Indigenous American Advent Meditation: Seven Sevens and an Envoy for Juan Diego (again)

Ben Camino's Indigenous American Advent Meditation: 

Seven Sevens and an Envoy for Juan Diego (again). 

I know it's rather late in the day, but still today, at least on some continent somewhere, it is the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the subject of the great Catholic miracle story involving indigenous Americans, specifically colonized Mexican peasants, early in the sixteenth century. It's a wild story with lots of twists and turns, and a great debate, ongoing, as to how one should "take" the story -- the lady having been appropriated both by colonizing Spaniards and colonized Americans over the years. There's some very interesting work on this by historians, art historians, and, of course, religious writers, but I leave those questions now to the side. 

Growing up on the border of Mexico, my Catholic faith was immersed in traditional practices that might not have been as normative in places like . . . Indiana. Although I'm happy now to say that, as I write in the following poem, there is now a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe in Warsaw, Indiana, less than an hour from where I used to live. And a sizeable Spanish-speaking congregation, many first and second generation immigrants from Mexico and Central American, with whom, usually, I meet on the vigil of the feast, which is when the really big celebration is. Now I am in Texas, near San Antonio, so I was part of the ultime Our Lady of Guadalupe extravaganza at the Cathedral last night, which lasted from something like 6 p.m. to 1.30 a.m. 

During Advent 2012, when I started writing what I came to call an "ironic advent meditation" every day, I certainly knew even less what I was doing than I do now. I generally wrote something every day, usually pretty late in the day because of work commitments, and posted it on Facebook. No fancy blog stuff. Usually no pictures. I was making things up. The posts were intended to be unlike any inspirational Advent meditations ever written, directed towards those who, like me, did not respond to those. They were like scented candles, when I felt the need to rip hearts out of chests. 

So that same year, I had a friend who the PREVIOUS year (2011) had attended the OLG vigil celebration down in Florida. And that experience had a great deal to do with getting her back to church. I was, at that time, in a period of moving from a sort of non-denominational evangelicalism in which I had never been comfortable, to an evangelical Episcopalianism, to what I felt pretty certain would eventually be some sort of evangelical expression of of the holy, catholic, and apostolic church -- the church of Aquinas, Francis and Clare, Benedict, and (eventually) Chesterton. 

So I went. And I got home early in the morning on December 12 (maybe 2.30?) and hammered out a poem. And posted it on Facebook. And the NEXT year, I published it on my blog (and have posted that version every year since). In 2015, my good friend Oz Hardwick published it and six other of my poems in a book featuring several medievalist poets (as we pretentiously called ourselves).  

Not that I'm vain or anything (do I hear laughter?), but I do love this poem, and both the reality and visionary unreality it captures. My friend Jennifer reads this out loud some years and chokes up doing so, which also always chokes me up. I choke up when I read it out loud too.  

Next year, come visit me on the December 11th and we will go together for the songs, and the flowers, and the bread and wine, and the dancing and the tamales. And maybe there will even be a pageant of the story, as there was last night at the cathedral. And maybe the archbishop will come up to you, as he did to me last night, and say, you look hungry, should I go get you something from the rectory? (I said no). 

Seven sevens means, seven stanzas of seven lines. An envoy is something tagged on at the end of poem, usually directly addressing someone (a real person or maybe someone in the poem) but also serving to comment or interpret on the whole thing. 

One final thing, if you get lost and don't quite understand where you are or what you are supposed to be seeing or feeling, thank you. Here's the poem, the original vision (of 2012, not 1531). 

SEVEN SEVENS AND AN ENVOY FOR JUAN DIEGO*

Just last year Jill said

that nothing was finer or ever would be again

than the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe

in her local church, in Florida,

with the mariachis and the dancing.

Alright, I’m not sure she said dancing,

but this is not journalism; just shoot me when it is.

