Design Flaws

I've been taking a six-day retreat, and today is the last day. I awoke this morning, troubled by a question I had been asked several weeks ago during a program Sr. Heléna Marie and I gave in Arizona. The question has been rolling around deep inside my psyche, and this morning it finally popped out into my consciousness: the words "intelligent design" were clear as a bell at 6:00 AM.

"So you believe in intelligent design?" asked one of the women. Alarm bells rang in my head as I answered, "I wouldn't use that combination of words, for sure; they are loaded with a particular 'baggage' that I don't wish to carry."

This is incredibly dangerous territory, and I've been mulling over just what bothers me about the whole intelligent design theory. I know in the ground of my being that intelligent design, as preached by people and institutions (like the Discovery Institute in Seattle), is off-kilter. There is an inherent deception about their efforts, and I cannot trust or believe in a god (or its followers) who condones deceit to establish its validity. I have a jaundiced eye for a god who would apparently disappear if it were not for human interpretation, verbal lid-banging, vilification of others, and behind-the-scenes manipulations.

ID proponents attempt to use their traditional adversaries — the legitimate scientific community and an increasing body of amazing scientific knowledge — as proof for its not-always hidden agenda. There is more than a whiff of political maneuvering among the ID folks that intensifies my suspicion — ties to politically obvious groups who want to turn our schools into boot camps for government-by-theocracy, for example.

An interesting (and probably dangerously simplistic) explanation of intelligent design is one that uses a picture of Mt. Rushmore, where the pattern of the rocks below and on either side of the carved faces is ascribed to natural law and chance, whereas the faces themselves were created by intelligent design. True, but the design for those faces came from humans, not God. Somehow the ID folks want to be sure that the human, above all other aspects of creation, maintains its current elevated status over creation; a status that was created by itself, by the way, and is proving to be phenomenonally destructive. ID people would like us to believe that that devastaion, the result of "materialistic science" they claim, can be corrected if we'll only let them take over education and government by way of religion.

"Intelligent" design theory is not one most intelligent people would subscribe to. But it does get sticky. When one studies that vast body of scientific empirical data — quantum physics, "seeing" the leftovers from the original fireball, amazing photography from traveling cameras zooming around our galaxy, the development of a planet that for most of its four billion year life transformed its wild, chemical-rich seas into palm trees and anteaters and the Rocky Mountains without one human helping hand to do it — one has to wonder. Is there not wisdom in this Universe? A force that yearns toward complexity and self-revelation? In my mind, absolutely everything in this Universe is an expression of the Sacred, the Numinous.

What is not useful is to sustain the belief that one set of ideas should hold sway over another, that one group has the "right" knowledge and must therefore wipe out or control the others. Behind-the-scenes, under-the-table machinations and ill-disguised political dance-steps for power are not useful.

What might be more useful would be to step back and observe creation with awe and wonder, to celebrate the beauty and wisdom of it all, to honor and respect everything that shares this lovely, sacred, "fragile Earth, our island home" — yep, even the ID folks.

Sunrise Moon

Any of you who follow my blogs or visit our website know that I'm enamored of sunset skies. We are halfway up Joe's Hill and have a marvelous west view, so we are treated to a lot of spectacular twilight shows. But early Friday morning I looked out back and saw this lovely sight.

When the sun hovers near the horizon, day or night, the sky can transform into breathtaking artistry. Today the rising sun bounced pink and yellow off the western clouds, Earth's shadow was still discernible (just above the trees), and the barely-waning moon stood out as brightly as if it were midnight.

Jet contrails across the sky to the south and east were bright pink, too. Toward the east, the clouds reflected deeper yellow tones as the sun cleared the horizon but not our hill.

I absolutely never tire of looking at the sky, whether it's the characteristic deep blue of dry air, heavy with water-logged thunderheads, blazing with hot red sunset clouds, or vast with the awe-inspiring galaxy-studded blackness of night. I seem to be eternally fascinated by the sky.

Sometimes I just stand there, unaware of the time or weather, awed into wonder and silence. Never, in the entire four billion year history of the Earth, has the sky looked exactly like this. And it never will again.

Don't miss it.

A Sleeping Giant

Macrina took a looooong flight today. I was standing in the little ducks' pen when I heard the familiar sound of flapping wings. I looked up to see her about 200 feet away from me and 30 feet or so in the air, skirting the edge of the trees to the north. Clearly she had been down in the woodland near the athletic field. This is a major flight distance for her. I assumed she was heading back to the rocks and stone benches where the big ducks spend most of the morning, but she never wavered. On past the house and out of sight she flew.

