dharmatalks

The following is the text from a homily I gave tonight to honour Sister Helen Travis, the amazingly firey, foul-mouthed, irascible Benedictine nun who started the Travis Centre in the South Bronx back in the 80′s. Sister Helen died seven years ago today, and I miss her.

Even if the whole “religion thing” isn’t your cup of tea, you may enjoy this glimpse into the impact this remarkable woman had on the lives of so many of us…

In our Gospel for this Sunday, we read the passage in Luke 5:1-11, in which the account of Jesus calling His first disciples to a new vocation — a completely new and radical way of life. To these simple and uneducated fishermen, Jesus says metaphorically, “From now on, I will make you fishers of men…”

It’s a passage that usually strikes a particularly deep chord for those of us who live the consecrated religious life, because we, like those first disciples, commit to “leave everything and follow Him.”

On February 3rd, seven years ago, one of my great inspirations in religious life died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The brash, Benedictine fireball, Sister Helen Travis was far from your typical nun. She was a recovering alcoholic, who lost her son and husband to substance abuse, who founded a halfway house in New York’s South Bronx. Those who knew Sister Helen frequently tell me that my colourful choice of expletives, especially my personal favourite — “the f-word” — reminds them of her. And nothing could compliment me more than to be told that my no-nonsense, radical and raw ministry reminds them of Sister Helen.

Like St. Peter, Sister Helen was no young chicken when she answered the call to consecrated religious life. She was 56 years old when she entered the Benedictines. By that time, her husband already died an alcoholic, and two of her three children, 15 year-old Thomas and 25 year-old John were dead. Thomas was stabbed to death, and John died of a heroin overdose. At the age of 58, Sister Helen started the John Thomas Travis Centre in a city-owned apartment building. She would tell people that she was called to do for other people’s sons what she couldn’t do for her own. For Helen, her vocation was her “second chance.”

Before her death, Sister Helen had twenty-one recovering alcoholics and addicts living at the Travis Centre, which is now run by her surviving daughter, Mary. She ran the house with an iron hand, insisting that every resident pay rent, help maintain the building, volunteer in the food bank, and stay clean. When it came to random drug-tests, Sister Helen was well known for her candor with every resident. In a documentary that was being filmed about her the day she died, she is heard saying to a new resident, “When I say piss, you piss.”

Sister Helen lived out her vocation in the trenches, fighting for the lives of addicted men. And because some of these addicts were not just addicts, but pedophiles, murders, thieves and con-artists, she knew how to dose out some of the toughest love in the South Bronx. Her irascible, abrasive attitude, sailor’s mouth, and simple black veil were only externals that shrouded one of the greatest living examples of the revolutionary call of Christ. Sister Helen was an remarkable woman, an amazing nun, and extraordinary follower of Christ.

And it was Sister Helen who encouraged a young Franciscan friar not to give up, when the institutional Church refused to support his work with those dying with AIDS in the late 80′s and 90′s. She said, “Don’t give up kid… you can’t let the fuckers get the best of you. That piss and vinegar you’re made of won’t get you a show on EWTN, but it will give you the courage to be the arms of Christ for those who would otherwise die without knowing they were loved.” She also said it would never be easy. And it hasn’t been.

Today is Vocations Sunday, and as I celebrated the Vigil Mass, I found myself pausing for a few minutes of gut-wrenching tears. Sister Helen had a hemorhage minutes after yelling at the vendors who were not going to be able to get the food her residents needed for dinner to the house that day. She died fighting for those who didn’t have anyone else to fight for them.

