Ironic Advent 2017 #1: A Landslide Brought It Down and Other Things That Sound Like They Mean Something

Ironic Advent 2017 #1: A Landslide Brought It Down 

and Other Things That Sound Like They Actually Mean Something

[a rare actual photo of Ben Camino, engulfed by a big, freakin' moon]

It's been a beautiful day or two, for December, if you can stand ordinary time. Me, I've been chomping at the bit for Advent to get here, so it's been a pain, global warming and all. Yes, last night the sky was amazing, including the forerunner to tonight's even-more-amazing moon. The clouds were unlike any I'd ever seen before in texture. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating, but it's time you start readjusting to the Ben Camino universe dear ones where the difference between reality and . . . what I tell you to think gets blurry. 

Anyway, or anyways as a former good friend of mine used to say and my daughter Jennifer still does, the sky was just . . . whoa. So, because I was in Ohio, I happened to comment to an Ohioan how whoa the sky was. And, of course, being an Ohioan, never to be outdone by a Hoosier, my respondent assured me that the sky in Ohio was quite regularly this irregular and, in fact, was invariably weird. I gave up, at least for the time being, knowing I would have an opportunity for payback in my first Ironic Advent post for 2017. 

In a minute I'm going to talk about the big freakin' moon. Right now I just want to say how sad it is that I, Ben Camino, also known as your Advent servant, am inside writing this meditation, while THAT moon is still out there haunting us. I'm getting texts that say things like "look at the moon," by people who must a.) think I have lost my eyesight or b.) know that I'm probably just being morose and refusing to acknowledge the beauty of the creation of c.) writing an Ironic Advent Meditation. More on the moon in a minute. And I promise that I will eventually get to "Landslide (brought it down)." 

But I realize that some of you may have some questions about Advent. And, even more of you, who may (but probably don't) understand Advent, have questions about Ben Camino and Ironic Advent Meditations. To you good people I say the following: please don't make me go through all this again. At least not yet. For several years now, I have written these meditations during the season of Advent (and usually twelve more for the twelve days of Christmas). I can't explain what Advent is right now, but here is a link to a previous attempt. And the best way to understand Ben Camino and Ironic Advent Meditations is to read them all tonight before you go to bed, starting with the ones from December 2012. If not, you can just relax and learn as you go (and read some of the old ones when you have some extra time). 

Anyway(s), that is some big freakin' moon out there. And if you are in some part of the Muggle universe that doesn't have access to . . . the moon, please refer to the photo of me above, taken earlier tonight on the bridge over the Sydney Harbour. You doubt this, Muggle? And everybody is all crazy about the moon, giving it cool names, like cold moon, and doing strange dances to mandolin music. Oh, no, that was the little girls who were dancing to my song tonight at the public library. But still, it might have been the moon too. Earlier (ten minutes ago) I did some in-depth research through the first-thing-that-comes-up-on-Google-Search method when I typed in "big, freakin' moon on December 3" and this is what I got:

"In December, winter sets in and the Full Moon is called the Cold Moon. It is also called Long Nights Moon, and the Moon before Yule. ... The December Full Moon is also called Oak Moon, while a Celtic name was Wolf Moon." 

A likely story. That's someone's way of saying that they have no earthly (intended) idea what this moon is called (interestingly, the article goes on to say that "in Ohio culture, it is commonly known as the plain old ordinary everyday Moon and they are not amazed"). I say, if you call it everything then you are calling it nothing. But  Ben Camino, who lives in the alternate universe of the liturgical year, knows. It's called the big freakin' Advent Moon. 

Consider the gospel reading of the day from Saint Luke, not to mention the ones from the Book of Bokonon which I will omit for the present.   

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon [the Amplified Version has BIG FREAKIN' MOON], and the stars,
and on earth nations will be in dismay,
perplexed by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
People* will die of fright
in anticipation of what is coming upon the world,
for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
And then they will see the Son of Man
coming in a cloud with power and great glory.

