EASTER - SEEING ANEW

Easter Dawn

Is there anything so sublime as the hope one feels rising on Easter morning?  In childhood one immediately thinks of finding hidden baskets filled with chocolate eggs and bunnies.  The new clothes and hat one will wear to church.  The delicious meal one will share with family.
All beside the point really of Easter's meaning of hope and Resurrection brought though the suffering and blood of Our Lord. But we were too young for that reality, perhaps.  The connection with the cosmic event is made in myriad ways, young as one is, and on through our lives.   It's still mostly chocolate eggs, candy bunnies and jelly beans, marshmallow chicks, don't you find?  Does the Event break through all of this?  Ever?

John 20:1-18 brings us a view of a miraculous breakthrough:

John 20

Resurrection!

 ^1-2 Early in the morning on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone was moved away from the entrance. She ran at once to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, breathlessly panting, "They took the Master from the tomb. We don't know where they've put him."
 ^3-10Peter and the other disciple left immediately for the tomb. They ran, neck and neck. The other disciple got to the tomb first, outrunning Peter. Stooping to look in, he saw the pieces of linen cloth lying there, but he didn't go in. Simon Peter arrived after him, entered the tomb, observed the linen cloths lying there, and the kerchief used to cover his head not lying with the linen cloths but separate, neatly folded by itself. Then the other disciple, the one who had gotten there first, went into the tomb, took one look at the evidence, and believed. No one yet knew from the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. The disciples then went back home.
 ^11-13But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus' body had been laid. They said to her, "Woman, why do you weep?"
 ^13-14"They took my Master," she said, "and I don't know where they put him." After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn't recognize him.
 ¹⁵Jesus spoke to her, "Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?"
   She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, "Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him."
 ¹⁶Jesus said, "Mary."
   Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, "Rabboni!" meaning "Teacher!"
 ¹⁷Jesus said, "Don't cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.'"
 ¹⁸Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: "I saw the Master!" And she told them everything he said to her.
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Take the above verse by verse and it might just amaze you with a new seeing.  Paul wrote his letters in about 48 AD, Mark 65-66 AD, Luke 70-71 AD.  And here is John writing 90-95 AD, almost 100 years after his Lord made His sacrifice.  John's version differs from the other Gospel writers, though he knew of them as evidenced by some of the things he includes in his Gospel.  But John's scene at the empty tomb is so different from the other Gospels.  What is his purpose?  He takes us into a mystical realm.  There is Mary Magdalene, the one who had seven demons exorcized from her.  A woman alone at dawn in a quarry- a notoriously nasty place to begin with, to mourn as is the custom.  She 'bends over' to  look into the tomb through an opening usually 2' by 3' feet. This is not the picture we artists have depicted of a grand tomb, with a great stone covering the opening.  This is a niche hollowed out of limestone as would be in a quarry.  Mary Magdalene sees angels, one at the foot and one at the head of where Christ's body should have been in this small space.  The angels ask her, Woman why are you weeping?  In keeping with John's paralellism Jesus asks her the same question.  It's an important question and one we all must answer.
Mary is in a state of practical, ordinary reality, one might say- roughly analogous to our chocolate bunny and jellybean state perhaps?  Jesus calls her name, Mary!  And she sees.  Really sees!  She is close enough to God to touch Him, hold onto his body, embrace Him.  Jesus has to explain to Mary what has and is happening, to alert her to the great fact that will not only change her life but the life of the world.   She does what we are asked to do. Go tell!

John has bidden us all to see anew, to visit again the mystical realm where in grateful prayer Christ Jesus is truly met.

