We have had the driest three month period, April through June, ever, or at least since they started compiling such things, and all the small plants and farmers’ fields and sickly trees are dying. The lawn is so crisp that spikes of grass hurt bare feet like pine bristles, and the soil in the garden is a fine rusty-red dust wherever it has not been watered regularly. Ponds have turned to scummy, stinking weed beds and geese and cranes and all the water creatures have crowded into smaller and smaller shallow mud puddles and algae-choked lakes. This is an agricultural area, and in the churches, prayers for rain are now said every week. It is the first thing most people talk about when they meet, and everyone has been moved to stoic resignation as weather, no matter what they say, is one thing that no one can fix, no matter what.
However, it is the best picnic and campfire weather ever. The sun is shining brightly all day long, and finding a mosquito is almost like searching for Sasquatch or the last passenger pigeon. While the days are hot, they are dry, and, as in the desert, the nights are cool. There is a crispness to the air that screams “summer” and if we had an ocean nearby it would be the season to live at the beach. Perfect cook-outs are taken for granted, and no one worries about a rain date. In fact, some of the more superstitious might even challenge the sky to darken by making a really important date just to make it rain, for the death of everything is worse than the lack of everything else. Still, no one would deny that the dryness has been convenient, at the very least; no one would deny that we are witnessing a most beautiful dying.
It will end. It always does, and we will live life again almost as if the drought hadn’t happened. The dying will stop as it always does in the grand scheme of nature, but it is not always so with us as individuals. Each of us will have our own dying someday, and the process is rarely a beautiful thing. It means incontinence and empty bank accounts and stressed-out caretaker children and overworked nursing staff and pain and discomfort and confusion. It amounts to everything that a severe drought is without the beautiful sky and the backyard barbeques. These deaths will not end in a deluge and a return of growth in this world. Still, the end is often beautiful, often so beautiful that a single human death can put the glory of the sun to shame.
The beauty of death is in the stillness. I have never been there at the moment, although I have seen that stillness just before death and just after. Everything else looks shallow next to it. No pretense or university degree or expensive car or important position can take away from this singularity. Life is not eclipsed by it, but rather set right. Nothing looks the same in its reflection. Normal perspective simply vanishes into vacuity before it as we are brought to the edge of where we so need to go but so desperately don’t want to.
These are times that one cannot forget, just as I cannot forget a documentary that pictured such an event in absolute, fearless honesty. It is called “Apparition Hill” made by Stella Mar Productions, and it is overall one of the greatest real-life films on spirituality ever made. Its primary focus is not on death, but on the phenomena of Medjugorje, which I have mentioned several times in this website. I have gone on pilgrimage there twice already, and hopefully will go another time soon. Briefly, Medjugorje is the site of Marion visions, similar to Fatima and Lourdes, except that the visitations to the visionaries – there are six in all – are still continuing. Situated in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former part of Yugoslavia, it is far from cutting-edge First World civilization – yet millions go there annually. For many, including yours truly, it is a big deal.
The documentary features several people whose life situations are showcased before they are brought to Medjugorje by the filmmakers. There is a Protestant who believes that the veneration of Mary is idolatry, a drug and alcohol addict who hopes that the magic of the site will cure his addiction, an atheist who is just going along for the ride, and a woman in her forties with several underage children who is hoping for a cure for her rapidly advancing cancer, among others. We are treated to each’s experience during a week-plus stretch in and around the village. Some are affected profoundly and others not so much, but the most memorable is the experience and aftermath of the dying mother, and for reasons one might not expect.
At first, her illness was so advanced that it was not expected that she could survive the flight. Then, just a few weeks before the trip, she had a startling remission of symptoms, and the trip was on. Once in Medjugorje, set in a valley between extremely rocky and hilly terrain, she found herself able to climb Cross Mountain, an effort that takes experienced hikers at least 45 minutes, and attend all the masses and meetings and other hikes through and around the boulders and sharp rocks. This included a lesser but still strenuous climb up Apparition Hill, for which the documentary was named, this being the place where Our Lady of Peace, as Mary is called here (or simply Gospa to the locals) first appeared to several visionaries, all of whom were then children. We are surprised. We watch on in anticipation. Will we witness a miracle towards the end of the documentary? Will God grant her life to raise her many children to adulthood? Will God grant her life so that we might believe?