I found myself, a couple weeks away from my 44th birthday, having lived with full-blown AIDS just under a quarter of a century now, struggling to get by, with less than $30 in the bank. Earlier, my front tooth shattered — a sign of the deteriorating condition of my health and problems associated with not being able to afford to see a doctor for treatment in the past five years. In order to be able to eat, I had to “rebuild” a tooth from acrylic nail powder, and affix it to my remaining teeth. Paying for a dentist wouldn’t be possible. Without an income, we’ve lost the hermitage. My things are in storage, and hundreds of resumes are in circulation, trying to find work as a hospice chaplain or other work in a non-profit agency. The physical pain, fatigue and weakness I am dealing with, coupled with the losses of more than 108 men and women, who’ve died in my arms in the past 24 years almost succeeded at overwhelming me and winning…

And then, I was reminded of Sister Helen. She went down fighting until the end. I’m not sure how, but I am resolved to do nothing less. For her and for all of those who have no voice… for those who have been rejected by institutional religion and society… for those who have lost hope… for those who don’t know that God is Love and that the arms of Christ welcome everyone into that sacred embrace and the silence of unspeakable love.

Luckily, not everyone is called to live such a crazy, chaotic and schizophrenic vocation. But each of us is called… called to become fishers of men and women… to cast our nets wide, and bring everyone we can into the embrace of Eternal Love.

We may not all be called to serve as consecrated religious or contemplative monks… but we can be consecrated teachers, consecrated retail managers, consecrated homemakers, consecrated programmers, and whatever else it is we are called to do in life — we can consecrate that life to bringing love, healing, compassion and reconciliation to those we touch.

Sister Helen, this one’s for you! I’m still hanging in there, Sister! I miss you… and I honour your memory! Eternal Light and Blessed Memory!

Since my Candlemas/Imbolc reflection got the fundies all in a snit, I thought we’d continue the theme, with this little newsbyte from the world of archaeology!

National Geographics News reports that connected to the readily recognised stone monument, known as Stonehenge, and a second timber monument recently discovered, was a much larger religious complex, housing the ancient community who built it.

The leader of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, Mike Parker Pearson reported that in September 2006, excavations revealed the remains of eight wooden buildings and archaeological remains of up to 30 more dwellings. The project, which is the joint effort of six British universities, and is funded by the National Geographic Society, claims that this Late Stone Age village — the largest ever discovered in Britain — is also the largest “henge” or circular earthwork ever found, dating back some 4,600 years, to the building of Stonehenge’s familiar sarsen stones itself.

Each of the small houses excavated measured about 200-250 square feet, and had clay floors, hearths and even such furniture as beds, tables and cupboards.

These imposing buildings may have been the homes of the high priests and priestesses, who would have lived apart from the community at large, and in closer proximity to the sarsen stones. Others suspect that they may have been shrines or small temples used in part of the worship and craft of the people who built them.

Further out, along the remains of the ancient road that connects Durrington (where Stonehenge is located) to the River Avon, remains of another cluster of homes exists. This impressive ancient road is aligned with the path of the summer solstice sunset, opposite the road known as “Stonehenge Avenue” on the other side, which aligns with the summer solstice sunrise.

And where Stonehenge is aligned with the winter solstice sunset, the larger Durrington timber circle is aligned with the winter solstice sunrise. “Durrington is almost a mirror image of its stone counterpart at Stonehenge,” Parker Pearson said. “You can pretty much overlie the plan of Stonehenge on the timber circle and see they’re the same dimensions.”

Evidence of prehistoric pyres has been found along the course of the river, suggesting that worshippers travelled to Stonehenge to bury their dead or celebrate the mysteries of the ancestors.

“The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors,” Parker Pearson said.

Whatever their significance, the modern day practitioners of the mystery arts are one step closer to learning how their forebearers might have lived and worked in a community of healing, compassion, wisdom and light. And it begs to ask, if people of the Neolithic Age could build such communities of peace, why can’t we?

Does the possibility for a non-hierarchical, contemplative, progressive and inclusive spiritual community strike anyone else as being of interest? Discuss…

Throughout the history of the Catholic Church, festivals were created to coincide with more ancient traditions, because the leaders of the Church realised that these traditions would always be part of the fabric of the people’s lives. Christmas was celebrated on December 25th to coincide with the festival of Saturnalia, Easter would coincide with the festivals surrounding the Spring Equinox.