EASTER - VICTOR HUGO, A MAN'S BIRD'S EYE VIEW

Victor Hugo wrote Notre Dame de Paris (famously The Hunchback of Notre Dame in English) in 1831. Exiled to England by Napoleon and upon the deaths of his sons, Charles and Francois-Victor, he rejected religion.  He was quoted as saying, "Religions pass away, but God remains." 
Victor Marie Hugo had written one of the most poetic and mystical passages about the city of Paris on Easter morning.  I had never read anything like it. And so, as students in Paris in the 60s we hauled ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to experiece what Hugo wrote about.  He had it right; young kids not amazed by much of anything and so very wordly wise, we were astonished to be brought to our knees one Easter dawn!  May we all have ears to hear!

Hugo wrote:
And if you wish to receive of the ancient city an impression with which the modern one can no longer furnish you, must climb- on the morning of some grand festival, beneath the rising sun of Easter or of Pentecost-climb upon some elevated point , whence you command the entire capital: and be present at the wakening of the chimes.  Behold, at a signal given from heaven, for it is the sun which gives it, all those churches quiver simultaneously.  First come scattered strokes, running from one church to another, as when musicians give warning that they are about to begin.  The, all at once, behold!- for it seems at times, as though the ear also possess a sight of its own, - behold rising from each bell tower, something like  column of sound, a cloud of harmony. First, the vibration of each bell mounts straight upwards, pure and, so to speak, isolated from the others, into the splendid morning sky; the, little by little, as they swell they melt together, mingle, are lost in each other, and amalgamate in a magnificent concert. It is no longer anything but  a mass of sonorous vibration incessantly sent forth from the numerous belfries;  floats, undulates, bounds, whirls over the city, and prolongs far beyond the horizon the deafening circle of its oscillations.

Nevertheless, this sea of harmony is not a chaos; great and profound as it is, it has not lost its transparency; you behold the windings of each group of notes which escapes from the belfries. You can follow each group of notes which escapes the belfries.  You can follow the dialogue, by turns grave and shrill, of the treble and the bass; you can see the octaves leap from one tower to another; you catch them spring forth, winged, light, and whistling, from the silver bell, to fall, broken and limping from the bell of wood; you admire in their midst the rich gamut which incessantly ascend and re-ascends the seven bells of Saint-Eustache' you see light and rapid notes running across it, executing three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like flashes of lightning. Yonder is the Abbey of Saint-Martin, a shrill, crackedsinger; her the gruff and gloomy voice of the Bastille; at the other end, the great tower of the Louvre, with its bass. The royal chime of the palace scatters on all sides, and without relaxation, resplendent trills, upon which fall, at regular intervals, the heavy strokes form the belfry of Notre-Dame, which  makes them sparkle like the anvil under the hammer.  At intervals you behold the passage of sounds of all forms which come from the triple peal of Saint-Germaine des Pres. Then, again, from time to time, this mass of sublime noises opens and gives passage to the beats of the Ave Maria, which bursts forth and sparkles like an aigrette of stars. Below, in the very depths of the concert, you confusedly distinguish the interior chanting of the churches, which exhales through the vibrating pores of their vaulted roofs. Over all the murmur of half a million men, the eternal plaint of the river, the infinite breathings of the wind, the grave and distant quartette of the four forest arranged upon the hills, on the horizon, like immense stacks of organ pipes; extinguish , as in a half shade, all that is too hoarse and too shrill about the central chime, and say whether you know anything in the world more rich and joyful, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes;- than this furnace of music,- than these ten thousand brazen voices changing simultaneously in the flutes of stone, three hundred feet high,- than this city which is no longer anything but an orchestra, - than this symphony which produces the noise of a tempest.

Victor Marie Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris, Book Third, Chapter II Birds Eye View of Paris
I wish you such a blessed Easter tempest wherever you happen to be tomorrow!
Blessings, Ann

THE BELLS OF PARIS

THE BELLS

Bells have for ages been a part of church life and thus ordinary lives of people in most European cities.  They ring the Hours, celebration, mourning, call to worship.  They have been to me as friends speaking comfort and security during lonely nights away from home on foreign study. Their voices are identifiable.  Sing to me: there she is, Merry!; now,  Henriette!; and reach to my soul, Emmanuel!  The dark nights, you are my most faithful friends.

