Letters to the Ground: Ordination Preparation Group
by Damien Gilroy, Erica Maclennan, Nigel Lumsden and Robert Bower
This blog article will present the work done by the Ordination Preparation Group as suggested by Rev. Patrick Kennedy, Seminary Director, as part of their sermon writing class. The exercise started with a search for words to describe “ground”. Once that was completed, they were asked to write a letter to the Ground.
Ordination Preparation Group 2022
Rev. Jonah Evans, Nigel Lumsden, Erica Maclennan, Robert Bower, Rev. Patrick Kennedy,
not pictured Damien Gilroy.
Beloved Ground,
You are the sublime yet humble counter-balance to the infinite periphery and magnitude of the cosmos. You are the most precious life bearing blue and glistening jewel of all the worlds. You are beloved of gods, glorified and nurtured by divine spirits. Yet so little are we humans conscious and grateful for your majesty in all existence. It is time now to try to speak some words of recognition to you, O ground, of how you benefit our earthly lives and spiritual evolution.
I want to acknowledge the depth of your being and the timeless witness you have given to all who have made their life upon your surface. You have graciously upheld all the visions and dreams of those who have felt you as their home; you upheld them in the light filled, moist and airy realm, without judgement allowing them to freely shape and test their desires and indeed you provided all they needed, the bricks, stone, wood and mortar. You shared your treasures of gemstones and precious metals to bring majesty and awe. Your larder, the bounty of your harvests have nourished all with your fruits from time’s beginning.
I know that you reverently hold the relics of all who have passed; not only their mortal remains interred in your bosom but each deed of their existence is etched in your substance and never forgotten but catalogued in the strata of your basement. Indeed, past epochs, aeons and ages, civilisations, empires and kingdoms are lovingly unforgotten.
But you do not bear only the marks of the great and the mighty. O Ground, I believe that you also bear the imprint, fossil and memory of all within your realm; each fallen leaf, raindrop, snowflake, each changing breeze, breath of wind and wash of running water, each footprint, pathway, high road, each reverberation of thunder, trill of bird song, each hot, cold, each light, dark, life, death, uprising and spreading, ebb and flow of tide and wave - all are warmly and peacefully accrued, making and shaping you into the loving being who is forever for us the Ground for our living and becoming.
O sacred ground, at the turning point of time, after so long suffering the fall of your divine substance into the mire of dying and hardening death, you graciously bore the life giving tread of Christ, and humbly received His body and blood to restore your consecrated and spiritual nature.
Close to my heart, I know you bear the dear mortal remains of my father and my darling sister (they lie side by side) as well as so many of our brothers and sisters who over time have all returned as leaven for your being.
I want you to know that in spite of your gracious forbearance, the denial of human beings of your living body, divine soul and consecrated place in the cosmos is irreverent and sacrilegious. We are abusing you in selfish ignorance of your deep mysteries. We seek your forgiveness and pray that we will soon learn to revere your living body and honour your infinite wisdom.
On behalf of all who seek to know the loving depths of your being we give you thanks,
Damien Gilroy 28/2/22
March 1, 2022
Dear Ground,
I’ve been thinking about you these last couple of days and Patrick thought it would be
good to write to you. And it is a good idea, so here is a letter to you and it’s written with a part
of you as well — graphite and clay!
Graphite and clay — you accept that people take these kinds of things from you. We
dig, we excavate, we even blow you apart to look for things you hide beneath your surface.
Because light doesn’t penetrate you, we can’t see into you or through you. But when we open
you up we see what you hide within you: minerals, seeds and roots, insects and animals….
And Ground, you cover and hide things we put into you: treasure; trash; and bones. Ground,
do these things become a part of you? And what about me? I have bones hidden in me too,
am I a part of you? Are you a part of me?
When I stand, I stand on my foot bones, that are solid like you. Then my feet stand on
you, for you dear Ground, are firm and able to support me, me and EVERYTHING else! Trees,
roads, buildings, skyscrapers — all supported by you, you bear all!
And hey, remember the time I traveled deep inside you? Walking into a crack in your
surface, down a tunnel and into a hollowed out space within you? In that cave, even though
you didn’t touch me, I could feel weight pressed down from above, pressed in from the sides
— AND I still stood on you. On and in you, Ground.
Then there was the time I followed your surface as it rose up into the sky, higher and
higher. You showed yourself to me in many ways on that mountain — mud, broken boulder
fields, talus scree slopes. How is it Ground in all of these you are hard? Even though scree
shifted and moved when I traversed across, you were still hard.
I also think about you sandy and level beside the lake. I could see you under the water,
for a little anyway, and then you dropped out of sight. But you were there, holding the water,
giving its edges their shape, giving the water its form.