Though all the big ducks do fly, Bernie rarely does (I think he's too heavy to enjoy it much), and Petra and Basil only fly short distances, and then only when it suits them. So far I've seen no (human) logic in what triggers these short forays into the air.

"Well," I thought, "there goes Macrina." And I meant it literally. She's gone. She's discovered the lure of a larger world, and it's a lot more interesting than home. I worried. It's a lot more dangerous, too. The wild geese and ducks will peck her to death. She'll get lost. The coyotes/raccoons/hunters will kill her. She'll starve to death. She'll never want to come home again. She'll be injured in some painful, horrible way that causes her to suffer for hours. Maybe days.

Wait a minute. She's a duck in a beautiful duck environment. I was standing there, worrying like a human mother for a child heading off to college. Macrina is barely domesticated, really, and her ability to survive is instinctive, not something she needs to learn the hard way. Of course awful things can and do happen. Everything in the entire Universe is subject to destruction, and eventually it will happen to each of us, for some a prettier process than for others, but it will happen nonetheless.

There is something deep within us that cares for the other, for beings that appear to us to be not-us, which is an illusion, of course—we are all infinite expressions of the One. That means caring is instinctive, hard-wired within. It is a powerful and necessary force for survival. Over the past 13,000 years or so we've done a dangerously good job of putting this tendency toward caring to sleep, but it's still there.

It may be a sleeping giant, but thank goodness it's not a dead one.

By the way, Macrina finally appeared soaring in from my left. She'd made a huge aerial circuit through the woods and around the house and school. She was checking out her environment, taking risks. And this time she came home.

It's Hard to be New

As promised, here are our two newest duck family members, Terest (L) and Avila (R). They are new in several ways: new to the Earth, new to this home, new to the ducks who already live here. Their covering is new: soft, fluffy, not-very-protective down that is still (mostly) duckling yellow. Almost everything they do is new, at least to them. New home, new pen, new yard, new food, new pond ...

Being new is tough.

The big ducks are pretty sure they don't want the newcomers to stay, even though I don't think they are entirely sure just what these little yellow critters are. But they understand that the fuzzy little invaders want to hang around, eat their food, play in their water — and generally act like little sibling annoyances.

So Bernie, Macrina and sometimes even Basil (Petra, as ever, is gentle with everything) go after the little ones. Once Bernie and Basil got them cornered and something ruthless clicked in their pea-sized brains. Luckily I was there and stopped the frenzied and brutal pecking almost as soon as it began, but it was a little scary. I actually had to push Bernie away, and he rarely lets a human get close enough to whiff his tail feathers, never mind execute a serious shove. Thankfully, a nine-pound testosterone-poisoned duck is no match for a ——— well, never mind how much I weigh, but I definitely have the edge on Bernie. He knew I meant business and he quickly came to what little sense he ever has. He calmly wandered a few yards away and nibbled politely on the smart weed. "See?" he seemed to say, "I wasn't doing anything ..." Yeah, right.

It will be several weeks before Teresa and Avila are big enough to endure the inevitable tail-feather-removal pecking that will establish Bernie as the Main Man. Then everything will settle back into a routine that includes our little newcomers.

I remember the misery of starting a new job. I hadn't any idea what I was doing, where to find things, how to remember all those names. I hated feeling new, and my first days as a newbie were intensely and exhaustingly focused. I just couldn't bear to look foolish, and I hated the feeling of not belonging. Inevitably, there was one co-worker who seemed to go our of her way to make me understand that my place, whatever it turned out to be, would be less than hers.

It's the same here in community, where (thankfully) we have new woman joining our little family fairly regularly. They are powerful women, coming from strong business and professional backgrounds. Yet in a way it's back to step one for them, and they struggle to embrace the profound differences between living independently in a secular world and living faithfully in a family of flawed humans, engaged in their own struggle to move into a new monastic vision. They can feel picked on, as more experienced Sisters bring errors in reliigous practice to their attention. Lord knows we're not perfect, and we're not always as welcoming as we'd like to think we are.

It's not exacty a picnic. It can feel like having a rug yanked from under your feet, like having your skin rubbed with sandpaper, like ... well, like being new, I guess. So I watch our little ducklings, and I watch our brilliant newcomers in community, and I pray that all of them will weather the storm of adjustments, eventually nestling happily into a nest that no longer feels so darned new.