Good bells are forged 1 to 4 of tin and copper.  They must be very sound as they will ring life's high points for hundreds of years. 

A good bell, fairly struck, should give out three distinct notes - a " fundamental " note or " tonic "; the octave above, or " nominal "; and the octave below, or " hum-note." (It also gives out the " third " and " fifth " above the fundamental; but of these it is less necessary to take notice.) Very few bells, however, have any two of these notes, and hardly any all three, in unison - the " hum-notes " being generally a little sharper, and the " fundamentals " a little flatter, than their respective " nominals. The quality of a bell depends not only on the casting and the fineness and mixture of metals, but upon the due proportion of metal to the calibre of the bell. The larger the bell the lower the tone.

Some of the great bells of the world are to be heard in Paris. Emmanuel, a G bell, hangs in the much buttressed South Tower in Notre Dame. It is a bourdon bell weighing some 28,000 pounds. The clapper alone weighs 500 kilos.  Once the wheel is set in motion it takes minutes for the clapper to strike.  The tower is closed at times of ringing as a person could be made deaf from the sound. Its famous sister rung in fiction by Quasimodo, Grande Marie, was melted down during the French Revolution in 1791 and 1792.  She didn't go easily.  Likewise Jacqueline, Gabrielle, Guillaume: voices that measured the days were silenced. Emmanuel was spared.

The largest bell in Paris, and one of the three largest bells in the world, is La Savoyarde in Sacré Coeur.  It was so named as it was a gift of the citizens of Savoie.   It weighs 19 tons. A grown man could stand upright inside the bell. 

St Sulpice is home to five magnificent bells: Thérèse, Caroline, Louise, Marie and Henriette.  The praise these venerable ladies sing is sublime.

Tradionally, great bells are baptized: : "May this bell be + hallowed, O Lord, and + consecrated in the name of the + Father, and of the + Son and of the + Holy Ghost. In honour of St. ___. Peace be to thee." Finally, the thurible with incense (thymiama) and myrrh are placed under the bell so that the smoke arising may fill its cavity. Then another prayer is said of similar purport to the last, and the ceremony ends with the reading of the passage in the Gospel concerning Martha and Mary.  

The bells are named and sometimes inscribed by the foundry such as:

Laudo Deum verum plebem voco congrego clerum
Defunctos ploro, nimbum fugo, festa decoro.
(I praise the true God, I call the people, I assemble the clergy;
I bewail the dead, I dispense storm clouds, I do honour to feasts.)
Or otherwise:
Funera plango fulmina frango sabbata pango
Excito lentos dissipo ventos paco cruentos
(At obsequies I mourn, the thunderbolts I scatter, I ring in the sabbaths;
I hustle the sluggards, I drive away storms, I proclaim peace after bloodshed.)

There is a Roman Catholic Church just one street over from where I now live.  The electronic 'bell' system chimes the hours and plays the lovely wavering prayerful voice of hymns.  I say lovely when nothing goes wrong with the recording! There is hardly a real cast bell to be heard in the country.  I prize fond remembrance of the profound prayerful and faithful voices of the bells of Paris. 

THE UNITIVE LIFE - PALM SUNDAY

The Unitive Life

What is the unitive life anyway?  It's poetry, really:

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

                               Pied Beauty

    Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change:

                                                Práise hím.

Evelyn Underhill in her book, Mysticism , Oneworld, 2000 paper) describes the unitive life as a profound and abiding peace.  She writes, "We look at a small but ever-growing group of heroic figures, living at transcendent levels of reality which we, immersed in the poor life of illusion, cannot attain: breathing an atmosphere whose true quality we cannot even conceive." Well, maybe.  But we do know that there is something other out there, something that transcends ordinary  existence.  The mystic sees unity in all existence.

