I returned from a retreat at Grailville last evening after a drive from Loveland, Ohio to Detroit, Michigan and then Detroit to Springfield Heights. I drove with my colleague Rev. Karen McFarland to Detroit, and then my colleague Rev. Leonetta Bugliesi to her Springfield Heights home. It was a crazy combination of ride sharing, both to Grailville and than back home, which gave me a chance to spend good hours in building collegial relations coming and going.
Grailville is the leading center of The Grail in the United States. The Grail is a women's movement based in Christian spirituality that seeks to promote interreligious relationships, community and power. Started in the Netherlands in the 1920s, it is an international community of women.
I concluded my stay in Grailville with some private time before breakfast, walking the path beyond the barn-turned-chapel Oratory to the back pasture where the telephone pole installation "Poles" stands. Robert Wilson created "Poles" with the help of many volunteers in 1967, transforming the pasture into a performance space. Three arches--like a stage's proscenium--form a gateway to the open field. A collection of poles stands like the rows of seating in a theater facing a smaller portion of the open space, edged by the graves of members of the Grail and the Grailville community.
I read that "Poles" was restored in 2001; but since I began visiting Grailville in the fall of 2005, the monumental collection has again become overgrown with trees and vines. I am neither disheartened nor pleased by this development. I am, instead, led to wonder. I wonder what it looks like in the spring and summer, when the grass is coming back to life not coated with the heavy dew of autumn. I wonder what performances have happened on the site, and how the site is used in these days of a sober spirituality about sustainability. I wonder if anyone imagined what a star Robert Wilson became, and wonder how he came to know the Grailville community, and vice versa. And does he have a connection to them now?
For me, the quiet of the rock covered graves, the names of the sisters of the Grail and their companion brothers and sisters, the simple plantings and variously decorated gravestones . . . and the notion I feel that the Poles give witness to a performance that continues beyond their deaths . . . all these move me to find a moment, each year, to be alone with the Poles, to be alone with the weather (yesterday a cool drizzle) and to be lost in my monkey mind thoughts.
I am happy to be in the Heartland, to be among colleagues, to be on this human and Unitarian Universalist journey, and especially to be able to take a little time away from my routine.