 

So I took a trek, I made a pilgrimage,

I mean, I left the Protestant comforts of home,

and drove fifty miles on 30 West to Warsaw, Indiana that is,

where the closest shrine to Nuestra Señora obviously was,

having read about it in the Catholic Directory, if there is such a thing

and met at midnight with what felt like half a million Mexicans,

I mean at least a hundred of us standing and only one of us a very tall gringo.

 

I knew there would be mass, but in my ignorance

I knew so little how (so) much more to expect.

The singing, the children, the costumes, the flowers and families together at the shrine,

the processionals, the professionals, the prayers,

and, inconveniently, my heart ripped out of my chest and blood all over the pew.

My mother, my father, every love I've lost, which pretty much includes them all,

walking through the door, zombies too now, empty and bloody as hell,

 

finding me there, then, together, parading down the aisle,

nuestros corazones heridos all turned to flowers in our hands.

We kneel together, music all around,

a song to the lady, the one Diego wrote,

Las Mañanitas, a birthday song for the precious one you love:

Despierta, mi bien, despierta, mira que ya amaneció

ya los pajarillos cantan, la luna ya se metió.

 

And it's not exactly a miracle that everything smells like roses,

since there are perhaps a New Year's Day parade's worth of them

piled under her feet. And, yes, sometimes the celestial music

is slightly out of tune or the trumpets are just obviously showing off.

But it really doesn't matter about the roses or the guitars or the outfits

because you find yourself mumbling,

I've been bleeding a long time, a long long time.

 

And it goes without saying that this is the lady

with eyes like the western ocean and scars like Barranca del Cobre

who once whispered, "you may touch my feet my pilgrim

but my thighs belong to Padre Nuestro en los cielos,”

who fed you berries by the road by the river your sorrows looking up into the dream of her face

by the mountain by your childhood by the constellations,

who even now weeps for your loneliness.

 

And then, so as not to die here,

you get up from the kneeler and retrace your hungry steps,

go forward for the bread, though they’re stingy with the wine.

After, in the unfinished basement, you share tamales and abuelita chocolate and dancing

with folks you'd swear you've seen before.

It’s clear they knew your father better than you did, though they were born after he died.

For they knew to call him Carlos, which you were not allowed to say.

 

Envoy

Adios, then, Juan Diego, but you know now where you are if not yet who you are.

And, perhaps, at least a little, why you came this way.

To bear witness, to these, los campesinos preciosos,

each with a message from the lady,

for the powers that be, for the white priests in dark robes--

the future is flowers,

hiding in a poor man's cloak.

*revised and re-posted from December 12, 2012; corrected from the later published version in New Crops from Old Fields: Eight Medievalist Poets. Edited by Oz Hardwick. York, UK: Stairwell Books, 2015, 89-91.

Ironic Advent Meditation #12: Desolation on the Way

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2020 Meditation #12: 

Desolation on the Way or The View from the Ditch

Wow. My Advent Morning Prayer (Lauds) led me the perilous pathway through Psalm 88 this morning. I have always appreciated this poem for its raw, unblinking depiction of a life (I'd say soul, but that sounds too spiritual) in desolation. 

But recent events have made it sing in my gut in ways that make words like "appreciate" sound rather twee. Come on Advent Baby (can I call you that?), what about joy to the world and harking old harold the angel and heavenly peace? 

I know, I know. Not yet. And if by "know" I mean "feel," maybe never. Or perhaps, as one commentator assured me, Psalm 88 is a reminder that HE suffered through desolation so we would not have to do so. I don't think the God of Hosea OR the God of the Bethlehem manger will mind if I say, "hahahaha," that's what you think Mr. Commentator. 

I looked for an appropriate image to post, something at least slightly as ragged-edged as the imagery of the psalm itself. Nope nothing like. Pretty much shiny, slick poster/memes with a brief quotation. One, at least was just a black background with the phrase "darkness is my closest friend." High five to whoever posted that one. 