There is the sense that most of us live as split persons:  doing the laundry/feeling bright flashes of the wonder all around us.  Yet, the agnostic in us is at great peril. Wonder hits and runs without warning.  There are bright moments of joy.  Box one, box two.  Like Schrodinger's Cat: look and neither is where predicted. 

The true mystic, the one truly living the unitive life, describes that life as a marriage with the Source of all life.  The Holiest of the Holy for Jew and Christian alike expresses it from a woman's point of view in poetry:

⁶Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm,
for love is strong as death,
    jealousy is fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
   the very flame of the LORD.⁷Many waters cannot quench love,
   neither can floods drown it.
If a man offered for love
   all the wealth of his house,
   he would be utterly despised.

                          --Song of Solomon 8:6-7

Fifty-six verses of the Song are hers.  She speaks of longing and fear, ecstasy and disappointment, intimacy and loneliness.  She speaks to the heart.  Her poem is a kaleidoscope of images and colors, touch and emotion. Mixed subjects rush along: I, you, he, we. The Song dances along in pictures, stepping on the hem of the one before as a dream or fantasy recalled.

This love is "like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. (8:6) and yet the lovers are not consumed- they do not lose their being in the flame. This is what the fakers miss. The lovers become more self in loving.

Jacob Boehm, who described the union between  Word and the soul puts it like this: "I give  you an earthly similitude of this.  Behold a bright flaming piece of iron, which of itself is dark and black, and the fire so penetrateth and shineth through the iron, that it giveth light.  Now, the iron doth not cease to be; it is iron still: and the source (or property) of the fire retaineth its own propriety: it doth not take iron into it, but it penetrateth (and shineth) though the iron; and it is iron then as well as fire. (quoted in Underhill, 421)

Authority teaches that to live the unitive life one must die to live.  Reborn, the new self combines one's Martha practical servanthood with contemplative Mary.  Or He, riding on a donkey followed by her foal- people singing Hosannah!  And the Cross a week later.  A difficult path to see reality as a whole, a Cosmic unity.  Most do not arrive at the fully unitive life. It's not an easy path, and not for the half hearted.  We look though the mystic's magic mirror and see a garden at the beginning and a garden at the end.  That will have to suffice until our winter is over.

IN THE BEGINNING

IN THE BEGINNING

Every civilization has a creation myth.

One could look at Native American myths of creation:  notably Navaho, Lakota, Apache, Hopi and others. See: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/world/accounts.html

Or Dreamtime of the Australian Aboriginal Indians- where the Ancestors went about and sang the world into existence by naming into existence the idea of each being.

The great Nordic myth The Kalevala tells: "I have a good mind take into my head to start off singing..."

Or, In the beginning was the Word.  One French Bible translates this LOGOS as the Verb.

Kabala points out Adam named the creatures into existence. Creation by Word.

Tolkien's myth of creation is The Ainulindalë:

"There was Eru, the ONE, who in Arda is called Illúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for

a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of the mind of Illúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony.

And it came to pass that Illúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful that he had yet revealed; and they glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Illúvatar and were silent.

Then Illúvatar said to them: ‘Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in

adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.’

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Illúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in a harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Illúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. Never since have the Ainur made any music like to this music, though it has been said that a greater still shall be made before Illúvatar by the choirs of the Ainur and the Children of Illúvatar after the end of days. Then the themes of Illúvatar shall be played aright, and take Being in the moment of their utterance, for all shall then understand fully his intent in their part, and each shall know the comprehension of each, and Illúvatar shall give to their

thoughts the secret fire, being well pleased."

 And most likely the Celtic myth of Oran Mór would have been known by J. R. R. Tolkien:

" Quiet—

Eternal Quiet.

Not even the sound of the restless, stirring, dark waters could be heard.

  Then, a great spiraling strain of Melody moved across the endless waters.

  Subdued at first,

  then quickly gathering momentum until it reached a great crescendo.

  And, then, there was Life!

But the Melody did not stop.

  It continued its song,

  filling all of Creation with its divine harmony.

