Oct 29, 2010

Woody Wodraska

Saint John and Me in the Desert

What do I even know about the man, the prophet, the baptizer? I picture him gaunt, dressed in skins, a wild man haranguing the crowd and standing knee-deep in the Jordan. A man with a message, making a spectacle of himself. Tough, a standup guy. Then languishing in Herod’s prison cell and finally, his head on a platter at a feast. “I must decrease while he [Jesus] increases.”


Contact #1 On the way to the monastery on the Rio Chama I spent a night at a hot springs resort in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. After a low budget night in the yurt, while I was outside and looking around, a lady dressed in one of the fluffy white robes they rent there for the treks from lodging to hot pools, this lady looked at me oddly from a distance, then walked to close the gap between us, clearly bent on telling me something.

She said, “You look just like John the Baptist, the way I saw you then, just taking a step forward. One of your ancestors could have posed for Rodin’s sculpture of John the Baptist.” And that was that…she walked on. Good thing, because I had no response to this, though I can vaguely picture the bronze she’s thinking of.

Contact #2 A couple of days later I was in Taos, staying with an old friend while waiting to go to the monastery. She brought out a copy of a painting, unframed but somewhat protected by a mat mounting. I don’t know the name of the painting, but it’s by Leonardo or Michelangelo and it shows Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, with the two boys, chubby and a year or so apart—a toddler, John, and an infant, Jesus. I hadn’t seen this painting in many years and gladly accepted when my friend said: “We had this when we were together in the 80s, and to me it was always your picture, so why don’t you have it with you from now on?”


Another few days and I arrive at the monastery, up the Rio Chama to the head of the canyon, with the chapel backdropped by rimrock and two crosses at the top; you crane your neck to see them catching the evening light. For me this is a firm intention, put into effect years ago—to be here with the monks—now manifesting. I’m humbled and exalted to be here.



Contact #3 I enter the chapel for the first time. An octagonal central space with a plain altar in the middle and flanked on four sides by great paned windows thirty feet high and 20 broad. Guests are seated just inside the big double doors, a ranking of 16 cushioned, heavy wooden chairs. The view for the guests is of the soaring rimrock, differently shadowed and colored as the sun makes its way across the sky, from Matins at 7:00 AM to Vespers at 7:30 PM. To the right and left of the central area are the choirs, seating a more or less equal number of monks at each office, chanting alternate verses. Their chairs are much the same as ours, but with arms and spaced farther apart. Behind the monks on the right is a niche with a statue of Mary. In front of them on the wall is a graphic, iconic, more than life size crucifix…the blood streaming and the expression agonized. Straight ahead is the door through which the monks enter, typically in one’s and twos, and leave in procession; both going and coming they bow to the altar. At the right of the door is a smallish icon, maybe the size of a breadboard, too far away to make out the details. I discover later that this one is changed every day or two.
And to the front of the monks on the left, in a niche next to the carved lectern from which homilies are delivered, is John the Baptist. Nearly life sized, tormented with his message of repentance, striding forth with a thin staff in the form of a cross in his right hand and a book in his left hand, improbably topped by a lamb the size of a cat. There he is again.

Contact #4
We go to the main meal, that first day, and there he is again, on the wall between the refectory and the kitchen, behind the main monks’ head table—another iconic picture of John, large-sized. And before we sit down we sing three songs of praise and thanksgiving, one of them a grace, another to the monastic founder Benedict, and one to John, the forerunner, The Troparion of Saint John the Baptist:
The memory of the just
Is mentioned with praise.
As for you O Foreruner, the
Lord’s witness is enough.
Indeed, you were greater than the prophets,
Since you were found worthy
To baptize in the waters the One
They could only announce.
You have fought for the sake of truth;
And proclaimed to those in Hades
That god who appeared in the flesh
Has taken away the sins of the world,
And bestowed his great mercy upon us.

Contact #5 The smaller icon, by the Brothers’ entry door in the church. After Matins on my last day at the monastery I crossed the altar area to have a look at it. Another iconic painting, of Jesus standing, leaning on a light staff in the form of a cross and pierced by the staff in the manner of a proclamation unrolled, a parchment with those words again: “I must decrease while he increases.” And on the ground in the left bottom corner, the bloody head of John in a basket.


Copyright by Woody Wodraska

Biography
When Woody Wodraska is not contemplating the head of John the Baptist, his hands are in the soil of mother earth and his work is family and community deep bio-dynamic gardening. Woody is a co-founder of Aurora Farm Family Foundation. The Foundation supports the Aurora Farm Seed CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) which provides non genetically modified open pollinated bio-dynamically grown heritage seeds to gardeners. “Food Sovereignty Begins with Seeds.” Woody is the author of Deep Gardening: Soul Lessons from 17 Gardens published by Trafford.

Deep Gardening: Soul Lessons from 17 Gardens, Biodynamic Memories

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