Advent things are happening all the time. It's not all scented candles, inspiration, and Frosty the Snowman in the front yard. It's also Herod the King, John the B in the wilderness (and, getting thrown in prison  even before Christmas, liturgically speaking), rough paths to Bethlehem, and, at the last minute, doors shut in your face Mr. and Mrs. Messiah's parents. 

That's all. I got nothing else to say. Here's my translation (ok, paraphrase, I don't know Hebrew) of the Psalm. Even though I've read it a hundred times, I kept waiting for the perspective to pull back from the edge and lighten up. Nope. Ironically, and perfectly to my mind (because I think the liturgy understands what I don't), the whole ugly mess ends with the "Glory be to the Father" as if we had just chanted one of the Alleuluia psalms (148-150) or something. 

Sorry to be this way. See y'all on the other side. 

Psalm 88, a song of desolation

Lord . . . God? I call for help all day long,

I cry all night to You. 

Please let my prayer rise up to You, 

open Your eyes to my cries. 

See, my life is filled with horror;

I'm right on the edge of the grave.

I might as well be dead,

I don't have the strength to go on. 

I am like somebody all alone surrounded by the dead,

like a dead person dead in the grave,

like those people You have forgotten, 

lost, cut off from you and your care. 

You are the one who has put me deep in the grave, 

in a dark place, like I said, in a deep place.

Your anger is crushing me;

You are drowning me under your waves!

You took away my friends

and made them hate me. 

You put me in prison with no escape route;

Look at my eyes, see what You've done to me.  

I am crying out to you all day every day;

stretching out my hands, pleading. 

Are you planning to kill me first then do a miracle? 

Is it your will that my ghost will praise you? 

You think I will sing about Your love after I'm dead?  

Or praise Your faithfulness after you destroy me? 

Or say how wonderful You from down in hell? 

Or how just You are from under the earth? 

It's true, I cry out to you for help, 

every morning I beg you to answer me. 

Why do you reject me?

Why do you hide from me? 

I am a mess. I've been a mess since I was a child; 

I've put up with so much from you; now I'm just numb.

Your anger has crushed me again and again, 

You have terrorized me, destroyed me. 

Your sufferings surround me all day, every day, 

I am constantly under attack. 

Friends, loved ones, community -- you have taken them away;

my only friend is the darkness. 

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit

as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever. 

Amen. 

 

Ironic Advent Meditation for December 7: Saint Charles Day

 

Dear Reader, nothing on this earth is more sacred to Ben Camino than the memory of his father, Charles William Ricke. 

Thus, several years ago, against the advice of both Popes not to mention Jerry Falwell Jr. , he instituted the Feast Day of Saint Charles, complete with readings, reflection, and prayer. 

And a couple of really cool pictures which you can treat as saints cards if you like. If you aren't Catholic, you don't don't have any idea what I mean, so don't worry about it. 

A slightly revised version of this appeared online at the Relief Journal site, December 2017. The earliest version of this, without the "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" frame appeared in the original Ben Camino Ironic Advent Meditations on this day in 2012.

I'm sorry about all the weird highlighting. I don't know how to fix it, and my blog assistant is on vacation (there is no blog assistant).  

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent Meditation

for Saint Charles Day

My father died on a cold gloomy Advent day like this; well, this day exactly, senior year.

It was cold and gloomy in New York anyway (or anyways, as Jennifer Lynne Ricke says), and that's where I was that morning.  

He was in Houston. He had a heart attack in his car. I guess it was hot and gloomy. 

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

I had just worked out a new bluesy arrangement of "O Come O Come Emmanuel." The Advent song to end all Advent songs. A way of tuning one's soul (by which I mean my whole being, including my body, of which I am fond) to the ideas, the meanings, and the specific stance (or bend or bent) of Advent.

I had always loved minor keys. 

I didn't know why then, though. 

I know now. 

And death's dark shadows put to flight

Or maybe I just think I know now. 

