As soon as Rebecca and I got on the ferry to go to Vashon Island, I was cold and stayed that way until I bought some long underwear, long socks, and a second hand, long sleeve shirt. Whew! We went to dinner with Terri and Tobey Fitch, old friends of the family. Rebecca went to school with Terri and they live in Portland and have stayed close. We were going to go to the Hardware Store but the wait was too long without reservations. So off to the Gusto Girls, which serves great food. Trying to eat simply as one of my constraints, I chose a light appetizer because everything else was quite lavish, including salad. They were all appalled so I said I had eaten a big lunch. No problem. We had a great visit and I got to tell them some of my stories.
The weather had been Indian Summer up till now, but fall came in the night with the rain. Rebecca made me a bed in the living room on the floor with one of those foam pad things and lots of blankets. It rained all day Saturday, which was when we harvested the garden of berries, tomatoes, squash, beans, egg plant, marjoram, oregano, Italian parsley, French tarragon, and thyme. Rebecca had rain suits for both of us and it was great because we were out there for hours. We cooked a huge pot of tomato sauce and grilled fillets of squash to make several vegetarian lasagnas to freeze. I made my famous cabbage and black bean salad for our dinner. She will be canning and freezing for awhile as most of the garden is still producing. We built a fire that night and it really took the chill off. On my journey to France I helped out where I stayed during wedding preparations. I baked 1800 cookies; chocolate chips and peanut butter. Most of the guests had never heard of a cookie.
MORE BACK STORY...
One might ask how I went from being a Fundamentalist Christian of the charismatic persuasion to Mystic wannabe. It was like a lovely car journey to go sightseeing, only I thought we were going to tour the French Riviera. Surprise! I had no idea it was the Grand Canyon of my own soul and what a strange map developed from that...yikes!
My transformation started innocently with a sudden interest in Celtic Christianity. Well really, I was suffocating and needed more room to grow spiritually, so I began exploring my Christian roots thinking maybe the Church was going through de-evolution.
My real name is not Ribble, but rather a French or perhaps older...a Latin name. I also know that strong Irish component in later generations. So it seemed natural to seek in parallel with Christian history, my European roots on my 1998 pilgrimage to Ireland and France.
The big event happened in southern France. But how it started was being stuck in Barcelona. The trains went on strike throughout Spain and Santes Station, in Barcelona, was full of stranded travelers sleeping on the floors in clusters. They were mostly young people and many were so sick they were retching in trashcans. But I don't think I got it from them. Mine was respiratory and I may have picked it up on my flight over. It had fully incubated into an infection and I found it intolerable to be around smoking. I switched from the hostel further away from downtown to staying in a hotel near the station so I could keep an eye on the trains. I languished on my bed or took hot bathes in those great short but deep bathtubs they have over there, to help my breathing. I wondered what I had done to myself going off alone on this adventure without a tour guide. By the time I caught a train out of Spain to France, I was too sick to travel beyond.
I was trying to reach the family home of a friend of mine in the States. I had hired Claire for a couple of translating projects and we had become friends. She was visiting her family's vineyard outside the city of Carcassonne near the foothills of the Pyrenees for the wedding of her youngest sister, Marie. I was generously given shelter there to convalesce for a couple of weeks. When I was on the mend, Claire volunteered to translate interviews with nuns and monks in cloistered communities in the area nearby. Every evening my hosts took me to Mass at the convent that bordered the vineyard. I was not familiar with the Roman Liturgy, Latin, or French and understood little of what was going on. I found myself bewildered at my own weeping through the mass each evening. One night, a woman from Paris, Katrine, sat next to me and noticed my crying but could not inquire because of the language barrier. Suddenly she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek to express her concern. I knew what she meant and gestured that I was fine and we both smiled. It struck me how we could make ourselves understood without language. This caused me to think about the universality of symbols and it was not much of a stretch to realize the rhythms and ancient symbols of the liturgy were impacting me somewhere inside that I had no conscious awareness before this event. Amazed, I determined to explore this Kairotic portal further. It was an awakening; knowing in ways other than through my rational mind. This transformation caused me to review how I look at meaning and truth, what the rules are, or if there might be other ways of framing my world. The event each evening caused both a palpable epistemological and ontological shift in how I read the text of my life.
After I returned from Europe, I began seeking this experience in the US. At first I tried the local suburban Catholic churches and found them short of the experience I had in France.
Then a Catholic friend suggested I try St. James Cathedral near downtown Seattle. Bingo! I was a sobbing mess all over again. But as I attempted to go through Christian Initiation at St. James I choked on dogma. The year I spent at St. James intensely absorbing beauty was not lost on me. This place was eye candy compared to the striped down churches where I worshiped in Evangelical Christianity. St. James came to represent the glories of heaven to me. The sensory beauty around me penetrated and healed so many places I did not realize were wounds, The acoustics in cathedrals are incredible. Music was new again.
During that time, I attended a seminar by Father Thomas Keating on Centering Prayer. I was especially wowed by this ancient but revived practice of deep Christian meditation. It started with the Desert Fathers and Mothers and continued mainly in the monastic tradition. Now I was grasping something beyond the symbols and the beauty of liturgy. I could get beneath the noise of our culture and my own deep hurts that caused me to run a strange little obstacle course in my life. Now felt like I was going somewhere in my faith.
Now add to that the Welcoming prayer developed by Mary Mrozowski, who is also a co-founder and faculty member of Contemplative Outreach. She is now passed but left the gift of this intuitive prayer for others. It was from the classes Cherry Haisten taught that I learned these two wonderful methods of prayer. The classes were held at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral. I mentioned that I was struggling with Catholic dogma and she gently suggested visiting St. Mark's for a service. I did and talked with people who answered questions about the Anglican faith. Another bingo. This is where I could really ask questions and explore my faith.
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