[*the original Greek excludes Ohioans who will have no reaction] 

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Nations in dismay. Big Freakin' Full Cold Long Nights Yule Oak Wolf Moon. People are afraid, wondering what in hayall is going on down on our little planet under the big freakin' moon. 

Which reminds me of this guy I met at an open mic a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a poem about it. It goes like this. 

Strangely moved tonight
by the old hippy (with the perfect white pony tail)
not at all hiding his hearing aid
required no doubt by way too much Led Zeppelin II once upon a 70s time
covering Stevie Nick's "Landslide"
complete with billy goat treble
probably just his own voice now
not an imitation of her or anyone else's 
particular billy boat treble
he omits though the gypsy dance moves
and pouty lips 
which I would have thought obligatory for a Stevie Nicks' song.
it is, in truth, a lovely song though
though I'm afraid it really more feels like it means something
than it really does mean something
which may be what it means
at least to me
sitting here waiting to do my own song
which one guy who heard it called
"the saddest song ever written" 
although I'm working to remedy that

Whoa! That has to be the worst transition ever by Ben Camino. Let's just say I'm kind of anxious to get outside and howl for awhile. I have always thought it understandable how pagans of all sorts have worshiped the moon. I am at my most "religious," I suppose,  when I consider the heavens, including the moon. Which religion is not always clear. 

Anyway(s), I keep thinking I know what "Landslide" is about, and I'm sure that most people either know or think they know. It's doesn't seem to be a particularly complex song. But it doesn't work. Not really. I've looked at it several times with this in mind, and I will share the diagrams upon request. For now, let me once again say that it is indeed a lovely song. And it's kind of sad. I think. And I'm not sure what else, including what "it" the landslide brought down. IF you know, don't tell me. Don't ruin my love of ambiguity. 

And the moon? OK, give it all the names that Google Search can come up with. Here are the most important things about this moon: Awe, loveliness, fear, worship, majesty, a god, the feeling that I'm not a god, LOVE.

I don't know what comes next. People dying of fright? The Son of Man coming in power? A baby born in Bethlehem or Benghazi? More old guys covering Stevie Nicks?

I love words. And I love what they tell us. And I know that most of what words tell us is how lovely words are and how hard it is to understand anything down here under the moon. Under the heavens (whatever that means). 

"Words and music will never touch the beauty that I see in you" wrote Jackson Browne. I'd say that words and music are just about as haunted as . . . the rest of the universe. And maybe that's why I like a haunted song like"Landslide" (whatever version, with or without gypsy dance and pouty lips). And maybe that's why I love Advent. 

Like Charlie Brown deciding again to kick the football, I keep coming back. I guess I'm hoping or maybe dreaming that this year the football of meaning and love will stabilize a bit. I feel what I really hope for, although I'm not sure if I can say it. In "Weight of Glory," C. S. Lewis said “In speaking of this desire for our own far off country . . . I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia." Like Cold Moon. Like Christmas. Like the heavens. Like the saddest song ever written. We gesture towards it. It might take a god to rip it out of us.

In fact, the other day, a god came down to Ohio and ripped open the hearts of a few thousand people who had seen it all and knew how ordinary it all was. The locals said it was nothing special. Sadly, for them, they were right. 

The moon is still shining, and I'm headed out to get my heart ripped open. Again. If I live through the apocalypses promised in today's gospel, I promise to waste several thousand words in the weeks ahead on you my friends, my readers, my judges, my secret admirers, my would-be assassins.

You will all misunderstand my words. This is what we Can know. But I hope they touch you, sadden you, thrill you, anger you, haunt you, elate you, and rip you open. Yes, I've got my annual Advent ache, not to be confused with my usual everyday ache which never goes away. 

It's the first Sunday of Advent. Let's go. I'm sending you a text: "look at the moon." 

And another one: "people don't keep covering 'Landslide' because they understand it. They cover it because they want to possess its beauty. Because, like the moon, it's not-so-hidden message is that everything glows. Including us, unless we insist on our inner Ohios"

Buen Camino kids.  

