I enjoy the architecture of holy spaces: churches, abbeys, monasteries, temples of all types. Europe suits such a fancy, and lets me see a wide variety of structures meant to honor something – though what they honor is sometimes a bit off from the original goal. This week we are on holiday at Børnholm: Denmark’s only rocky island! (Sometimes the Danglish on signs can be quite amusing. My favorite so far is “Feminism Squats my Heart”…but I digress.) Børnholm has proven to be far more charming than its English tourism by-line. It’s a pretty leafy island in the Baltic Sea, with fine sandy beaches, clear water, and pretty woods through which to bike. In addition to home brewed brown ale (quite nice) and smoked herring (not so nice), Bornholm’s claim to fame includes several Rundekirks – round stone churches white washed to a gleaming brilliance. We were lucky enough to visit a couple of these unique bulwarks, which have served as a combination places-of-worship-cum-look-out-towers since the early 1100’s.

I was particularly struck by Nylars Kirke, the smallest and least significant of the bunch. It’s stolid bulk and cool interior is just the type of space that appeals to me – old, earth-rooted, and simple. I was compelled to touch things there. I ran my fingers along the rim of the grey stone of the baptismal fount, planted firm in the center of the building; placed my palms on the stout center column and felt the wisdom held in its age; ran my hands along the curving outer walls to feel the warmth of the sun-kissed wash and the underlying chill of the hewed stones.

These are the kind of places that speak of home to me—these simple rooms with history in their walls, with time poured into their mortar. It is in these nearly abandoned places, anchored deep in the unwinding days of time, where I my footing can be found.

That’s my daughter in the water….

click watch a joyful romp

mother’s prayer #105

may my children for always
feel this at home in
their holy, beautiful bodies.
amen.

in just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it’s
spring
and
the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

-e.e. cummings

Catie displays her hope note for a soulmate in Rwanda.

There was no church for us today, at least not in a cathedral. Still, I’m pretty sure we were playing in heaven’s backyard when we joined up with HopeRevo. This afternoon Cate and I worshiped at the altar of hope–crayolas and markers our consecrated objects, water and paints our bread and wine.

The women of Rwanda have taught me more about grief, hope, and forgiveness than any sermon of hymn could convey, and I’m happy my daughters and I can join them in their knowledge, exchanging hope across the miles.

Here’s Catie’s hope note to a Rwandan girl her age. They haven’t met each other, but very soon this card will unite their hearts. You can play in the fields of hope too! Click here and join our church service already in progress. Here’s to Hope and all her siblings!

“mukobwa-wurwanda niwowe mbaraga zigihugu uwize aramenya, abakobwa babanya merica bwaragu shyigikiye.” Translation: Rwandanese girls; you are the power behind your country! Someone who learns is the one who knows best. American girls are supporting you!

mother mary calls to me, whispers words of wisdom…

The stones lie here, behind a building, beneath a sign, under the shadow of the grand cathedral. Once, sometime before 1100, there was a church here, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This is what is left. This, and a small sign, first in Swedish and then roughly translated into English:

“This was Sancta Maria Minor, Little Mary’s church. The people loved Mary. She understood their language.’”

Is that what we long for, when we search for the feminine divine? Something Mary reflects in pale shadow? Someone who understand our language? I think yes. I think so.

“In my times of darkness is she is standing there in front of me, speaking words of wisdom….” Play us out boys…

Eden in the role of fairy at the arboretum in 2006. Picture by MadGiddy.

There is a demonstration garden at the college of agriculture and veterinarian arts, which lies between our flat and the children’s school. I walk through it sometimes, on my way back, to escape the roar of the traffic on the morning-busy streets around our new home. The garden is moving towards its finest season, unfurling leaves and blooms.

There might be fairies here, I think, and thin spaces such as the Celt’s revere. A friend of mine, a full-blown adult, believes in fairies. She is not the type to wear caftans either, or to name her children ‘Willow.’ She’s actually an incredibly intelligent and well reasoned academic. She works with the poor all over the world, and struggles to find paths of escape for those caught in the throes of human trafficking. She is wise, my friend, and knows you cannot love reason too much and still nurture hope. And so, fairies. Why not? Why can’t the earth and her energy—the creative force of fern and flower, earth and air—why can’t these things sometimes appear to those with sighted eyes? Stranger things have happened.