Dear Ground, thinking of you I realize you are in all of my life! It’s about time I wrote to
you, eh? Oh, and I forgot to mention you patient endurance…
I am so grateful,
Erica
Path from the Seminary to the Chapel,Toronto, March 2022 (Photo: M. Delannoy)
Dear Ground,
I am currently sitting on you, or at least three metres above you on the floor of my bedroom which is part of the house whose foundations you firmly support. Next to the house are tall trees whose roots you hide, but hold surely, even in strong winds so the trees do not topple, only sway in the wind. But you also allow the water to percolate down to their roots so they can drink and even give of your own substance so they can healthily grow.
You gently hold up the hooves of the animals as they walk and trot and gallop over your surface; their rumble spreading for miles for those who have ears to hear. And providing the soil in which plants can grow; fodder for the creatures who roam over you. And for those who can dig, you provide a warm shelter, safe from hungry mouths, in burrows and dens and warrens. Even the great bear seeks a haven in dark, cosy caves.
For human-beings, who are not so deferential to your sensibilities, you provide food as grain and fruits and animals. And from your substance, coal to burn, iron to make their machines and even gold to treasure.
For your sister, the river, you provide beds along which she can run, steps over which she can fall, holes in which she can disappear only emerging hours or weeks later, refreshed and enriched with your minerals. You hold her between your firm banks, but never so tight that she cannot meander her own way around rocks, through gorges she has carved herself and gently wandering across the open plains.
You play with your brother, the wind, allowing him to scoop up fine dust and dirt and sand, swirling it high into the air but always it comes back down to settle at a new place, becoming ground again. And in his stronger, more persistent moments, he slowly carves your rocks into dramatic sculptures, displaying for all to see, the shapes of the wind.
How you love to wallow in warmth and compete with cold! Naturally cold, which multiplies your firmness, you eagerly absorb the heat of the sun but never holding on to it you release it at night. But below ground, in the dark of the cave, you are always cool; winter, spring, summer or fall, your coolness persists and so does your darkness. But if light is brought into you, bountiful treasures are revealed: crystals of all colours, all shapes, stone icicles and stone pillars majestically standing for centuries unknown.
In some regions the ground is not cool. On the contrary, where fire finds its way to the surface, you loose your firmness, you loose your form. You emerge from yourself a liquid! But is that ground? But as the fire cools you return to your solid, hard, heavy self.
Heavy? Are you heavy ground? If I lift some soil or sand or stones on a shovel it is surely heavy, but is it ground? Not until it is returned to the ground it becomes ground again. When it is lifted up you are no longer ground. My body is ground, lifted up, so not ground, until it is one day returned to the ground.
For all you do, including lending a part of yourself to me, I thank you Ground.
Your other brother,
Nigel
Dear Ground,
You are beneath me. You resist me so that I can stand. When I was young, you gave me fields to play upon. In places you appear flat and at others you are sharp and jagged. You have allowed your firmness and defined form to be molded by human beings into roads for cars, into canals for ships. You hold water on the earth’s surface in basins, rivers, lakes, and oceans and in a vast underground network ready to be tapped for human use when needed. You selflessly store light, warmth, and energy; you compress plants into oil; all of this you willingly give away when you are coaxed in the right manner. You provide the
base for the plants whose roots penetrate you and even part of the substance of these plants themselves. Through this you feed us all. You contain minerals for healthy human development and precious metals and stones for use by humans in commerce and manufacturing — with different substances used for different purposes depending upon the properties of the materials themselves. And this brings up the diversity of elements that you contain. From silica which you allow to be doped with impurities (such as boron) leading to the creation of semi-conductors through which this letter was created, to copper which can be used to transmit humankind’s use of electricity, there appears to be a selflessness to your components’ lawfulness. You also furnish many kinds of animals with their homes and protect them from the elements — as well as feed them.But, what are you on other levels? What is about you that is not physical? Your steadiness; your patience; your slow moving; your forgiveness; your memory. Do you love? Are you moral? Can you lie? Have you a use for art and religion? You give us these capacities. And you give me a place to put my bed on and to sleep. Your laws give me a place to return to when I awake. And when I die, you take a part of me back into you. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Robert
Damien Gilroy has been a Waldorf Class teacher for over 30 years. For as many years he has been involved with the Christian Community in Australia. He and his wife, Meredith live in Willunga near Adelaide, South Australia.
Erica Maclennan was born in Montreal, Canada, and spent most of her life living in British Columbia where she raised two boys and had a career as a Waldorf Early Childhood Educator and Administrator. She is living and studying at the Seminary in Toronto as a part of the Ordination Preparation Group.
Born in England in 1956, Nigel Lumsden studied physics at university, worked in Camphill, Waldorf Schools, Waldorf Teacher Training in subjects ranging through physics, maths, religion, woodwork, metalwork, teaching practice and anthroposophy. His path to the priesthood began in 1985. He is happy to be an ordination candidate here in Toronto.
Robert Bower is from the Chicago area by way of Ghent, New York. He has been a biodynamic vegetable grower for over 25 years. He is currently in the Ordination Preparation Group at the Seminary in Toronto.
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