June 9, 2024.
Dear Friends,
We will gather together remotely for our Badaliya and Peace Islands Institute faith sharing on Sunday, June 9, 2024 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm. Please join us on Zoom, or in spirit, as we encourage Inter-faith relations and pray together for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, especially in Israel and Palestine; for an end to the violence in the West Bank, a ceasefire of the war in Gaza and an end to war as a solution to the many conflicts in our world, especially in the Ukraine. Our prayers are on-going for all the victims of human-created violence as well as natural disasters and for the many humanitarian groups risking their own lives to offer much-needed aid.
The key events at the close of the Easter Season began with the celebration of the Ascension of Jesus, his return to God described in the Acts of the Apostles, with the promise that, in the same way, Christ will come again. Nine days later we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost, the dramatic coming of the Holy Spirit that was promised by Jesus in order to provide us with the inspiration needed to live in the fullness of Life in Christ and share our experience with others. Openness to the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives becomes an on-going transformative experience allowing our capacity for compassionate caring for the well-being of others, our world and all of creation. Many images representing the Love of Christ continually being poured out through us for all of human life include the Feast of Corpus Christi and the two beautiful images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the memorial to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. All of these expressions of Divine Love are meant to help us to experience the power of Love's ability to heal and transform our broken world.
The First reading for today's liturgy, that traditionally comes from the Hebrew Scriptures, reminds us of the very beginning, the Genesis of human life on earth. The awakening of these symbolic first human beings, made in the image of God yet all too humanely naked and vulnerable, calls us to reflect more deeply on this new beginning of life in the Spirit. These images of hearts open to the working of that Spirit within us calls us out of our myopic self-centeredness into the recognition of that Spirit in others so that we can truly love one another as we have been loved.
Today we are paying tribute to the 70th anniversary this year of a Muslim and Christian pilgrimage that was established in 1954 in a small Breton hamlet in Western France. Louis Massignon spent years researching the sources both for the legend of the Sufi Saint, al-Hallaj throughout the world but also the legends and popular devotions that survived the centuries and became part of liturgical celebrations. He had already discovered the legend of the Seven Sleepers when his daughter, Geneviève pointed out a Celtic Breton Chapel in Vieux Marché, Brittany, near to their summer home, that had an altar with seven figures surrounding the Virgin Mary in the center and the legend read in ancient Breton every year at the annual Parish pilgrimage. Massignon researched the origins of the Chapel and its altar and translated the Breton story. Although the seven statues on the altar were thought to honor seven Bishops, he was astonished to discover that in fact the Breton story was very close to the legend of the Cave of the Seven Sleepers found in the Qur'an and in Orthodox Christian traditions. It is a story of Resurrection that took place in the second century in Ephesus in modern day Turkey. Suggesting to the local Bishop in the town of Tréguier that the pilgrimage was an opportunity to bring Christians and Muslims together he was given permission to adapt the annual event into a shared Christian and Muslim pilgrimage.
The rituals associated with this pilgrimage, that is traditionally held on the closest week-end to July 22nd, the Feast of Mary Magdalen in the Church, fueled Massignon's spiritual sense of the connection of ancient pre-biblical traditions to the images and rituals found in the earliest Christian documents. Here is Celtic Brittany, the land of ancient Druids and standing stones, called Dolmen, mysteriously erected between 5000BC and 3000BC, thousands of years before Christianity, now thought to be not only burial rituals of ancient peoples but also means of navigation in this sea faring region, an ancient form of astronomy. They have been Christianized with images of crosses and saints sculpted onto them throughout Brittany.
In the crypt of the Chapel in Vieux Marché are the original altar statuettes as well as the Dolmen over which the Chapel was built on the feast of Mary Magdalen, July 22,1703. The ancient Breton story suggests that the crypt and Chapel were "not made by human hands". Nearby is a natural Spring with seven veins that is reminiscent of the Muslim sites dedicated to the Seven Sleepers established near to natural Springs that Massignon researched and found in many other countries in the Middle East, but also in Spain and Germany. This follows the tradition of establishing sanctuaries near to natural Springs dedicated to Mary Magdalen and the Virgin Mary in many countries as is the case in Ephesus as well. "The maritime ports of call on the trade route between Ireland and the Middle East provided a clue as to how the Eastern Church and its devotions found its way to Brittany, France with the Celtic immigration in the 5th century." (p.218 Dialogues)
We can say that the many images of Divine Love for all of humanity found in devotions such as the Sacred heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the legends of saints such as al-Hallaj and the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus are invitations, not only to connect with our ancient Biblical and Qur'anic roots but also to the most primordial human experience of the workings of the Spirit of the Divine throughout ancient and modern human history. Let us pray that these reflections help us to find our shared common humanity in order to heal the human weaknesses that divide us so that we can embrace the wonder of God's image of diversity on this planet during our shared pilgrimage in this life.
May Peace with Justice be yours and reign in our world during the coming summer season.
Dorothy
References:See www.dcbuck.com for all past letters to the Badaliya and Peace Islands