At the very least, there is creative power in this place, so eagerly tended by students, their futures unfurling before their very eyes—all the possibilities of their own growth spilling out with earth and seed from their mulch-rubbed fingertips. All this cultivating. All this growth. It is the first thing we know of our parental divines: God Created. God creates. In this bright urban garden, with people barely out of their teens, that holy work continues.

I walk through the curving paths, trying out a new graveled walk or step-stone passage each time I visit. Today the garden leads me to Mallard couples, sleeping in loose pairs on the grass with their heads tucked under their wings. They look for all the world like croquet balls abandoned when the players were called away to tea. There is a pond here too, with a marsh tucked into one curve, and a lily pad farm in the other. As I walk along the curve of the pond, past low borders of bent-willow fencing and calla lilies as yellow as lemon tarts, I am greeted by a cherry tree which stretches wide where the pond path meets the trail to the gate. I pause there under her branches, the beautiful cherry, always our first hope of Spring. The air seems to hum with energy. Thin Spots. Fairydom. In a heartbeat she christens me, the cherry tree and her humming court. And then, with a slight reluctance, I move on, towards the traffic and city bustle, the chores and the normal—life beyond the narrow gate.

Just before I reach the street, there is a transitional space of sorts—the brick-paved expanse of the college drive which stretches wide between the garden and the roadway. There, I am greeted by the school’s fountain: five charcoal granite slabs slick in the sunlight. I hesitate a moment, feeling obvious and strange. Then I walk up the slick lower steps to the spring bubbling forth at the top, dip in my hand, touch my forehead, breastbone, the boney crest of each shoulder.

A baptism then, into the life of fairy and mallard, lily and tree.

For most posts about my sacred life click here, or become present to your own sacred life with Sacred Life Sunday. Thank you for being here!

Souren wearing the keffiyeh he got for his birthday in 2005.

If you walk around downtown Copenhagen for any length of time, you will see dozens of teens wearing the keffiyeh. White kids, most of them with shockingly blond hair, sporting the keffiyeh as an accessory to tight jeans and Chuck Taylor all stars. The boys wear them in the traditional black or red. The girls have them in everything from turquoise to hot pink. You can get them for less than $50 kroner ($10 US) at any stand on the street.

I asked our sometimes-teenager Souren, who lived most of his life with the Euro-kids in Germany, what this prevalence of the keffiyeh is all about. Did it mean that a lot of young people in the EU supprted Palestine’s quest for independence? Did it have something to do with aligning themselves with the much-maligned Muslim communities here in Denmark? Did the girls wear it as feminist statement aligning them with freedom-fighter Lelia Kahled, who was one of the first women to be noted wearing the traditionally male headscarf? Were they showing solidarity with recent Muslim immigrants who are struggling in this new country? What was the appeal of these Middle-Eastern head coverings worn in this cold clime as scarves against the winter chill?

Souren tells me that in Germany kids who like the peace loving tunes of reggae & skaa punk wear them; and that these kids often go to protests against the neo-Nazis. (Something that looms larger in his German upbringing than it ever did in my Californian youth.) But here, they seem to be merely in fashion.

I am long past being a teen, and I think that in this society, it would be ridiculous of me to wear the keffiyeh. But part of me wants to don this ethnic wear, to wrap something around me that would stand out as a sign to my Muslim neighbors – something that would say “I am with you. Don’t be afraid. You would have a warm welcome here.”

As racism and tragedy seep like poison into the veins of my new city, this becomes my prayer—that peaceful ties might reign in my neighborhood. That love might stretch across the great divide. That I might wear a badge of solidarity with all of those who seek to co-exist, as we wend our way towards Allah, towards God, toward Yahweh–stumbling as we are towards the Great Divine.

is it enough
this story,
this ideal,
this wistful thing—

the teacher speaking soft in the garden,
mouthing my name,
warm-blooded and real.

when I grow tired of picking,
sorting fact from fiction,
lies like stones among the lentils,
truths as yellow bulbs among the rocks,

when I tire of this painstaking plucking

i hold instead,
one smooth egg
one round stone
one child, with chocolate on her mouth and songs on her tongue.

he is wisen, comes the lisp
he is wisen indeed!

tell me true things, i whisper,
my face held close,
warm against her neck.

she sings to me
an edict, a lullaby,
ubi caritas, maman,
ubi caritas et amor
ubi caritas, deus ibi est.

where there is charity, there is love
where there is love
there god is.

enough, i think,
to hold this egg
this stone
this child
enough, to say ‘amen.’

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning;

and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain–not a single
answer has been found–
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems: Volume One
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two