On the heels of a vivid dénoument from a yoga session last year, an epiphany struck Jane Moss — yoga as an interior sacred practice had become an essential respite from the cacophony of modern life.  That singular moment of introspection and inspiration now culminates in her new creation: the White Light Festival, three weeks of artful music dedicated to sacred programming at a most secular performance arts institution — Lincoln Center in New York City — where Ms. Moss serves as vice president of programming.

According to Jane Moss, the festival is trying to achieve “focus on personal interior spaces where all music starts.”  For a festival to be scheduled at all during the height of the fashionable fall season, much less a sacred one “devoted to spiritual expression and the illumination of our large interior universe,” is a bold and highly unusual move for Lincoln Center.  The “relentlessly imaginative” Moss has gathered an array of incredible artists — the Hilliard Ensemble, the Westminster Cathedral Choir, Meredith Monk, the Tallis Scholars, and other notables — for an ambitious program shaped by advising author & theologian (and GladdeningLight fave) Karen Armstrong.

All around us, there is spiritual hunger in evidence.  Some are drawn by artistic means to the secular corners toward the liminal divine.

(Note: source quotations from The New York Times)

www.lincolncenter.org/Press_Release/White_Light_Announce_PR_FINAL.pdf

www.new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/white-light-2010-conversations

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.