I remember St. Jean Baptiste, a soaring, graceful church built by French immigrants in my hometown in western Michigan. Inside, it had a mysterious, airy spaciousness about it, quite unlike St. Mary's, my stolid home parish, built by German immigrants. In my teens, I used to visit St. Jean's when no one else was likely to be there. Among the pillars soaring to the cavernous roof were infinite gradations of shadow. They were balm to my eyes.  So was the simple red glass "Presence Lamp" burning alone in the sanctuary as a signal that the Blessed Sacrament lay within the tabernacle on the altar.

The Blessed Sacrament, the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, contains the "Real Presence" of Christ Himself.  According to Roman Catholic and Orthodox belief, when the priest pronounces the words of consecration over bread and wine in the Mass, those substances may continue to look, feel, smell, and taste like bread and wine, but they will actually be the body and blood of Christ. This is the doctrine of transubstantiation (dating back to the Lateran Council of 1215), according to which the appearances of bread and wine are retained, but the entire substance has become Christ's body and blood. Being of a mystical bent anyway, I never had any trouble with that.  It's just spiritual quantum physics.

Back in the 40's and 50's, when I was growing up, and perhaps today as well, some priests used to "guilt" people into making a "visit" to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. "Think of how much He did for you," they would say, their voices soft, poignantly manipulative.  "Surely, you can spend a little time now and then to visit Him." While transubstantiation made sense to me, what made no sense at all was that the omnipotent Jesus might feel lonely being a little piece of bread inside a locked tabernacle (lest He be stolen) in a local parish church, and that He would therefore be in need of consolation from humans. He was infinite, existing as much among the stars and seas as in St. Jean's.  Still, I was a soft-hearted kid and, just in case, I didn't mind stopping by. Besides, as I've said, I loved the shadowy beauty of that French church, the silence, and healing solitude.

When I was fourteen, I decided I'd like to spend my life in such a place, so I found a way to visit a cloistered Carmelite convent in a nearby city and explained to the nuns that I wanted to join them.  Despite the fact that I was just a kid, they accepted me.  Fortunately, my mother created a great ruckus, and Sister Carola, the hugely sensible Dominican nun who was my physics teacher, supported my mother, and that was that.  When I later discovered the concept of reincarnation, I realized that I'd been a nun, priest, monk, and priestess in countless spiritual traditions so there would have been no point in doing it again.  I needed to move out of my comfort zone.

Meanwhile, my St. Jean's pattern continued when I moved to New York City in the early 60's -- I loved walking around quiet Catholic churches, watching the flickering sanctuary lamp, knowing it signalled that the Divine Presence was nestled humbly in a nearby wafer of bread.  "Hello, You," I would whisper, feeling a sense of easy, long familiarity with that Presence. I've never liked genuflecting, which is the traditional way of acknowledging the divine in Catholic churches -- it seems a stiff, graceless movement, hard on the knees, awkward to perform. What I did instead (when I was sure no one was watching), was the graceful Moslem bow while moving the right hand from heart to lips to brow and outwards. Such a motion came naturally and felt right.

At some deep level, that eucharistic presense mattered to me. Of course, being an intense sort, one day I took the next logical step and stole a consecrated wafer during Communion in a small Jesuit church on Second Avenue. Thereafter, having so cunningly "kidnapped" God, I kept Him safely in my slum apartment on the Lower East Side.  Soon afterwards I even put Him into a tiny antique pyx, which I turned into a pendant and wore everywhere, since I knew no one would ever guess what it contained and I was pretty sure my stolen Guest didn't mind.

Looking back, I realize that such intense proximity to that eucharistic vibrational-field was probably necessary to wean me from lifetimes spent in a devout, dualistic bhakti-yoga mode. It's too easy for me to lose myself in those realms and become dependent upon them. Slowly, over the years, I realized that if the divine was "real" in the pyx, it would also, necessarily, have to be equally "real" throughout creation, for there could be no place where it was not. So I too needed to expand out into the world instead of remaining isolated within something more rarefied.