We expect this; we demand it. What good is a film like this without a miracle? Yet, in the follow-up after her return to the States we find that her cancer has returned with a vengeance. Not long after, we see the camera crew at her house, then in her house, and then in her room. She is dying and the family, little and big children and sorrowful husband, want the crew to be there. We might wonder why until the final minutes arrive. Then we understand. The family is subdued, nearly silenced in the shadow of death, but there is not wailing or gnashing of teeth. The family wants us to see that something has changed since the mother’s visit to Medjugorje. They want us to see that peace has descended upon both themselves and the mother. They have been brought to an understanding that God is with her, and with them, in death. They have come to learn that even in the hardness and horror of dying, there is a light, a glow, a grace that can descend upon those with faith. They have allowed this grace, or this grace has been allowed them, to fill their lives since the pilgrimage, where we believe the mother came to this understanding and brought it home.
Then we see her die in real time. Prayers are said, but these are nothing compared to the prayer that the family is living. Peace, belief; a crossing of the line between this world and the next; a touching of the divine with fleshly fingers. There is a magic here that brings one to tears, but not to despair. We realize that we are witnessing the real miracle, one that we can all become a part of. It is born from a trust in creation, and a love for that which is hidden but present in everything. This trust is an opening to everything after so many years of closed minds and arms and hearts. It is a witness to the triumph of faith.
The drought will end. The dust will be washed in life-giving rain and all will be green and life will once again flourish. So it always has been and will be. Who cannot see the metaphor that creation has set before us? Whose eyes could be so blind? Yet what is behind the metaphor of nature is so much more. It is the deep mystery we find in the reverent silence, the unity that exists in eternity, and the reality beyond the flux of seasons and life and death. Profound beyond thought and words, this “something” is what casts the thin shadow of nature that we so cling to. This, this something, is our inheritance, what we have been born to share and will share once our gaze has been turned beyond our noisy, tiny selves. It may take a pilgrimage to shake us free; it may take an illness, or the love of family or the grace of a saint or a strike of lightening, but it will always find us if we so desire. In tears and awe it will come, this rain that is hidden behind every drought.
We have had the driest three month period, April through June, ever, or at least since they started compiling such things, and all the small plants and farmers’ fields and sickly trees are dying. The lawn is so crisp that spikes of grass hurt bare feet like pine bristles, and the soil in the garden is a fine rusty-red dust wherever it has not been watered regularly. Ponds have turned to scummy, stinking weed beds and geese and cranes and all the water creatures have crowded into smaller and smaller shallow mud puddles and algae-choked lakes. This is an agricultural area, and in the churches, prayers for rain are now said every week. It is the first thing most people talk about when they meet, and everyone has been moved to stoic resignation as weather, no matter what they say, is one thing that no one can fix, no matter what.
However, it is the best picnic and campfire weather ever. The sun is shining brightly all day long, and finding a mosquito is almost like searching for Sasquatch or the last passenger pigeon. While the days are hot, they are dry, and, as in the desert, the nights are cool. There is a crispness to the air that screams “summer” and if we had an ocean nearby it would be the season to live at the beach. Perfect cook-outs are taken for granted, and no one worries about a rain date. In fact, some of the more superstitious might even challenge the sky to darken by making a really important date just to make it rain, for the death of everything is worse than the lack of everything else. Still, no one would deny that the dryness has been convenient, at the very least; no one would deny that we are witnessing a most beautiful dying.
It will end. It always does, and we will live life again almost as if the drought hadn’t happened. The dying will stop as it always does in the grand scheme of nature, but it is not always so with us as individuals. Each of us will have our own dying someday, and the process is rarely a beautiful thing. It means incontinence and empty bank accounts and stressed-out caretaker children and overworked nursing staff and pain and discomfort and confusion. It amounts to everything that a severe drought is without the beautiful sky and the backyard barbeques. These deaths will not end in a deluge and a return of growth in this world. Still, the end is often beautiful, often so beautiful that a single human death can put the glory of the sun to shame.
The beauty of death is in the stillness. I have never been there at the moment, although I have seen that stillness just before death and just after. Everything else looks shallow next to it. No pretense or university degree or expensive car or important position can take away from this singularity. Life is not eclipsed by it, but rather set right. Nothing looks the same in its reflection. Normal perspective simply vanishes into vacuity before it as we are brought to the edge of where we so need to go but so desperately don’t want to.