Perhaps in some culture somewhere, 

Mars for example, or Iowa,

the minor key is not the hearing aid for sorrow, loss, and lament. 

But in New York, in my senior year of college, reading Auden in the gathering gloom, it made sense.

I used to be in a church with a song leader named Fred. Fred would complain about any song written in a minor key, even if it was chosen by the pastor. Fred "had the victory," he said, so he thought that the minor key was a kind of blasphemy. 

We mourn in lonely exile here.  

         

My last note to Dad contained some “clippings” as he called them of our game the night before--

Ricke had 18 points and 14 rebounds.

I grew up reading and rereading the faded clippings of his forty point games in Houston.

And sitting in his lap reading the sports pages.

That's probably when I began my spiritual practice of remembering useless facts.

Under the influence of Auden, another kind of father, I had just written him a rather formal and pretentious poem called “Father Christmas”--

If you are keeping track, that's two rather formal and pretentious poems I wrote under Auden's influence that December.  

It was going to be my father's Christmas present, but he never read it. It's at home on my fridge.

Somewhere I still have the piece of paper on which my friend had written Joe, call home.

My words scrawled under it, during the phone call, you're too big to die daddy.

And he was. He really was.

He was like a god to me.

Like a god now in my memory. 

A loud god. A messy god. A very present god in time of trouble. 

A god who didn’t ask me to take every little thing on faith. Who hugged and held me like it mattered. And, as I said, shared the sports pages.

Saint Charles brought life and light and a certain wry, slightly inebriated smile to everyone who knew him.

His father had died before Charles was a teenager, so he became a bit of a wild one. He didn't teach me how to gamble, but I'm sure he would have if I asked. He doesn't know it, but I got pretty good at poker and blackjack in college anyway. Once won $20 from the rest of the basketball team on a long Saturday morning.

I flew home to Houston and, a few days later, was giving his funeral sermon. I don't remember much of what I said. I know I said he loved dogs, which was true. And family. Whatever I said, I'm sure my words meant, "you're too big to die." 

 

Charles fought the big one, in both Europe and Asia. He was wounded twice, I mean in the war. I know for a fact he was wounded many more times than that. I'll bet I was responsible for some of those wounds. I know my mom was. 

Not to mention the time Noel hooked him in the shoulder once with one of those nasty three-pronged fishing hooks. That was on the jetty at  Padre Island. Dad laughed. Loudly. Probably as good a way of any as dealing with pain. Noel was ten. And still alive. 

O Come Thou Dayspring, come and cheer

He could laugh about things, that's for sure. That was his standard liturgical response to most things. Who knows what he saw in the Pacific and in Italy during the war? I know he piloted amphibious landing craft in several invasions.

It's not really much of a guess to say that he had seen enough horrors for one lifetime. A fish hook in the shoulder was funny.

Although he spent most of his time in a little town with his family, being as domestic as he could stand to be, he got that look in his blue eyes when he got on the road. Especially somewhere big and open and wild.  

He'd pull over and stop if it was amazing enough. And remind us all to be amazed. Well, I think he just said, look at that.  

Driving in the mountains on our infamous vacation to Colorado, he'd like to drive as close to the edge as possible. We had an old dam outside of town we called "the waterfall." He used to like to drive over it while we screamed in the back seat.   

Speaking of the driving close to the edge, he got married three times. To the same woman. Eudora Juanita Thompson, as extravagant and wild and worth looking at as her name. My mother. You may have heard about her.

He couldn't sing a lick, but that didn't stop him from doing the "Streets of Laredo"or "I've Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle" ("now ain't you glad yer single," he would emphasize when Mom was in the car). 

Really, though, he didn't sing a lot. Usually only when driving a boat down near Rio Hondo. Or driving fast in his '65 Mustang down Rio Rico Road,  headed towards Mexico. When Mom or Missy weren't around, he might sing his dirty sailor songs from the Navy for a line or two. Then blush and shut up. 