 

[ a rare actual photo of Ben Camino on a raft somewhere engulfed by a big freakin' moon]

Ben Camino's Ghost Dance: Ironic All Hallows' Meditation

Ben Camino's Ghost Dance: 

Ironic All Hallows' Meditation

 

 

This universe is a horrible place. Literally the setting for a horror show of unbearable trauma. I would say unimaginable except that it is precisely in the imagination where this horror performs its most brutal, beautiful dances. This we know. This needs very little explanation. From so-called “horror” films and such to the so-called rememberings (inaccurate though they be) of things that have been and the interpretations (wild as they may be) of the split-atom of our immediacy and the visions (part brain electricity, part futile hopes, part inspired prophecy) of the future. We talk foolishly about “imaginative” people, as if they world were divided up into two kinds of people: imaginative people and non-imaginative people. In fact, the world is divided up into imaginative people and all the things that haunt us. A person is an imaginative mammal. 

Of course, it goes without saying, except in the Ben Camino universe where nothing goes without saying, that the universe is a glorious place. Literally the site of a romance of almost unbearable aching loveliness. How do we keep from breaking down in tears of wonder and gratitude every day, no, every minute of every day? Every breath we breathe, every friendly gesture, every kiss, every flash of sunlight off water, is a haunted miracle precisely because we can imagine not breathing, imagine being friendless, imagine being alone, imagine being lost in the dark. And we know, or think we know, at least in those moments, that there is a meaning (or meanings), a presence (or presences), hovering above, under, around, and within those lovely moments (which were, are, and will be in our imaginations). Willing slaves of these absent presences, we write poetry, sing songs, shape clay, scratch canvas, burn candles, and chant in their honor. As we should. 

In his essay Spectres of Marx, Derrida called “haunting the state proper to being as such." This is all a little too technical for an All Hallows’ Eve audience perhaps, but the point seems to be that “being” (and I would say, the past, present, and future of human consciousness) takes shape or becomes self-aware in relation to these ghosts, these hauntings, these absent presences. Consciousness/being is relational. But not just with the so-called living person across the office. The story that we think is the story of us is really a much larger, perhaps scarier, story. My story is for all the saints and from all the saints. And the sinners too. And the wintry drives chasing the sun I think I remember. And the places I return to, not so much to have a “fresh” experience but to soak in, brood on, be gladdened or hurt by the ghost dance always waiting for me there. 

When St. Paul was making his defense before Festus and Agrippa, as recorded in the Book of Acts, he said that he had been a fine and dandy citizen until the day he was confronted by the presence of Jesus Christ, who had been haunting him for some time. Festus interrupted him at one point to say "You crazy Paul!" Obviously, Festus thought, you are imagining things. Paul couldn’t really point to the clear evidence. He couldn’t produce the presence which he claimed he met that day. What he could do was say that if one believes in the resurrection of the dead (I realize how big an “if” that is for my Festus-like friends), the universe is a much larger, more haunted place Festus (Horatio, Hume) than you have ever imagined. And, too, there is another kind of evidence. 

That's pretty much it, dear readers. There either are or are not presences haunting us, in their absence and perhaps, sometimes, by their intervening presence on roads to (or, these days, from) Damascus. There are or are not “kindly powers silently surrounding us” as Bonhoeffer wrote from a Nazi prison. There are or are not the kind of malevolent presences Luther sang of in his “Mighty Fortress” hymn (Happy Reformation Day, heretics). What we do know is that the universe, by which I mean human consciousness, is haunted by imagined (I don’t say false) “realities” that shape us, break us, and beckon to us. 

