Six months since quarantines began, and, with it, abandonment of local worship options, but ongoing since maybe five years ago in daily prayer with heavy focus on traditional psalter, and now with three months of a sibling’s ashes on same altar, with words so familiar much of it is memorized, and audio of a monk’s chants numbed to background tracks, here is a mind still hooked:
memory of long-distance running in the winter: some mornings hating the start, but trusting buzzed feeling kicks-in somewhere past halfway
Psalmist David’s point-of-view daily shocks—a wake-up reminder to anticipate wildly different head-trips in coming day
this may seem but feels not so far afield from once-upon-a-time UU Sunday School “Holy Days and Holidays” in a Frank Lloyd Wright built place of worship: it is daily architecture with words, the temple of words tumbles moment-to-moment, and needs rebuilding each morning anew
other humans build other temples in other places
leading children on a Sunday to make faux Jewish prayer shawls with magic marker, school yarn, and bedsheets was the stationing seeker moment
to brother’s ashes who, when young, defended the rights of born-again charismatics but would have ridiculed his sister for carelessly donning a wrong cloak: “Agreed. We’re a long way from our Rudolph’s nose-seeking, territorial 12-hour backseat passengers in second-hand smoke annual pilgrimage religion”
about cremation: Alexander Schmemann in his book The Liturgy of Death writes the Early Church used local customs in funeral practices; their main focus was understanding what the resurrection meant, i.e., a radically new understanding of death; understanding that is key
the key is easily lost
one of the first learned prayers, about “verdure,” is one of the oldest and (personal opinion) one of the best, which along with Psalms 50 and 118 are fundamental liturgical structures that this particular human with a build-your-own-theology heritage, who genetically descends from a Mediterranean moment, knows no enlightened insight toward which to alter
personal healing (whatever it’s called) is aided by an ever-revised list of names; each name read aloud briefly becomes a stone in the daily built temple wall of words which will dependably tumble
Frank Lloyd Wright designed his architecture for local materials and was influenced by prairie landscape where each day is a showcase on Earth for among the Sun’s broadest arcs
building and re-building is the whole point.
Saturday, September 12, 2020, local, 19:41 CDT:
Aries 2° 06′ rising square Midheaven 1° 05′ Capricorn
Jupiter 17° 24′ Capricorn in 10th station direct