Chrysalis of Change

The strange resonant word, ‘instar’, describes the state between two successive molts, for as it grows, a caterpillar, like a snake…splits its skin again and again, each stage an instar.  It remains a caterpillar as it goes through these molts, but no longer one in the same skin.  There are rituals marking such splits, graduations, indoctrinations, ceremonies of change, though most changes proceed without such clear and encouraging recognition.  ‘Instar’ implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far.  (p. 83;  A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Rebecca Solnit)

 When are you going to wake up and see how it really works? When are you going to see that the world is NOT a warm and welcoming place? When will you stop being such a Pollyanna?

 These are questions I remember being asked between middle school and high school.  At that time, I had nothing to offer by way of acceptable response.  I simply needed to believe that there was hope.  I needed to know in my bones that there was reason to believe in something bigger, something more.  I could not bring myself to give in to darkness nor could I offer an acceptable defense of my seeming aloofness to another’s perceived reality.

 I have been asked those questions by others in my adult life too.  When will I wake up?  When will I see the true state of things? 

And I still don’t have an easy answer that can be penned into an appointment slot or plotted on a

Google calendar.

But here’s what I believe: I will see the true state of things when I die…when I Become. When I witness a driving rain transformed into light.  (The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery) Then I will truly see as God sees and I will know as God knows.

Until then, I live with the tensions.

The tension of lax money-grubbing, gun laws that allow the mentally ill to own guns and accrue ridiculous amounts of ammo.

The tension of discriminatory immigration policies based on fear, power, finance, and privilege. Policies that affect people I know, people I love, and people I do not know…people who are fleeing their home with nothing and seeking refuge.  People who need safety before they can believe in tomorrow.

The tensions of racism, classism, radical nationalism, gender-ism, sexual orientation/gender identity-ism…and   a multitude of –phobias… all of which seek to elevate distinct groups, set them aside as good and better and best, while other groups are to be scorned, feared, blamed, ridiculed, beaten, starved, exiled, stoned, shot…

 The tensions of a political situation in my country of birth that I find shameful, blind, and profoundly dangerous. 

These issues and so many others are pulling at me.  Pulling at my hands to write, my feet to march, my eyes to be open, my voice to proclaim, and my heart… my heart…

Oh, my heart…it hurts sometimes. Deeply.  It hurts with wounds and it sometimes hurts from so much grace.

I see all of this as tension, though.  Tension…not laxity. Tension…because there are forces pulling back.  There are forces within me that are stronger.  There are forces in world society that are stronger.  Energy for good.  For hope.  For justice, compassion, inclusion, solidarity.

Sometimes the balance pulls to one side, sometimes to another…sometimes heavenly, sometimes disastrous…oscillating between near and far...

So, when will I "wake up?"  I've been awake. Awake because of Hope; Awake to Love; Awake for what lies ahead...the work, the tension, the grace.

Six Years and a Smooth Stone

I recently began a book that has quickly become a warm smooth stone in my pocket, a book I am pleased to have with me whether I have a chance to read it or not.  When I do have the concentrated time to savor it, usually in the morning, I do so with a pencil in my hand…bracketing things, starring sections, freely annotating, carrying on a running commentary with the text/author.  It is as much a gift when this intimacy happens with a book as when it happens between friends.  

 A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit had me won over in just a few pages.  She begins with the distinction, “losing things is about the familiar falling away, getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.” (p.22) And by referencing Walter Benjamin, a twentieth century philosopher-essayist.  “To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away.  In Benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.” (p. 6) 

This speaks so directly to my deepest desires about God and to those moments I have known when I am certain that with just a bit of effort and a bit more letting go of gravity, I would rise and be enveloped by what was present to me…Listening to the choir at Saint Francis Xavier in NYC, listening to a live performance of Handel’s Messiah, staring at the Pieta and being captivated by the aliveness of the question in Mary’s upraised hand, feeling the depth of silence created only when a community gathers to weave stillness together…

Rebecca Solnit has another phrase that delights me as well—“the blue of distance.”   How easily and readily I can lose myself in this blue…how it calls to me.  Standing against the wall in Assisi, looking out over the textured patches of land and history, out toward the horizon; Sipping coffee and having an apple turnover by a window looking onto Halifax harbor on Saturdays at the farmers’ market; stepping outside the hospital at sunset and looking past the mountains toward the unknown ahead when my father was dying… This blue draws me, entices me… “These nameless places awaken a desire to be lost, to be far away, a desire for that melancholy wonder that is the blue of distance.”   