In my own long darkness, this All Hallows’ Eve, I share with family (including those I never met), friends (including some of my dearest whom I have only known in books), monsters (of my past and of my nightmares), and the haunting presences of my saints, especially St. Mary Magdalene (patron of those who wonder and wander by the way), Mary (the mother of Jesus), and St. Joseph (her husband and my namesake) this most mysterious pilgrimage of being. And with my sister Missy, who is probably right now dressed up as a zombie. And with you folks. My fit audience though few.

You too, Festus. Yeah, I know I’m a little crazy. Why don’t you write a song about it. Or maybe a gospel. Do something worth imagining.

Ironic Ordinary Meditation #1: Ordinary Time Again

Ironic Ordinary Meditation #1: Ordinary Time Again

Yesterday we began ordinary time again.

Ordinary time again. That has a kind of ring to it. A very dull ring. OK, maybe not so much a ring. Let’s say it has a kind of thud to it. Ordinary time again. THUD!

“What the heck are you talking about Ben Camino?” I hear several readers say, most of them as usual named Jennifer. Except my friend Jennifer who is an Episcopal priest. She knows what I’m talking about. Also, being Episcopalian, she wouldn’t say heck. She'd go straight to hell. 

For folks who either aren’t part of a liturgical tradition or who are but like to spend their sunny summer Sundays at the lake house or at farmer’s markets or just sleeping in and binge watching whatever people binge watch these days, I’ll first clear up what the heck I’m talking about and then, if I get rolling as I am wont to do, talk a LOT about it.

Yesterday was sort of the reboot of what the traditional church (sometimes known as the Roman Catholic Church or the One True Church or Pope Francis' Neighborhood) calls “Ordinary Time.” Even the most liturgically deprived of my readers, whether named Jennifer or Zsa Zsa or Fred,  I assume have heard of Christmas and Easter. The great feasts sometimes we call them. Or . . . bank holidays if you are from that island where people refer to HOLY DAYS as bank holidays. 

Some of you, a smaller but still substantial group, have at least some notion of what is meant by Advent and Lent, the two great fasts. You might not know that they are thought of as “fasts,” but you at least know about the universal practice throughout church history of giving up chewing gum and high-fructose corn syrup (which is in everything) for Lent. I sometimes changed that up a little as a kid and gave up Brussel sprouts instead.

So, the easy way to think of this is that if you are in the Advent, Christmas, Epiphany (which follows Christmas), Lent (which precedes Easter), or Easter seasons, then you are NOT in Ordinary Time, no matter how boring your Christmases might have been. Jennifers, I'm talking to y'all. This is one of those circumstances when the liturgy, representing something higher and loftier than dates on a calendar or even your self-esteem, says to you, “I will tell you what that day meant, regardless of how underwhelming the scene was around the table at Granny’s.” 

More recently, since Easter that is, we have still been in the Easter season, until Sunday that is. That was Pentecost. Fifty days, more or less, from Easter. Followed by . . . THUD! Ordinary Time. 

So after the seven Sundays of Easter (yes, Easter is longer than you think, dear reader), we celebrated Pentecost. And now we are in day two of Week Eight of Ordinary Time. What? Week Eight? How did that happen. Don't worry, we were already ordinary back in the winter, after Christmas and Epiphany and before Lent. I know, I know. So confusing. That chunk happened. Then came Lent, then came Easter (50 days, more or less), then came Pentecost. And now comes Ordinary Time. And more Ordinary Time. 

The BIG DEAL TIME is now over. It’s a little more complicated than I’m making it, but I’m trying to give you a break and get to the good stuff. 

Assuming I come up with some good stuff. 

Anyway. Or anyways as Jennifer Lynne Ricke would say, thud! It’s ordinary time again. Everybody’s like looking around, waiting for something cool to happen, maybe an angel of the Lord talking to Mary, maybe dead people walking around alive again. Something wild or outstanding or extraordinary or worth a present or at least a fast.

Well no. Not really. Or yes, but not that way. 