  And so it continues today,

  for all those who listen."

  The primordial myth of Creation tells of a mighty melody – the very breath of the primordial god – that sang Creation into existence. To the Celts it was known as the Oran Mór, "The Great Melody" which goes on and on.  And 'breath' as Spirit brings to mind the Genesis creation story, of course.

Read the Tolkien creation story to see how close it is to the Biblical account of creation.

I love to think that Creation began with a Word which was Song.  Creation sung into being.  Now, that is an Easter thought!

CHAOS!!

CHAOS!!

Everywhere you look, it's just chaos.  You hear this from people every day.  You hear yourself screaming, Chaos!

It's an ancient complaint: "The people cry over and over. Why was I born? What is my part in life?  Why have I been given the power of understanding? (2 Esdras 5:35; 4:22)

     We've an inexhaustible list of chaotic conditions: the government, war in Libya, genocide in Ivory Coast, earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, the economy, crime, poverty, can't find a pair of shoes I like, hate my haircut, church has it wrong, that pastor couldn't deliver a good sermon FedEx.
     Just an ordinary day it's chaos.  Run to the post office, you're cut off on East Allendale Avenue by a stupid moron talking on her cell.  The post office has lost grandma's quilt you thought you  had sent to California.  The drug store cashier is talking to her daughter about her crappy husband, and you've got to get the prescription and meet the guy coming to spray for ticks.  Those X%#& deer. That little girl in total meltdown because she can't have a pack of gum.  Smack her on the butt! More traffic. Where are these people going?!
   Then there is the weather, airport delays, stockmarket, snowflakes, disease, relationships, heart rhythm, brain activity, earth's surface.  Chaos everywhere you look.

 

     Have you watched Spielberg's movie starring Tom Cruise, he War of the Worlds?  Terrible movie, but that Aliens' view high over the land of cars swirling below on highways, and people in cities looking like ants crazily running around was almost worth watching that movie. What in the world is the meaning of it all?  God!  Chaos!

     If you are of the Shit-Happens mindset, scenes like that don't register.  Or if you are of the I-Do-This, and Then-I-Do-That category, more power to you. Enjoy life as it comes.  I'm serious; enjoy the moment! Ski, sked, bike, swim, drive fast, eat. Enjoy. It's a Facebook playground.  We all have to play and play hard at some point in life.
But once you enter the murky waters of meaning you're going deep, in over your head, to creep like a crab forward and back forward and back, claws held high, ready to fight. You will take that icy plunge sometime in your life if you are human.  And God! I say that having absolutely hated it when someone said similar to me when I was young.  But it's true: the 'Why' will bite down, hard, and chew.
     Job's outrage is ours, yours and mine:
"Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?  ... My groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me, what I dreaded has happened to me.  I have no peace, no quietness, but only turmoil."        (Job 3:23-26)

WHO AM I? WHAT AM I DOING HERE? WHERE AM I GOING?

     Life is a mystery.  We know that. Tsunami meaning upon meaning upon meaning.  Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?  There are all sorts of things out there with which one can attempt to gain understanding. Rosary, Tarot, Ouija.  Freemasonry maybe.  Wicca.  Whatever -ism.  Yoga.  The healthy choice! There are thousands and thousands of things to choose.  You won't lack for choice.
     I, for instance, have been very fond of philosophy for interesting answers. Augustine and Boethius assured us that God perceives all at once in a timeless act of knowing, there has always existed a Unity; we see only in part.  The Greeks said magnificent things about First Cause, the Monad. Socrates, Plato in Republic, Pythagoras.