This year, this Advent, every Advent, December 7 shall be his feast day. A day of remembrance. The feast of Saint Charles. Let there be barbecue. And Border Buttermilk (look it up).

This saint taught me the important stuff. This is the saint who taught me how to tie my ties. Or, more truthfully, who tied my ties most of the time. 

I can feel him standing close to me. Hear him breathing heavy. 

I thought that was a strange sound then, but I just wasn't used to large human beings breathing close to my body. Now I miss it. 

I learned to love and care, whatever little I learned, by watching this giant, gentle man, this reluctant warrior, nurture and mother four children for years when Nita was, for all practical purposes, out of commission. 

 

I learned to pray at mass by listening to him, sometimes sitting in his lap or just stuck up against him close enough to smell the after shave and cigarettes.

He would be saying the words, and I would be making sounds I didn't understand. It was Latin anyway, but I figured out that  the way to pray was just to make sounds that sound sort of like words but have a meaning you don't know yet. While snuggling with your dad. 

Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel nascetur pro te, Israel

Now I’m thinking, who the hell really knows? Who really understands? Maybe we don't want to understand. Maybe we want something more. Maybe language isn't enough.  

and close the path to misery

This is one of my clearest early  memories, probably from the same year Noel was born.

I'm maybe four, sitting next to Dad in the pew at Our Lady of Sorrows (that was the name of our church; Second Baptist was already taken). 

I'm warm and happy mumbling my holy sounds and feeling very close to my God and to Saint Charles whom I can hear mumbling beside me. 

and give us victory o'er the grave

A Prayer for the Feast of Saint Charles.

Dear Eternal Being of Power and Love, if so you are, thank you for the life and witness and sacrifice and amazement at this world's wild beauty, not to mention the mysterious mumbling noises, of your creature Charles Ricke, who by his flawed, wounded, and slightly inebriated soul (I mean his whole being, including his body of which he was rather fond), brought life and light to the gloom. And who points us, as we gather together mumbling at your altar, towards the mystery of power and love we celebrate, if so it is, this Christmas season. 

 

Ironic Advent 2020 Meditation #8: Advent Roots

Ben Camino's Ironic Advent 2020 Meditation #8: 

Advent Roots

Roots are gnarly things aren't they? I mean, unless by roots we mean carrots growing in very finely cultivated soil. Humans have, when they knew what was good for them anyway(s), taken care of their roots. Roots ground and fix and give life to whatever is rooted to them. But roots and that to which they are rooted best flourish, when some cultural work by heaven, mother nature, or even people like us helps them along. 

Maybe that makes sense. It better because by the end of this meditation, I'll be applying it to Advent and Christmas. 

But first, this. Today I spent a good deal of time hiking around or "tramping" as Thoreau and my father would have said. I suppose tramping is less tied to the path and more interested in whatever seems interesting at the moment than my normal hike (which often even has a mileage minimum limit I'm trying to meet). Today, was a wander. And, as you might guess, it being the Advent season, I wondered as I wandered. Sorry. 

And you can see by the picture above that I came to place I've been studying a lot lately. A place on the banks of the Wabash River where a great deal of the root systems of the trees on the bank are exposed due to erosion. Besides being really really interesting to look at (I have more pictures if you'd like to see them), they are very interesting to ruminate upon. I would say ponder, but then that would mean I was pondering while I was wondering while I was wandering. And none of us wants to hear that. 

I'd love to work on the long version of this meditation. But I'm going for the short one this time. All that tramping and pondering and wondering and wandering wore me out. Plus I'm trying to cut down on caffeine a little bit as an Advent discipline. This ginger-lemon tea hits the spot, as they say, but it doesn't quite pack the punch of the Starbucks Christmas Blend (don't judge me, I asked for Advent Blend). 

If you've read some Ben Camino before, you know that chewing on my roots is one of the ways I describe what I do when reflecting on my own life and experiences as part of these meditations. But the Advent season, every year, is a four-week call to root chewing (from one perspective), root strengthening (from another), and root exposure (by an ironic advent meditator, at least). 

