the wind. And so I messaged him, I said, did you know that Thoreau also had a wind harp just like this? He said, no, I didn't know that, but how interesting that you messaged. I just finished repairing it a minute ago. Glorians, the ineffable, it's all around us.

[00:28:17] And as we close today, I want to take this moment for each one of us to honor the glorians that walk amidst us, the glorians within you, the glorian that you are, that is within you, and to honor the fact that we are never, ever alone. In the closing words of Tempest Williams, the

[00:28:46] glorians are reaching out to us, they are inviting us to engage. They arrive unplanned, unearned, and irrefutable. They are grace. grace. Let's pray. In this moment, we go within to breathe into our heart and to honor that touch point of

[00:29:16] grace that is the temple of your own soul, the temple of your own heart, that altar for the divine within you. And we honor the way that there are messages from the infinite that so lovingly guide us, support us in a deeper connection, a deeper awareness of interconnectedness with all that is, with all the beauty, with all the grace that is all around us.

[00:29:47] And in this moment, we also lean in to embrace those places of darkness, those places of challenge, of pain, of fear, of disease. of unrest, those places in our world that are in upheaval, where the terror is all around. And we embrace those places right now, surrendering into a deeper sense of feeling

[00:30:17] and knowing that God is, Spirit is, grace is. And so we open our hearts and allow it to be. and it is with a deeper sense of thanksgiving that we give thanks for every walk of faith that takes us deeper into trust. May we all be part of a greater parade of faith that is the unification of our human and other than

[00:30:46] human world, our beloved planet. we send love, we send grace, and we open to the light. I release this prayer into that law, allowing it to be, feeling and knowing it is complete. So I affirm, and so it is. Thanks for listening to the Mile High Church podcast. This podcast is made possible by the generous contributions from

[00:31:16] listeners like you. To make a donation, please visit milehighchurch.org.