(p. 41)

And she closes this chapter with a knowing reminder—“Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.” (p. 41)

These first chapters have me thinking about Augustine’s restlessness of heart and my own.  A restlessness born of desiring God.  Born of a call to the blue of distance.  Born of a desire to be fully present, in uncertainty and in mystery.

January 30^th will mark the 6^th anniversary of my final vows, when I gave my life to Love, forever, in the Society of the Sacred Heart.  I like that this book will accompany me as I mark the date and wonder at where the journey ahead might lead.

Advent IV 2016

Advent IV, 2016

Come, fire-child,

to the cracks and fractures

of our humanity.

Make plain

the one hearthstone,

the common foundation,

for what burns,

consumes, creates

anew, Heaven;

anew, Earth.

Come, fire-child,

comet of Love,

to the galaxy

of our hearts!

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Advent III, 2016

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC-1073, taken by NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Advent III 2016

I dreamed of touching darkness

with the fire of Word.

Cradling fear in my hands—

each finger a ripple of light

woven into an embrace,

a space,

where silence is balm,

where hope can breathe,

where wounds are tended;

Where joy flares fresh

in the company of Love

and cannot be held back:

Amen! Go Forth into the stumbling glory.

Remember this!

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Advent II 2016

Advent II, 2016

(for JTB and other unkempt prophets)

A match is enough

to distinguish nighttime from hopelessness;

so I listen for the strike against stone,

the orienting  words of the seemingly unkempt prophet,

when the woods close round and the sun is eclipsed

by purveyors of maps going nowhere.

Let there be light. Let me bear light.

Let me turn toward you always:

My grounding, what calls to me,

my origin and All.

Kimberly M. King RSCJ

Advent I 2016

Advent 1 2016

Now

that the world has broken open

and sparks can reach the bedrock,

now Love

arcs across the Earth;

The fire of hope,

caught up in galaxies and mystery,

is loosed, is born; the fire of hope

has come.

What hearth do I give,

what tinder do I offer,

that this fire

may feed, may flare, may save?

Kimberly M. King, RSCJ

Nothing Less is Asked

Oh Glory, has it ever been a Week. 

A week in which one of my more popular turns of phrase was simply, “SERIOUSLY??” and in which the answer was a bleak and blanching “Yes.”

And then I read Toni Morrison:

~This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.  We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilization heals.~

So, here it goes.

In July, I wrote that ~Though it is the only way I know how to Live, how to have/feel/know a sense of Home, Meaning, Call, or Freedom, I sometimes find it strange and inexplicable that I continue to believe so strongly in a God of Love, Mercy, Compassion, and Inclusion, when the world is filled with such hatred, violence…And yet, I do. I believe that there is a light no darkness can overcome. I must, if there is any sense to be made at all. Or, I must, if I am to welcome and to be welcomed by this Mystery and live within it.

I wrote that in response to the attacks in Nice, France that were followed by an attempted coup in Turkey. In November, I re-read this in full knowledge that it applies as well to the current state of politics in the US.

As the repercussions of the Electoral College choice for president play themselves out, I cling to those few things I can control.  One of them is my hope. No matter who sits in the Oval Office, no matter which party controls the House and the Senate both, no matter what I read about which established policies will be rescinded, reframed,  or removed, I control my hope.  What I believe in is up to me.  And I believe in a God of Love.  I believe in Jesus, union of humanity and divinity, Word made flesh, who dwelled among the scrappiest sorts and called them friends.  I believe in the Spirit, living and moving and having being in God’s people. 

And this hope, these beliefs, have implications.  I need only look to Jesus to understand that.

To believe as I do means I am called forth to stand for justice, to act for justice.  I am called to acts of compassion.  I am called to include, welcome, forgive, challenge, and seek to understand.  I am called to speak sometimes and to be silent sometimes.  I am called to discomfort and deep joy, I am called to Life in abundance and to helping bring that about for neighbor, friend, enemy, and unknown.  I am called to Love.  Nothing less is asked of me.

 Love, lived fully, is astounding, confusing, redemptive, and frustrating.  Nothing less is asked of me than to live those emotions in vulnerability and passion.

Love, lived in fullness, is spacious, generative, and a personal commitment lived out in a beautifully nuanced, diverse, community that is not always easy to be with.  Nothing less is asked of me.

 And Love, lived fully, leads to the cross.  Nothing less is asked of me.

 This does not depend on who is in the White House or which party dominates the House or Senate.

It depends on my response to God’s invitation to “Come, follow...”  It depends on my response to God’s people who cry out.

It depends on whether I give up or continue to believe that there is a light that no darkness can overcome even when it might be but a match or the spark that arcs in sudden freedom when two opposing forces strike.

And I depend on God.