Because of the postcards

Posted on September 27, 2023 by doradueck

Friends, tomorrow I set out on another adventure: a tour in the Caucasus. Namely, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.

I was away for three weeks in July, road-tripping and retreating, and it felt big, and this seems almost too soon in its wake, but I’d booked this trip quite some time ago, and now it’s here. Tomorrow, Vancouver to Frankfurt to Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan). Two weeks with a small group of ten with Adventures Abroad, and then, since one of my sons and his family is spending the school term in Nice, France, I’ll stop to visit them for a week on my way home.

When I tell people I’m going to the Caucasus, the first question is often “Where’s that?” Between the Black and Caspian Seas, I say. The second question is often “Why?” It’s because of the postcards, I say.

My grandfather, Heinrich Harder, did his World War I service for the Russian Empire in the Caucasus. (The area was part of Russia then.) He was a medic tending the wounded on the trains that brought them from the front, where Russia was fighting the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), to hospitals in Baku and Tbilisi and so on. When he and my grandmother later immigrated to Canada, they brought along an album of some 80 postcards, most of them collected during his time in the Caucasus. This album ended up in my possession and one Christmas I spent my holiday time exploring the places on these cards via the internet. (The coloured ones are not colour photography but tinted from black and white photos.)

As I read his letters to my grandmother during the war, as I researched and contemplated the cards, the desire built to see — more than a hundred years later — some of the places where he spent several formative years of his life. It’s not really a follow-in-his-footsteps, because of course I’m on the schedule of an organized tour. But I will be there, in the cities of Baku, Tbilisi, Gyumri, Yerevan, all places he was too. And apart from that, I’ll be in a fascinating and complex part of the world.

So, tomorrow. Nothing further to do but go, and receive what there is, what will be. Nothing to do but be curious and open.

Accepting the chalice of our existence

Posted on September 16, 2023 by doradueck

Some time ago, a friend passed on a quote from the German Catholic priest Johann Baptist Metz (1928-2019), who stated that “Our self-acceptance is the basis of the Christian creed.” He described it as “accepting the chalice of our existence” and for some reason, this image struck me and has stuck with me.

I grew up in a low church environment, so chalice was not a familiar term or object, but there was the cup of the Eucharist and the cup Jesus spoke about when in Gethsemane he prayed, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will,” by which he meant his approaching death. The word chalice, with its roots in both drinking cup and cup of a flower, has a more evocative sound and larger scope for me than cup. When I think of the chalice of my existence it means the whole business of being me, not only whatever pain there’s been, but everything of past, present, and future. The tasks at hand, the particular aloneness of new widowhood, the particular losses and joys in aging, my relationships, my work.

Metz went on to say:

You shall lovingly accept the humanity entrusted to you! You shall be obedient to your destiny! You shall not continually try to escape it! You shall be true to yourself! You shall embrace yourself!

One afternoon during my writing retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey this summer, our small band of writers needed a break so we drove into nearby Humboldt to check out the thrift store. There was nothing I needed and the book section, except for dozens of Danielle Steele novels, was sparse. As I wandered around, waiting for the others, a chalice in white and blue (perhaps my favourite colour) caught my eye. It’s clearly mass-manufactured, certainly nothing uniquely handcrafted, but just the day before I had mentioned the “chalice of our existence” quote to one of my new friends, and here was a chalice, humble and ordinary, for the grand and entirely affordable price of $2. I knew it was for me!

Now it stands in my kitchen, reminding me in those moments when I’m tempted to dissatisfaction, of accepting all that belongs. And now and then, I drink something out of it too, either bracing or sweet.

Paths forward

Posted on July 29, 2023 by doradueck

My week at a writing retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey, Muenster, Saskatchewan ended yesterday, but I have to say, I wasn’t ready to leave. I had finished the writing that I came to do, so it wasn’t that I needed more time for that, but perhaps one more day — to read in the College library, listen to the bells, join in Abbey prayers, walk? But, in the words of the cliche, all good things must come to an end. And there’s always the road ahead.

Is there anything more enticing than a roadway between trees? Any kind of path, in fact, that pulls into distance, into the future?

And so I followed the highway to Saskatoon, away from the roadways and nearby rail line of the Abbey, and now I’m at my sister’s house, where the bed is decidedly more comfortable than the somewhat monkish one in the Scholastica building. Another sister lives in Warman, so I’m spending the weekend here, and so far it’s been lovely to catch up with both of them. There will be more of that catching up and seeing nieces and nephews and babies before I set out Monday for Calgary, where I’ll stay at my brother’s place, and then, D.V., my trusty steed, aka my red Escape (currently covered in prairie dust, though my brother-in-law has graciously offered to wash it this afternoon), will be turned westward and home.

Trusting that all will be well until then, let me thank you who came along via these posts. May whatever path you’re on open beautifully before you today!