The Viridescent Circle

This is my last letter.  It is all about glory, which I think is often what brings us to the crossroads of time and eternity. These crossroads were the intended place from which these letters were to be written.  I am so grateful that you have listened while I looked both ways and tried to describe what I saw. 

There is a tradition that in Advent preachers are to take as their subject matter the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. The landscape of November makes good fodder for the first week's topic, death.  How does confronting death prepare the soul for the feast of the Incarnation? 

This missive is passionate and full of concern. It speaks with strain about problems in the world and in the church. It speaks of the transcendence of God and the dancing ministrations of the orders of heavenly hosts who aide us and lead us to cry, "Holy".

The feast of the Transfiguration comes as summer is just getting old. There is a gift that permeates everything even though the grass withers and the flower fades. This letter is about how faith comes to be.

Seeing clearly in the season of the long sun. Believing in the resurrection while there is tragedy and tyranny in our world. 

Early Spring on the prairies is ecstasy and agony. What can we learn from moss and from our mother Mary about how to live in the vicissitudes?

When fall turns to winter we turn inward and slow down but on the long edge between winter and spring we are restless and combustible. Is there wisdom in the catharsis of the festival of Carnival before Lent?

In the opening I say that this letter is an elegy to the cold. My mixing of ideas has brought in the feeling of mourning when I meant to praise. But perhaps my mistake points to a mixed truth. The cold puts us in discomfort, a trial we often lament, a hardship we want to end. However, with the intake of icy breath, the body calls us to attention, makes us ready for the end which is our beginning. 

In the midnight of the year a mirror finds the light there is to be found. Let it leap into the eyes of our hearts. 

We are in between times; Fall is on the threshold of Winter. This liminal time pushes us to ponder the relationship between the living and the dead, and our own life and our own death. We can trust the good earth to ground us, the saints to guide us, and God to surround us with witnesses to the magnetism of Divine love.

We lean into great trees and know the miracle of mercy with fingers on wood. Holy Cross day invites us to root down into the sustenance which makes us capable of the work of our lives. 

We are at the midday of the year, the Angelus bells are ringing and we are called to sit with the Virgin Mary as she enters her eternal rest. It is good.

With fingers deep in the mud we ponder the greenness of the daily and the doctrine of the Trinity.  

On the Feast of the Ascension we must look up and gaze upon the vastness of the true blue of sky; and so we will, and we will speak of how the Word was made flesh in one place and time and ascended into heaven which fills all space and all time.   

The lenten winter is over and now we sing hymns of the resurrection and feel the warm breeze on our cheeks. We need to speak of what the resurrection inaugurates; time has been pierced by eternity and now faith, hope and love are inhabitable. And hope is the bloom...

It is the pinnacle of the Christian year and in this letter Kirsten speaks of the way which the drama Holy Week is purposed to draw the adherent and the seeker deeper into the love song of  the Trinity in order that our lives might be shaped by it. The energy of spring sings its own part in this glorious music.

In this letter Kirsten reveals the centrality of mercy in our Lenten Pilgrimage and wonders at the way blue skies teach us what we need to know about the height and breadth of the same.

The feast of Christmas is come and gone for another year and we are set down in the daily life of a January Winter. In this letter Kirsten reckons with the speechless message of frozen lakes and newborn stars and probes the invitation to hear and receive the epiphanies all around us. 

This letter is a short, stream of consciousness, poem-like thing. A meditation to inspire going out into the darkest night before the beginning of the feast. 

In this letter Kirsten is taken in by the narrative potency of the Advent Lessons and Carol Service. She effuses about the nature and expansive beauty of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures using many metaphors and possibly mixing them. 

In this letter bright red birds sit in trees and epiphanies incite a profound longing to chase wisdom.  Kirsten explores the lost tradition of the Martimas fast which the King's College Chapel seems to remember, and writes about what spiritual discipline has to do with a longing filled pursuit of truth. 

In this letter Kirsten mourns the loss of colour as the weather takes a turn, she looks to spruce trees for their stalwart greeness and speaks of a particular tree that sheltered her in a time of grief. Thoughts about the shelter offered by great beings leads to an exploration of what it is to be a saint. 

In this letter, Kirsten explores the different work asked of us in the summer light and autumn darkness. She explores the beauty and importance of good company when the lights go dim and as we take up the task of discerning the good, the true and the beautiful within the complicated and the prickly. Finally, she talks about prayer and why it is our sustenance as we stumble together and try to stand and search in the dim light. While she talks of all this, you will hear the waves of the lake and wonder why. It is because this is the place where she and Stefan say their Evening prayers and remember you. 

In late September the wind blows in the change of seasons, the birds get ready to migrate. This sends Kirsten off into a metaphor about the wind and meaning making, which leads her to Jesus’ comparison of wind with the Spirit in the Gospel of John. Kirsten talks about the difference between Angels and Humans and how, with their wings, Angels can navigate the wind far better than we humans can. The letter ends pondering guardian Angels and urging listeners to learn to lean on the ones who are near us, who knows how to navigate the wind. 

In the early morning Kirsten writes to one who is loved. She explains the meaning of this loving address and the pressing reasons for her writing to students and others in this time in history. She sets out the intention of her project and sends you off to say your morning prayers.

Aidan Ingalls interviews Kirsten about the work of Theologian in Residence at the chapel of King's College Halifax. Aidan asks about whether a chapel theologian can communicate with the broader university and what she might want to convey. Kirsten talks about 'infinite love' and the theology of Julian of Norwich. Renunciation and love of the world, and Charles Williams' notion of 'coinherence' are reflected on. Kirsten and Aidan discuss how time and eternity might be defined in this podcast and how they intersect, and they reflect on how the rhythms of nature and the rhythms of feasting and fasting in the Christian tradition relate to one another. Aidan is wonderful, Kirsten is learning the art - but she will get there.