These are times that one cannot forget, just as I cannot forget a documentary that pictured such an event in absolute, fearless honesty. It is called “Apparition Hill” made by Stella Mar Productions, and it is overall one of the greatest real-life films on spirituality ever made. Its primary focus is not on death, but on the phenomena of Medjugorje, which I have mentioned several times in this website. I have gone on pilgrimage there twice already, and hopefully will go another time soon. Briefly, Medjugorje is the site of Marion visions, similar to Fatima and Lourdes, except that the visitations to the visionaries – there are six in all – are still continuing. Situated in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a former part of Yugoslavia, it is far from cutting-edge First World civilization – yet millions go there annually. For many, including yours truly, it is a big deal.
The documentary features several people whose life situations are showcased before they are brought to Medjugorje by the filmmakers. There is a Protestant who believes that the veneration of Mary is idolatry, a drug and alcohol addict who hopes that the magic of the site will cure his addiction, an atheist who is just going along for the ride, and a woman in her forties with several underage children who is hoping for a cure for her rapidly advancing cancer, among others. We are treated to each’s experience during a week-plus stretch in and around the village. Some are affected profoundly and others not so much, but the most memorable is the experience and aftermath of the dying mother, and for reasons one might not expect.
At first, her illness was so advanced that it was not expected that she could survive the flight. Then, just a few weeks before the trip, she had a startling remission of symptoms, and the trip was on. Once in Medjugorje, set in a valley between extremely rocky and hilly terrain, she found herself able to climb Cross Mountain, an effort that takes experienced hikers at least 45 minutes, and attend all the masses and meetings and other hikes through and around the boulders and sharp rocks. This included a lesser but still strenuous climb up Apparition Hill, for which the documentary was named, this being the place where Our Lady of Peace, as Mary is called here (or simply Gospa to the locals) first appeared to several visionaries, all of whom were then children. We are surprised. We watch on in anticipation. Will we witness a miracle towards the end of the documentary? Will God grant her life to raise her many children to adulthood? Will God grant her life so that we might believe?
We expect this; we demand it. What good is a film like this without a miracle? Yet, in the follow-up after her return to the States we find that her cancer has returned with a vengeance. Not long after, we see the camera crew at her house, then in her house, and then in her room. She is dying and the family, little and big children and sorrowful husband, want the crew to be there. We might wonder why until the final minutes arrive. Then we understand. The family is subdued, nearly silenced in the shadow of death, but there is not wailing or gnashing of teeth. The family wants us to see that something has changed since the mother’s visit to Medjugorje. They want us to see that peace has descended upon both themselves and the mother. They have been brought to an understanding that God is with her, and with them, in death. They have come to learn that even in the hardness and horror of dying, there is a light, a glow, a grace that can descend upon those with faith. They have allowed this grace, or this grace has been allowed them, to fill their lives since the pilgrimage, where we believe the mother came to this understanding and brought it home.
Then we see her die in real time. Prayers are said, but these are nothing compared to the prayer that the family is living. Peace, belief; a crossing of the line between this world and the next; a touching of the divine with fleshly fingers. There is a magic here that brings one to tears, but not to despair. We realize that we are witnessing the real miracle, one that we can all become a part of. It is born from a trust in creation, and a love for that which is hidden but present in everything. This trust is an opening to everything after so many years of closed minds and arms and hearts. It is a witness to the triumph of faith.
The drought will end. The dust will be washed in life-giving rain and all will be green and life will once again flourish. So it always has been and will be. Who cannot see the metaphor that creation has set before us? Whose eyes could be so blind? Yet what is behind the metaphor of nature is so much more. It is the deep mystery we find in the reverent silence, the unity that exists in eternity, and the reality beyond the flux of seasons and life and death. Profound beyond thought and words, this “something” is what casts the thin shadow of nature that we so cling to. This, this something, is our inheritance, what we have been born to share and will share once our gaze has been turned beyond our noisy, tiny selves. It may take a pilgrimage to shake us free; it may take an illness, or the love of family or the grace of a saint or a strike of lightening, but it will always find us if we so desire. In tears and awe it will come, this rain that is hidden behind every drought.
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