     The scientists are working on our problem of the utter randomness of life which we take, wrongly it happens, as having no order and thus no meaning. Science is a 'safe' faith.  Don't you love scientists? They operate on the assumption that they can prove order and a unified theory out of the chaos; they have faith that they can figure it all out. Hawking predicts a marriage of Quantum theory and Chaos theory. Werner Heisenberg finds with his Uncertainty Theory that, Einstein's pronouncement notwithstanding, God may indeed play dice.  Polkinghorne posits that Chaos Theory demonstrates a subtle and supple physical reality.  Chaos. Benoit Mandlebrot used a formula:
 (z_n+1 = z_n² + c), and mapped it:

Turns out that coastlines aren't chaos at all , broccoli is not chaos, cotton prices aren't random chaos, nor is anything that we apprehend as 'reality' unordered random chaos. I LOVE this!!

     It's all in that dusty Bible on your shelf. Best not to be too smug about it.  We are yet in Lenten lands. In the Bible we find more layers of meaning that seem not to make sense. God who is feared is God who wept and raised Lazarus stinking from the dead.  We are Lazarus, walking out of our tombs, body wraps flapping in the breeze. Aren't we? Still crying,  What is going on here?!

2 Samuel 22:17
But me he caught—reached all the way from sky to sea; he pulled me out of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning. They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me. He stood me up on a wide-open field; I I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!
A new heaven and a new earth.  Revelation 21:1. That sounds like science, come to think of it.

     The Bible is best story ever told of humankind's search for meaning.  That story is the only story that holds a unified theory, the best answer for how the world works. The first sentences in the Gospel of John are a simply stunning summary of the answer to what we thought was chaotic, meaningless mess.
     I'm warning you the Bible is a landmine, a dangerous book, filled with dangerous ideas.  It is best studied in community mediated by the ageless experience of Churchmen and Churchwomen or run the risk of going completely off the rails.  This isn't a Catholic/Protestant body of savants I'm talking about.  I mean the whole experience of Logos from Genesis to Revelation  -  study mediated through church men and woman all who have a shared experience, who have walked the path to order, to unity, to God.  You'll go down a lot of dead ends if not for that. 
     Back to Job:  Job lost everything he thought was good in what looks like God's chaotic and meaningless plan. Worse, is that God has used Satan to carry out His plan. Satan, the very name of chaos. Job has learned firsthand that all is vanity.  Job cries, I hate my life!
    Strange thing: Like Lazarus, Job is raised. Job in all of his vulnerable humanness is met by God.  God says that Job's friends were wrong about their neat sin=punishment rules that have been used for centuries as explanation for why stuff happens.  Job finally understands that chaos is part of God's creation. That God will be what God will be. And in his acceptance, all is restored and then some.
     While we, the meaning challenged, are really shocked, if not furious that the story has such a slappy-happy ending.  This is not life. Is it?!  You can't be serious!

     So, we continue to try to make sense of life's mysteries. If we keep at it, sharing the journey with fellow sojourners, meanings bubble up and sometimes show us what's going on underneath.  And there is much going on underneath: turns out to our surprise that creativity arises out of the chaos. As Hopkins the poet said, life is Pied Beauty. Beauty. We live in the ambiguity, all the while reaching for the Light. It was planned from the Beginning.
---- 

More later on what the mystics term The Unitive Life.

MYSTERIES NORTH THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS

HUDSON RIVER - NORTH THROUGH THE HIGHLANDS

I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.

JOSEPH ADDISON, The Spectator, 1711h

Heading north. History closes in on us like the hills.  The names of places talk:  Cold Spring.  A lovely 19th century town with a Victorian bandstand, old buildings and gardens restored. 

Mt. Taurus (Bull Hill), Breakneck Mt., Storm King Mt., Sugarloaf Mt., Fishkill Bay, Mt. Beacon, Newburgh Bay- an 8 mile bay spanned by the Newburgh Beacon Bridge.

Soap Hill, Murderer's Creek, Wappinger's Creek.  The oldest settlement 1695.  History doesn't record dates of the Indian settlements that existed thousands of years before.  Poughkeepsie, Hogback Hill, Esopus Creek, Sturgeon Point.  The Atlantic Sturgion came up river to spawn.  It wears an armor of bony plates and can weigh up to   800 pounds, and measure 14 feet long. Sturgeon eggs, caviar, and smoked Sturgeon are of course much prized.  The mighty fish has almost disappeared from the river and it is now illegal to fish Atlantic Sturgeon.