The Angelus

Every day now we ring the Angelus, which is a series of eighteen strikes on the chapel bell, in a particular rhythm. We encircle our day by ringing the Angelus at 6:30 AM, as the day begins with an hour of meditation (which we call The Hour of the Wolf); at noon (a respectiful nod to the tradition of Angelus-ringing); and at 6:30 PM, at the close of our evening meditation (The Hour of the Deer). The traditional monastic practice is to stop whatever you are doing at the first bell to say the prayers [see below] as the bells are rung.

I most enjoy the noon Angelus, because that's when we might be engaged in any number of daily tasks: Pia's been finishing the hermitage renovation and making a new pen for the ducklings; Sr. Lilli Ana might be cleaning out a guest room or planning an afterschool program; Sr. Heléna Marie and Sr. Donna Martha might be pulling weeds, planting, harvesting or otherwise tending the garden; I might be doing laundry, raking leaves or paying bills; Sr. Claire Joy might be cooking or shopping; Sr. Emmanual may be riding herd on the lunchroom at school. And then, suddenly, "CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!!" sings the ship's bell we use for chapel, and simultaneously, seven woman stop in their tracks to pray.

When the Angelus began at noon today I was looking out the window of my office at the changing leaves. I could see Sr. Donna Martha working on fencing under the apple tree. and suddenly there we were like children playing "statue" — me with a cup of coffee in hand, Sr. Donna Martha with her hands full of deer netting and fence post. And there we stood for the next few minutes, two nun-statues, praying the same prayers together. Just then I felt the deep connection between our little family of Sisters, all of us standing quietly, praying words steeped in monastic tradition.

Old and new, shaking hands across the ages, joining time-tested tradition with emerging vision. It doesn't get much better than that.

Prayers for the ringing of the Angelus

The pattern of ringing is three sets of three bells, rung fairly close together and with a pause between the sets for the completion of the Hail Mary. After the three sets of three, nine bells are rung evenly but spaced further apart for the final prayer. (Imagine a bell ringing at each asterisk.)

* The angel of the Lord announced unto Mary
* And behold she conceived by the Holy Spirit
* Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, prayer for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

* And Mary said, behold the handmaid of the Lord.
* Be it unto me according to your Word.
* Hail Mary ...

* And the Word was made flesh,
* And dwelt among us.
* Hail Mary ...

* Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,
* That we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.
* Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have * known the incarnation of your Son, Jesus Christ, * announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his * cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection * who lives and reigns with you * in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, * now and forever. Amen.

The Community Grows

Well Bernie the Duck may be in love with Petra (or at least in lust), but there's no love lost between him and our two newest duck family members: Teresa and Avila, who arrived this afternoon, all yellow ducklette fuzz and brash mini-quacks. They are about four weeks old.

They can probably hold their own ... but "probably" isn't enough for me. Once I saw how aggressive Bernie was being to them, I just couldn't risk waking up tomorrow morning to fuzz-less ducklings, or, worse yet, dead ones. Back into Smooch's cat carrier they went, and up to the second floor just outside my room. It may smell like a barn up here, but I think I'll put up with it until I know they can hold their own against a testosterone-saturated nine-pound bully.

[CHECK BACK NOW AND THEN — I'LL GET A PICTURE OF THESE LATEST ADDITIONS TO DUCKVILLE.]

God's Promise

I do love a good storm, especially when I can lie in bed and listen to the hiss of raindrops falling on the brick patio below my window. But during the past week, as the rainfall pushed toward ten inches, my passion for stormy weather began to fade.

A small locust tree halfway down our back hill fell over in the saturated soil. The clothes never got quite dry, hanging down there in the basement. I began to think about large boats and pairs of animals. Sara, our friend from New Orleans, was beginning to feel like The Flood Jinx.

So being able to see tonight's sunset brought joy well beyond the delight of a gorgeous evening sky. This small community of sunlit clouds and blue sky sang of hope and possibility and trust. After days of flood control, chilling damp air and low-slung sooty clouds, we have been reassured that, as Dame Julian noticed all those years ago, "... all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Amen.

Love in the air

Two days ago I was out before breakfast, enjoying unseasonable early-morning warmth, when I heard a frantic quacking from the back yard. That was alarming, since our ducks are Muscovies, which don't really quack at all. They make a soft, whirring noise at most. Uh-oh.