In the mid-late 80's, during my masters and doctoral work in Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, that expanding awareness, as it has done for many others, morphed into an earth-based spirituality.  I found new sustenance in celebrating solstices and equinoxes as well as lunar phases, for sun, earth, and moon form their own triune forcefield, or trinity, that touched a more visceral part of me than Father/Son/Holy Spirit had ever done.  I consumed the last consecrated wafer, packed away the pyx, and that was that.  The Bread-Being remains a friend but, where deities are concerned, my focus has shifted to what I perceive to be the much deeper realm of goddesses, especially the kindly ones like Buddhism's Kuan Yin and the Taras, and Hinduism's Vak.

This past Saturday, I was in a World Market store in Kalamazoo looking at scented candles, windchimes, and Vietnamese lanterns.  I was trying to avoid India's hanging, stained glass Moorish-style votives that World Market carries this time of year because I already have several beautiful ones and didn't want to be tempted to buy any others.  But as I turned a corner, there they were, the familiar wonderful star-shapes but also a new style  -- a simple, stark 3" wide by 8" long hexagon of red stained glass with a brass Moorish roof and base.  It was only $8.  I didn't need it. I had no special place in mind where I could hang it.  I have to watch every penny these days but I bought it anyway, reasoning that I could return it if I regretted the purchase later.

In my upper hall are two small recessed windows where, in wintertime, I grow pots of herbs on the window sills. A narrow (1.5") vertical piece of woodwork separates the windows -- the dimensions were right so I hung the hexagon there and lit a teacandle to see how it would look.  I really liked it.  It looked as if it had been designed to fit just that location.

I started down the stairs to the lower landing and glanced back.  The whole hexagon was now glowing red, just like a Presence Lamp, I thought, surprised by the unexpected image after so many years.  But it seemed barren, at least in that context, because there was no Blessed Sacrament there, just two empty windows.

My vision shifted to the windows. It was late afternoon, overcast, windy, the season's first blizzard would hit later that night and bring us nearly a foot of snow. Outside, offering refuge to a few sparrows, I could see the bare branches of a maple tree I've named Sif (after the Nordic goddess, Sif of the Golden Hair), and beyond her, across the street, more maples created an intricate, wild, latticework of windswept branches.

And then I knew: earth is the "Blessed Sacrament," and always has been. When Jesus, born in Bethlehem (bet lehem, "house of bread"), later took bread from earth's threshed grain and wine from earth's fermented grapes, and said, "This is my body which will be broken for you...this is my blood which will be shed for you," there was no transubstantiation after all. That would have been an unecessary extra step. I think he meant it literally. Like the ancient Egyptian male earth-god, Nun, I think Jesus was saying that he is earth, and all that comes from it -- thus, the wheat, the grapes, the olives, the maples, the sparrows, the fishes are literally his body and blood. They are, and always have been, of the substance of the divine, manifesting some 2000 years ago on the temporal plane as a specific male, Jesus, who was Earth's emanation, avatar, deva, or emissary, for only a few decades, but now, since he has been "transubstantiated" back into the earth which birthed him, earth has grown as anguished as he once was -- torn, abused, polluted, ravaged, broken and bleeding-out at a perilous rate.

And so I light that Presence Lamp anew each twilight, letting it hold vigil for earth.

My wish for all of us this wintry season is that we remember, recognize, respect, and revere our earth, this blessed Blessed Sacrament.

Blessings,

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For more Crone Papers essays,
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Crone Papers' logo adapted from the "Three Norns" by Sandra Stanton.
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Text and layout © 2007 by Kathleen Jenks, Ph.D.
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Yuletide Page for 2007-2008:

Friday, 10:20pm, 12/21/07, less than 3 hours away from winter solstice, added completed essay (with thanks to my Links-Elf, Michaela, for her sensitive feedback).  Links updates are still tba; hopefully, most are still working.

Monday, 9pm-ish, 12/24/07: added image of my windows in the upper hall after getting the film developed this afternoon.

New Year's Day, 12:45am, 2008: essay added to "Crone Papers."