     

What we call 'urban renewal' has mostly exorcised many of the Hudson River ghosts.  And it is a ghostly place, of strange rock formations, and shifting history and culture all through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

 From small fishing settlements, to Dutch invasion, Revolutionary war, Industrial Revolution.  Judith Richarson's book, Possessions: The History and Uses of Haunting in the Hudson Valley is a good book to read on the subject of the Hudson River ghosts.  She attributes the many ghost sightings to social and historical upheavel the Hudson River Valley has endured.

Everyone you meet who lives or works on the river has a ghost story. Realestate agents make the choice to tell or not.  It's a toss up how best to sell historic homes along the Hudson.  Creaky floor boards, slamming doors, lights flashing on and off, tales of something pressing down on beds at night, holes dug in yards, computers booting up unaided, televisions suddenly coming on. Don't underestimate the technical acumen of old ghosts.

Indians maidens cry and search for their husbands and children all along the river.  Young girls in white nightgowns moan and float through bedroom walls,  a Revolutionary soldier in a bloody uniform rides up and down along the river.  Anna Dorothea Swarts, a young servant girl who was dragged to death behind a horse ridden by her master William Salisbury. She and Polly Pell are unusual as they have names and known circumstances of death.  Polly, remember, was killed in a sleigh accident, her body washed ashore on Pollepel Island.  And it's a crowd out there with her.  Many ghosts walk the island.  Drunk and unruly sailors were put off ship there, to be picked up on the ship's return downriver.  Many of those ended up as ghosts, of course.

Spook Rock. Another named ghost is Dutch party-goer Van Dam. Drunk,  he tried to row across the river and didn't make it.

The ghostly Lincoln funeral train with its skeletal band and skeletal guard of both Union and Confederate soldiers floats through solid deisel freight trains down the tracks of both sides of the river.  They say the air is warmer upon its passing.

The Patch Road witch is still around since the 1960's.  One of the latest of a long line of the not yet departed.

Washington Irving ploughed this rich ghostly ground for his famous story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow featuring the headless horseman. Sleepy Hollow.  So named as the lore is that the Indians put a curse on the place which makes certain travelers there so sleepy they fall off horses, or boats, upon entering the region. 

A misty morning on the river, you'll see the ghosts too.

THE HUDSON RIVER HIGHLANDS

THE HUDSON RIVER HIGHLANDS

We are in the 38' Bayliner headed to Rondout Creek to dock for a few days.  We christened the new boat Renaissance.  Get it?  Rebirth.  Out of the ashes.  We almost named her Phoenix.  A professional artist painted her name on the transom.

Phoenix seemed too much a reminder of the burned out hulk of l'Entre Acte dragged up on shore.  We first saw the wreck in a driving rain squall.  Little Michael holding his red umbrella which the wind blows inside out; he's sobbing.  Why did this happen to US?! Truly the veil was thin to tatters in that moment.  My mind swirling.  What to tell a nine year old about the evil that invades the earth?  Bad people do bad things.  All is well, and all manner of thing will be well.  We speak the comfort we aren't sure of.

And so, this boat had to be Renaissance. 

That's my mother sitting in the cockpit as the boat is docked on Blue Dock in Haverstraw Marina, ready to cruise up the river.  It's the one time my parents condescended to come aboard for a cruise.  Mom was born on a farm in Pennsylvania.  She never learned how to swim.   Hated boats.  She died this year on January 17, a saint. God bless her!

