Author Kathleen Norris appeared this past weekend at St. Philip’s Episcopal Cathedral in Atlanta.  Her books include The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace, Dakota, and A Virgin of Bennington.  In my mind, Norris writes richly about the interior life in much the same way as my mentor Madeleine L’Engle, who passed away in 2007 (though perhaps not quite with Madeleine’s bold resolve).

Kathleen Norris shared a formative story from her days at Bennington when, while studying abroad in Paris, she ducked into Notre Dame fleeing a sudden rainstorm.  For Norris, these were agnostic years in college yet church still beckoned its quiet and safe sanctuary.  By chance as the weather continued outside, the cathedral organist began to rehearse anthems, at once surging through the massive cathedral pipes, the stone edifice of Notre Dame, and into the heart of Kathleen Norris.  The combination of Notre Dame’s magnificence, the heavenly acoustic splendor of the organ, and the beating of her own heart aligned.  As Norris put it in her talk, this was a mountaintop moment.  The veil of her non-belief began to lift.

I had a similar epiphany while studying in Europe.  My childhood had left me spiritually bankrupt and in existential despair.  Yet within the great churches and spaces of Italy, I began to experience firsthand the passions that once led renaissance artists to create.  My eyes were opened.  This wasn’t gilding the lily as I had been taught; here, God was at work in us and through us along the pathways of aesthetic praise.

Note: Psalm 107b, Posuit flumina, “the Lord changed deserts into pools of water.”  More on Kathleen Norris may be found at http://www.barclayagency.com/norris.html.

I admit I borrowed part of this heading from the prog group, Yes, and its lyricist Jon Anderson.  His Revealing Science of God begins an excursion into the world of Topographic Oceans, the band’s courageous, overreaching experiment.  We shall speak of this later.

There is a spectacular academic quarterly of spirituality, psychology and metaphysics called Parabola whose current issue is devoted to the subject of desire.  According to their website, the journal’s parent Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition is a “not-for-profit organization devoted to the dissemination and exploration of materials relating to the myths, symbols, rituals, and art of the world’s religious and cultural traditions. To this end, the Society is the publisher of Parabola Magazine.”  The editors go on to emphasize the parabolic arc as representative of humanity’s collective reach, a curving outreach as the “epitome of a quest.”  This metaphor aligns with a favorite of mine — the ancient Greek’s use of epektasis, describing the athlete straining to reach a goal that can never be attained.  Epektasis is a core paradigm of spiritual growth: we as pilgrims yearn for answers to existential questions; we desire God, yet achievement of spiritual union eludes us.

And what does God desire?  That question is explored eloquently by Geoffrey Dennis in his Parabola article, “A Song of Desire, Creation and the Yearnings of Israel’s God.”  According to Dennis, God longs for communion with creation.  Passion for relationship is evident in God’s grief as a consequence of our separation from the garden.  Unlike Aristotle’s God as Unmoved Mover, here is a God of “the Most Moved Mover.”  Dennis concludes by insisting that God imparts to us the desire to do good for one another — living in symbiosis for community — and that this is a characteristic of evolved consciousness.

There are other wonderful considerations of desire in this issue of Parabola, from St. Francis to contemporary Dharma Master Cheng Yen.  I heartily recommend them and encourage you to acquire a copy wherever magazines are sold.

As we ponder the garden, let us consider the poetics of Joni Mitchell, “We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”  There is a common tendency to lean upon the foggy lens of nostalgia in framing our past and in this case, our natural being.  Creation is messy, involving dead ends and unrealized aspirations.  But the leaf upon the branch finds light and nourishment, and leans toward the sun where its future lies.

Another line from Woodstock, “We are stardust, we are golden” lays claim to the grounding quality of our common humanity.  A college astronomy professor of mine once made me literally bolt upright in my seat by stating, “You were once part of a star.”  Yes, all of our chemical makeup at the cellular level was once hurling through space contained within the heavenly bodies.  Our DNA, our mitochondria was and is stardust, remnants of the Big Bang.

Might we come to learn to appreciate our biological communion with the cosmic structure of the universe?

“I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I don’t know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust, billion year old carbon
We are golden, caught in the devils bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden”

© 1970 Siquomb Publishing Corp, Reprise / Warner Music