On Visitation

Science fiction, film and story give us the visitation of aliens from outer space taking over the world. Astronomers and space researchers actually try to reach conscious life among the stars. Why this is anticipated with such joy has always mystified me. The visitation might be invasion as easily as apparition. Why assume alien life is benign? The visitation before us now comes from inside, as a virus. Surely it warns about our desecration of the world we have.

            May is Mary’s month. The church pictures this Visitation as “a mission of charity.” Mary visits Elizabeth to help her older cousin: age is revered. Yet both these women recognize their children engaged in a divine drama, a visitation of salvation to the earth.

Visitation might also mean a funereal rite. In some cases visits of a week or more can be required. Part of the mourning for a unique being. Before we are visited, we might ask how our parents would feel if they could see us now? Age is revered. In our visitation of this world, how did we leave it? Mended, or harmed? Some of both, I fear. Events flow ceaselessly. There is still time.

On Islands

Many now have an enforced sabbatical. Sabbath: the day on which it’s permissible to work in order to save lives. An island of peace, a continent of divinity, made for humanity, not humanity made for it. Islands afraid of limited resources, surrounded by seas of compassion.

Sagas produced solidarity in Iceland island, reporting the coming of Christianity to the North. Islands which no man is, in times of the plague. The word ‘quarantine’ meant 40 days: ships as islands, refused permission to land, originally in Venice in 1377 when infected ships were already freighted with disease. Also see ‘quarentyne’ (15^th century): the desert where Christ fasted for 40 days. Jung would say 40 is an archetypal number. Quarantine is an archetypal state.

Lent, Lenten, based on Germanic roots for ‘spring’ refers to 40 days of fast for all. Some now fast who formerly were fed of our charity: street people, homeless, refugees. Asylum seekers are on islands of risk where a false touch perils all. Infection stalks. Continents are islands, with moats. Every house an island, with quartermasters: quartarius, a fraction.

Bodies are islands, boarded by fright. Christ refused the kingdoms of this world. Lord have mercy on us all.