Yes, there is still bread and wine. And maybe, some ancient witnesses suggest, more that bread and wine, even when all you've got is bread and wine. And if you listen carefully to the gospel readings during Ordinary Time, you will get a big dose (maybe bigger than you want) of the teachings of Jesus, especially the ones that tell us how to live, how to love, how to be human, how to be good. Sometimes they are parables, but, with a few exceptions, they aren’t nearly as hard to figure out as, say, the Book of Revelation (or that extra season of X-Files for that matter). 

One cool thing I always liked about Ordinary Time was that the liturgical color, to the degree we use a liturgical color, is green. Bright summery lively . . . green. Ordinary, everyday, natural, look-around-you (unless you live in Arizona, in which case don’t) green. The ordinary, yes. But maybe the beautiful ordinary which we lost sight of even though it was right under our noses. Maybe nothing golden, but then, as we know, nothing gold can stay. 

Ordinary Time, like the teachings of Jesus, which were, for the most part, less other-worldly than that of the other-worldly preachers who have followed Him. Don’t resent your broken brother; welcome him back. Take care of that guy who fell among thieves, even though the religious leaders don’t. Take it easy Martha; come out and sit and relax and talk with us. We’re talking about forgiveness and stuff. Quit praying so loud in public. Quit giving so . . . loud in public. And so on.

Ordinary time sounds easy. But it isn’t really. For example, the local church, even the one in New York or Paris, isn’t renting a camel for a big pageant on the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time. The choir may even take a few weeks off (you guessed it, to go to their lake houses). There may be babies but they won’t be Jesus AND they won’t be nearly as tender and mild as the one in the songs of Christmas. There will be wise men, but unfortunately for you, they will all be called Ben Camino.

The “strong liturgy” of the feasts and fasts grabs us and makes it difficult (though not impossible, obviously) for us to wander too far off from the message. We know where we are (Third Sunday of Advent--check, The Baptism of Our Lord--check, Holy Thursday--check, etc.). And, if you're like me, you hope (and maybe worry) that it’s all really making some difference in what we like to call “reality."

But the softer liturgy (my phrase, like it?) of Ordinary Time calls us to attention, calls us to attend, in another way, a more subtle way. Instead of placing us in the larger story quite so specifically, perhaps Ordinary Time asks us to find the story in our specific situations. Child-rearing, friendship, working in the garden or on the assembly line, toast, making love, breaking up, relating across economic and racial divisons, arguing, settling (or not) a dispute, cleaning house, driving down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a relationship with a brother, fishing, swimming, dealing with depression (ours or someone else’s), welcoming (or not) a refugee—these and many other actions make up the gospel story of Ordinary Time. It’s one that may become extra-ordinary, perhaps. Or not

Or maybe it’s not so important whether ordinary time becomes extra-ordinary. Perhaps that is the point. The ordinary is not necessarily less worthy, less valuable just because it's ordinary. Maybe it's just  less interesting or less spectacular. Less “extra.” And it would be a shame for us to mix up those categories (though we often do). 

Don’t neglect your babies, even though they aren’t born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger. Don’t neglect repentance even though nobody is putting ashes on your head. Take care of that person you wronged, although nobody else is watching, nobody else will know.

Bless the ordinary. Bless the weeds you just pulled. The water you just poured. The prose you just wrote. The lips you just kissed. The tears you just cried. The emptiness you just felt. The meal you just ate. The moon and stars you looked up to see while walking the dog. Oh, and don’t forget the dog. The life you just lived. The child you just burped. The neighbor you just passed by and stopped and said hello, how are you. The candle you just lit. Or blew out. The flowers on your table, in your garden, pressed in your book, or in a vase on your grandmother's grave. 

The ironic church of an ironic God says, come, let us celebrate ordinary time. It’s no big deal. It’s just everything. Everything.

It’s ordinary time again.

Thud!

 

Glory be to the Lord of the ordinary. The everyday. The good old green. The under-our-noses everything which, altared (my word, like it?), becomes the sweet stuff of the kingdom of heaven.

Feel free to share your ordinary time with the rest of us in the comments section. 

Peace, friends.