And so it was that the cross-quarter day — the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox — which had long been celebrated as Imbolc and the Festival of the Goddess Brigid, would be Christianised in the fifth century, so that another part of the Christian midrash could be tied into the ancient traditions of the people. This tying-in would prove useful in developing the mythos of a movement that would become an institutional religion.

The word imbolc literally means “in the womb” or “in the belly of the Mother”. In the ancient traditions, it celebrated the reality that hidden within the womb of Mother Earth, the stirrings of new life had begun, so that by the feast of Beltane, the seed of new life, planted in the Mother’s womb at the solstice will have bloomed into the richness and beauty of Spring. Imbolc marks the “quickening”, when nights will become shorter, and the light of day will lengthen into Summer.

In the Celtic tradition, the holiday was called Brigid’s Day, honouring the goddess of fire, at whose temple in Kildare, a perpetual fire was kept lit. Brigid was the patroness of healing and midwifery. Since the Roman Church could not extinguish the “fire” of the people’s devotion to the goddess, they created a mythical “saint” by the same name, and in Ireland, created an entire mythos around her allegedly being the foster mother of Jesus, whom they alleged came to Ireland with His family to avoid the mythical “slaughter of the holy innocents” (neither of which is actually likely to have ever occurred).

During Imbolc, the celebration was chiefly marked by the kindling and blessing of sacred fires. These fires represented the fire of birth, the fire of poetry, the fire of healing and the fire of love. And it was from the ancient belief that the goddess purified the womb of the new mother that the Roman Church developed the day of Candlemas as the blessing of candles to be used in the coming year, and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Mother Mary. In the ancient tradition of the Jewish people, a mother was “unclean” for six weeks after giving birth, and would come to the temple to be “purified” through the offer of sacrifice and prayers.

The mystical tradition surrounding the birth of Jesus and the festivals of the Early Church honoured and integrated these ancient traditions, and so it would be that they commemorated His birth on the Winter Solstice and 40-days later, on February 2nd, the purification of His Mother’s womb. In the ancient traditions, this day would also be when the Great Mother (Divine Feminine Principle) becomes the Young Maiden Goddess once more.

Imagine how beautiful it must have been to see, in the windows of every home, newly made and blessed candles placed in the window of every house from sunset until sunrise, welcoming in the quickening of spring!

For the early Jesus Movement, the symbolism was clear. From the womb of the Blessed Mother, new life… a new way of living… was born. It was for them a new spiritual springtime. From the womb of Mary, the embodiment of the Divine Feminine Principle, the Sacred Flame of the Christ was incarnate and made real for us.

The midwinter festival, marking the “return of the Sol Invictus” (the sun-god) had become symbolic of the return of the “Son of God” to reinvigorate the world with new life.

I’ll close with the opening meditation I will use tonight, as we begin our sacred celebration of Candlemas, wishing each of you the dawning new light of love, compassion, healing and inspiration in all that you do. The first signs of a spiritual springtime are stirring in the tabernacle of our hearts… soon they will bloom into signs of wonder and service, tolerance and reconciliation, love and peace!

Night of white lit candles,
of darkness turned to light,
Incarnate flame of healing love
whose sacred womb burns bright

Mother of the Universe
and Lady of the Snows,
let everything You touch be changed
through whom all wisdom flows

From your womb came our freedom
Enfleshed from You came Love
Enjoined to that One Source tonight
as here, so up above

Bless the lights enkindled here
and that enduring flame
which burns within us evermore
and heals our pain and shame

Let us become the candles
of Christ’s eternal light
And where there’s sorrow
let us bring joy
Where darkness, only light

Let us reveal the light of peace
where tensions now divide
So that our Eucharistic Feast
reveals the Light Inside

One Source of Perfect Life exists
One Healing Flame that gives
One Christ, One Mother and Many Paths
to One Love
So it is.

May the Light which Brigid bears to the world, be enkindled in the temples of our hearts for one another. Peace. One. Namast