This is the boat we always dreamed of.  Twin Hino diesels down in the hold behind my mother ready to run all day. Fully equipped head with tub, European shower, sink, linen closets and head.  Another half bath off the master stateroom, another stateroom with another queen size bed, full galley, stove, oven, microwave, fridge, two steps up to the Salon with an L shape banquette, dining table, lower Captain's station and captain's chair.  Icem  Aqua blue carpeting throughout, and an icemaker. On the bridge a full Captain's station, Captain's chair,  bench seating along each side lockers beneath.  We had a full enclosure made for the bridge. Radar added later mostly for ocean cruising.

So, off to Rondout Creek. Head north.

Some say that beyond West Point is the most beautiful stretch of river scenery in the United States.  We don't disagree.  One German friend who cruised here with us said it reminded her of the Rhine River valleys.  OK. But much less polluted here!

On both banks of the river Tors and hills steeply rise to almost diminish the river.  The scenery is breathtaking in any boating season- leaves just budding out, every shade of green in summer, autumn a spectacular artist's pallet.  The Hudson River School artists knew what they were doing when they came to paint these scenes.

But best stop gawking at the fabulous scenery and start paying attention to the channel markers.  Drift out and you'll find out the hard way how shoal this river can be.  We actually did run aground our first trip north in the 24.  I was trying to read the chart, which I didn't have a clue how to do yet.  We fetched up just before the Bear Mountain Bridge.  A quick reverse got us off.  Lucky first heads-up.  We heard stories of people waiting the 6 hours for the tide to lift them off.  Good, if you happen to be where there is tide. 

The Race is the stretch of river to the Bear Mountain Bridge. The Race has been named the Horse Race, and the Devil's Horse as the current here is the fastest on the river.  The river is only 3/8 mile wide, with depths up to 165 feet.  Watch those channel markers.

In the early 1900s ferry companies ran a passenger service to the Highlands.  And when the Bear Mountain Park opened thousands of New Yorkers took the ferries up to the park.  Getting there made for delays of four hours or more, or not getting across at all.  A story goes that Mrs. Vanderbuilt had had enough of that and had the Bear Mountain Bridge built in the 1920s.  The Bear Mountain Inn is lovely.  Worth building a bridge to get to, I'd say.

The area was the site of costly battles during the Revolutionary War as the British badly wanted control of the river.  There were two chains created and strung across the Hudson River in an effort to prevent the British from taking control of the Hudson thereby splitting the American colonies. The first chain, which weighed 35 tons and was 1650 yards long stretched between the base of Fort Montgomery and the rock at Anthony's Nose.

That chain failed to stop the British forces when they attacked Forts Montgomery and Clinton. That chain was dismantled by the British. The second chain was laid across the Hudson between Constitution Island and West Point. Each link was two feet long and weighed 180 pounds. This chain was never tested in its effectiveness against British ships. The focus of the war shifted to other battle grounds and they never again tried to bring their ships this far up the Hudson.

One of the promontories on which the Great Chain was fixed is called Anthony's Nose. That chain failed to stop the British forces when they attacked Forts Montgomery and Clinton. That chain was dismantled by the British. The second chain was laid across the Hudson between Constitution Island and West Point. Each link was two feet long and weighed 180 pounds. This chain was never tested in its effectiveness against British ships. The focus of the war shifted to other battle grounds and they never again tried to bring their ships this far up the Hudson.

The following is from Hunt's Letters About the Hudson and Its Vicinity: Before the revolution, a vessel was passing up the river, under the command of a Capt. Hogans, when immediately opposite the mountain, the mate looked rather quizzically at the mountain and then at the captain's nose. The captain, by the way, had an enormous nose, which was not infrequently the subject of good-natured remark; and he at once understood the mate's allusion. ’What,’ says the captain, ‘does that look like my nose? Call it then if you please Antony's Nose.’"

The story was repeated on shore, and the mountain  assumed the name and became a monument to  Capt. Antony Hogans and his nose.

 Now we're cruising from buoy to buoy.  No inventive boating here with the 38.  The river winds as it will. 

Rondout Lighthouse - Rondout Creek