I ran back there just in time to see Bernie climbing on top of Petra. Apparently nature is firing up Bernie's hormones, and this seemed to be the cause of the racket. Petra wasn't entirely sure she wanted to become the object of Bernie's affections, however. By now Bern probably weighs in at around nine pounds, compared to Petra's svelte five or so. The process looked a little too aggressive and unbalanced to me, and I was pretty sure Petra wouldn't have opted for this amorous attention if she'd had a choice.

Bernie didn't seem too skilled in his technique, either. His position made effective mating anatomically impossible for one thing. He was having a hard time balancing with his feet halfway up Petra's back, and occasionally he slipped sideways until he was perpendicular to her. His idea of foreplay was to peck roughly about her head, focusing (cruelly, I thought) on her damaged eye. It took a lot, but I resisted the temptation to yell at Bernie and chase him away from Petra.

Trust nature, I kept telling myself. It may look impossible, ludicrous and mean, but they'll sort it out eventually.

Finally Petra managed to bounce Bernie off her back, quacked madly and made off for Duckville Manor. Bernie wasn't deeply enough in love to follow her up the ramp, and his testosterone rush seemed to wear off quickly. She reappeared in the duck yard within minutes and life returned to pre-puberty levels.

But a line has been crossed. Soon the relationship between the four ducks will change permanently. Adult juices are flowing: eggs will be laid, the boys will fight each other, the girls will divide their time between incubating and foraging.

Something in me felt a little sad. Oh, I'm looking forward to delicious breakfasts of duck-egg omelets all right, and it's exciting to watch our duckies grow up ... but I'm not quite ready for them to take on the serious business of reproduction, with its competition and harshness. I like my ducks sort of daft and adorable.

Maybe it's time for a few more new ducks.

Water

Yesterday we finally got rain. Oh boy did we get rain. It poured all day — so much that I needed to sweep the excess water off the patio (four times), much to the great disappointment of the ducks; drag all the hemlock needles out of the second floor gutter drains (thankfully, just once); pull the leaf dams out of the sewer drains out on the road (twice); place seven wastebaskets in various places under the leaky school roof; spend almost five hours today dispatching a third of the pear tree that fell during the storm; and generally enjoy the soothing sound of a steady, pounding rain.

I couldn't have been happier.

By late afternoon I was playing in the rushing water along the curb. We have a sweeping curve in our driveway; rainwater flows toward the forest on one end and toward the road on the other. I was fooling around with the broom, sweeping water along so that when it reached the lip of the driveway where it spills into a little rivulet in the woods it would make a great splash.

Earlier, when I was pulling leaf piles out of the road grates, I was treated to the satisfying rush of a hundred-foot-long run of water released into the underground "box" the city installed years ago. What a sound! There was so much water and so much power in it that I was darned careful about where I was standing. Oh, there was no danger of being dragged into that box of roiling water, of course, but I sure could have been knocked off my feet, and I'm just a little too old to think that would be fun.

Water is amazing. In a hurricane it can bring incomprehensible devastation. In a pouring rain, it provides gentle, soothing sound. On a winter pond it is ground for skaters, a slide for otters, and protection for fish and other semi-hibernaters. In an iceberg it becomes glorious shards of blue light, crashes into the sea in the impressive act of calving, or takes out a gigantic sea-going vessel like the Titanic. Rocks are carved, smoothed, even worn completely away by the patient passing of the smallest steady trickle. Yet water will give way to a clump of newly fallen maple leaves, finding itself a different course around the blockage.

I've always loved water, even when it appears as an impressive gusher in the basement during a heavy storm. You just have to love something so versatile, unique, and mysterious. Everything else has the decency to follow the rules: shrink when you get cold, expand when you get hot. But not water. And thank God for that, because if it followed the rules we wouldn't be here. And precious little else would be, for that matter.

Once again Earth teaches me. Be like water. If it is beneficial to live by a different set of rules, give it a go. Know when to hang in there long enough to wear down something as unyielding as rock, and when to step aside for a tender possibility like a clump of leaves. Once in a while sweep someone off their feet, even if they think they are too old to enjoy it. Be flexible. Be playful. Be useful. Be beautiful. Sing a haunting, soothing song.

And once in a while, be ferocious. It will keep others respectful, compassionate and resourceful.