This is the way, walk ye in it. These are your roots. Tie yourself to them. Live in and through them. Acknowledge them. These metaphors don't work perfectly, of course, but I hope you will know what I mean. 

Christmas is a memorial of something that happened once, a long time ago, but it meant everything (so they say), forever. Advent didn't happen. At least not in the same way. Some things happened (angel visiting Mary for example). Many are yet to happen (world will end, stars will fall, sun will go dark, perhaps not in that order, according to the reading from the gospel on the First Sunday of Advent. And the gospel today was about John the Baptist, the grown up one, not baby John who leaped in his mother's womb. John the prophet is a post-Christmas "thing" that happened. And much of Advent features Old Testament prophecies. I guess if you hold to speech-act theory, those "happened. But not in the same way as Christmas happened. 

My point is this. Advent is a (more or less, depending upon us) elaborate imaginative root system for the celebration of Christmas (and I don't just mean partying). By elaborate, I don't mean every Christian should feel obligated to take part in every little ritual and practice that the Church or even a local church or family encourages. I mean, it's something that has developed over many centuries along with the celebration of Christmas, a celebration that itself has always been somewhat controversial and open to misunderstand and, frankly, misery. And it serves a function. It roots Christmas to something other than the pagan festivity it has become and, perhaps, once was (if you believe the Puritans). 

I am tempted to make the point that we especially NOW need our Christmastide to be rooted in something other than the lights, the shopping, the music, the flurry, and the hurry. BUT, truth be told, I am older than many of my readers, and I'm pretty sure things haven't changed quite as much as some of we old-timers pretend. I was a terrible pagan when I was ten. 

Advent cultivates the soil, strengthens the roots, sometimes exposes them lest we forget. Black Friday, Frosty the Snowman, Christmas Vacation (sorry that's the worst), sugar-covered . . . everything -- "this is what the season means to me" we mumble, dazed after yet another day of Christmas cheer. 

Advent says -- John the Baptist; the God we have abandoned still calling words of comfort to his creation; a young Jewish girl who meets an angel and says "My Soul Magnifies the Lord"; her cousin and her cousin's husband, who happen to be the aged parents of John the Baptist; the world will end someday  so you might want to think about that; and a little family of two (but soon three) makes a long difficult journey. 

We aren't trees, but the family of the Christ is figured as one in Advent. The tree of Jesse. Yes, even the Son of God is rooted in something other than . . . God. And, by the way, you might look up "Tree of Jesse" as an Advent practice, especially to get children involved. 

I suppose Advent/Christmas is always a time for thinking about own family history too, especially the older we get. That's probably as it should be. Those roots matter too. A lot. But they are best understood in the larger root system of Advent. 

In fact, Advent roots are so important that, sad to say, once every seven years December 6 is NOT really St. Nicholas Day. Otherwise, Ben Camino would have certainly chewed on that tonight. But today is the Second Sunday of Advent. The day we remember John, the cousin of Jesus, who came preaching baptism for the repentance of sins in the wilderness of Judea. Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, or at least a Saint Nicholas. But even in December, some things are more important than him. 

I said that there was no "real" Advent before the birth of Christ, but, of course, in one way at least, there was. There hadn't been a good old-fashioned prophet in Israel for a long time, not a legit one anyway(s). And along came John, reminding people of their roots, reminding them that being God's children had certain obligations. And that all started with remembering who they were, who Yaweh was, and what He expected of them. And John proclaimed, "He is coming! And neither I nor Saint Nicholas (like I said, John was a prophet) are worthy of tying his shoes." 

OK, I got carried away. He said, He is coming. Prepare for the coming. Repent. Do Advent. Get rooted. Go deep. Get used to the weird time scheme. And, while you are here, would you like to try some locusts and wild honey?  

My advice for you friends is simple. Eat roots. 

Amen. 

Come on already, Emmanuel.