I’m being haunted by a circle-chant that has changed my life.
I first heard it, sang it, in a circle of women I’ve taken to calling my “contemplative-circle-community.” They would not call themselves that, but they would claim “mystics in the night,” creating a practice community rooted in earth and shared spirit & womanhood. Well, they wouldn’t even say that, tortured language as it is, but they are who they are. We are who we are. We are a lively bunch committed to one another and invested in healing and deep listening, resistant to labels and previously-determined images for living Life into the world on behalf of all. The circle-chant we often sing together is a simple song, really, except for what it asks.
“Do you love? Do you love deeply?” You sing this in a group that is really asking? I mean asking themselves again and again, on behalf of the earth and all within it, no matter who they are? You’ll see what I mean. Actually, you’ll sense what I mean. A better verb. You’ll sense what I mean. Granted, I’ve been blessed to live in practice communities who have asked this question in various ways over the years, but I’ve not steeped in the question before. I’ve not been held in the question in this way of sung gratitude, shared gaze, open-hearted listening, and open-sense holding of one another. The question has never been intimate like this, in other words.
So now I’m being haunted. The key to my locked awareness may perhaps be…deeply.
Feeling drawn into the chant, I contacted its artist-authoress (Kellianna) to ask permission for slight wording-changes attentive to contexts of the sacred. She agreed, saying, “We’re all one. Please, go ahead.” Instead of a woman-centric naming, then, other two-syllable names could be sung. The original response to the question is “Gaia loves; Gaia loves deeply.” But now the chant could be opened up to other two-syllable names of the sacred, of G-d: Father, Mother, Jesus, Spirit, Allah, Buddha. I was startled to discover just how many two-syllable names there are. Others could be offered, but some are considered too sacred to say aloud, even in a true statement of love.
Not surprisingly, then, I found myself singing this chant in three striking settings, vastly different from one another and apart from the original circle. The first was in the car on a long drive up to an Islamic conference. I was to be the only woman-presenter of an academic paper, both of us—my paper and me—surrounded by Turkish, Arabic, and Russian Muslim men, with a few elderly European or American men in the mix as well. The shared circle on CD sang in my ears as I chanted up to Cleveland and back again, listening for how Allah loves. The second setting was to introduce a colleague of mine whose voice and work find fewer opportunities to be heard and seen than they deserve. We were at a progressive-ecumenical but Catholic conference on radical gospel living and new monasticism(s). We were a remnant of the circle itself, singing its question for multiple, new ears gathered from all over Ohio. The third setting for the chant was a fear-ridden evening introducing a dear spiritual friend, a rabbi, to a quite conservative-Evangelical congregation gathered to listen why he does not believe that Jesus is his Lord and Savior. He was aggressively evangelized by a faith-healed Christian 5 minutes before the event was to start, which unnerved me more than it did him. I had not planned on singing the chant, but the introduction that arose within me, flowing out of my mouth, began there. I sang it three times, in honor of the Trinitarian commitment within which I/they stand.
Still, none of these settings as described gets at the sense of deeply or the haunting that’s happening. I’ve often sung a simple prayer chant to offer praise and thanksgiving in the car, to gather the attention of a group of people at the start of some teaching or listening event. Deeply begins within an evening of contemplative circle practice, intentioned and welcomed toward our deepest Root, our roots of receiving & service. It was a mundane evening, with no desire or expectation of anything out of the ordinary. I have no recall of being weary or particularly energized. I arrived because that’s where I had been spending my Thursday evenings. The sacred rhythm began, a bit of vocalizing filled the spaces between us, and then a horrifying-mesmerizing image arose in my mind, my body, my breath. I knew I could pull back if I needed to but that the invitation was to receive it, to sense it, to allow it. I chose and refused and chose again. Poetic jottings required here:
A shot.
Gut-wrenching pain, powerlessness.
Power, too late. Then tears,
Suffocating shock, anger,
Rage.
Guilt
Shared across centuries, now mine.
Christian fundamentalism takes another life.
This time, heart of our heart,
Companion of shared Life,
Taken by “one of my own,”
Living the years’ hatreds anew
In front of my eyes, alone,
Piercing our heart
In two, once again,
Robbed of richness
Ours, theirs,
All for all.
The sound repeated itself
Again and again.
Noise of action unfeeling,
Unknowing, unstoppable.
“It’s only a matter of time,”
I heard before I waked myself.
Moving to the mirrored world-tree
Lit by a tiny tea-light
The center of the world
Then again it began,
Again and again and again.
Shock, anger, rage
Tears, powerlessness, guilt
Somehow old and new,
A matter of time.
Premonition?
Too easy.
It didn’t really happen.
We told a room full of Evangelicals
One could disbelieve
Jesus as Lord and Savior
and still live
Faithful.
A Jew, a child of G-d,
One chosen of many.
Absolute truth
Alongside absolute truth,
Alongside absolute truth…
All breathing the same air,
Incoherent in love,
Lived deeply.
So it went. The root-awareness of this image-nightmare-event accompanied me for three days, unable to be spoken in any way comprehensible to the rest of my life. I’m a theology professor, for crying out loud. We don’t truck in such things as nightmare-visions, nor do we have any framework within which to interpret them within or beyond ourselves. All of the ‘cognitive’ learnings fail, though they sound good:
· I’m working out the costs of loving deeply across polarized religious difference(s)
· I continue to be angry at the fundamentalist life-choices of my own sister, with whom I cannot even speak regularly, openly
· Violence happens apart from our ability to control it, prevent it
· The losses are felt intensely no matter what ‘circle’ you find yourself identified in/with, though there’s a particularly toxic cocktail when your primary relationships of learning-spirit-faith are outside “your own” community
None of these offers the pathway of listening, the pathway to truly receive whatever may be for the giving of life in this deeply-rooted awareness received, unwelcome but compelling, seemingly necessary. The circle-chant continues to be sung, and it is finding its way into communities who need to steep deeply and ask its questions as we face particular challenges in self, community, and media.
Perhaps I'm writing because I’d like the chant to haunt us all?
I will conclude, at least temporarily, with bits of a spoken-teaching/poem by a recent teacher, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, relevant here. She offers it in her Creative Fire, describing muerte or death as the patron saint of the chupa tintas, the pen-pushers, or writers. She speaks a description of the bus of life on which she always has death as a seat-mate. “The old one always sags next to me,” Estés says, “And she’s always just eaten a tub of garlic, and rubbed her armpits and genitals with vinegar and goat-cheese.” (That image makes me laugh every time.) The poem continues, nears conclusion in a way I had not heard before, though I’ve listened to it again and again. She says, “If I can stand it, if I can learn to love what others flee, to love the pain that I feel, then maybe I can write tonight, even for a month.” In the end, she confesses, “We always want muerte to be right next to us,” bringing the life it always brings.
Bringing the life it always brings.
Whatever else it means, I think I've received a patron saint and invitation to listen and write, write and listen again. The root-awareness refuses to leave, so it must live somehow toward delight, which is what I believe in. I don’t know all what loving deeply offers, in both richness and in pain, but I now sense this new root-depth I’d not known. I don’t know what this nightmare-vision offers to any who can receive it, truly receive it, for whatever will be life-giving in the times to come. I hesitate to offer it in any way to those most closely represented within it, sharing more openly only after the nightmare did not happen in the real. But this receiving—these images, continued listening, listening for the sake of fidelity and never again—refuses to return to its subconscious or unconscious life.
All this is not for the literally-minded. For now, until way opens to new awareness, this will be my patron saint of muerte, goading on the work that needs to be done, the knowledge that pain is required though suffering is not. At the very least, perhaps, I will be able to write tonight. Even for a month. Learning to love what others flee, learning to love the goat-cheese and vinegar. May a life of steeping deeply be offered for the lightness of life, the laughter of companionship across difference, the silliness alongside the serious. Amen, amen, amen...and a little woman. (Thanks, Mother Clarissa, as always)