“Cædmon’s Hymn” is a very early Old English poem, from around 650 to 680 CE, so 7th century. Our only source for it and for Cædmon’s life is Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede describes Cædmon very much like the wealthy churchmen of Brother Lawrence’s day described the “uneducated” friar. Bede says Cædmon was an illiterate herdsman who lived at the Whitby monastery on the northeast shore of North Yorkshire. If that is true, we know for sure that he suffered very cold winters there, taking care of livestock.
The story of Cædmon has many versions. One says he couldn’t make music and so never played the harp or sang during gatherings. But one day he had a dream, and in it a man ordered him to “SING” something. Cædmon protested, saying he didn’t know how to sing, but the man in his dream insisted and Cædmon then sang about the Creator and in praise of God. The song he sang very much reminds me of my early childhood days of being in a church choir, and we sang “This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears, all nature sings and round me rings, the music of the spheres.” I wish it had included “Mother’s world” and “Parents’ world.”
Cædmon had miraculously received the gift of religious song and became (like Brother Lawrence) widely known to the monks as a faithful, singing, and inspiring “lay brother.” According to Bede, Cædmon also composed other religious stories and poems which demonstrated his gift to the monks. But the only surviving one today is “Cædmon’s Hymn.”
Because no tape recorders existed in the 7th century, I created a melody for it two decades ago (while swinging my children on the playground), and I’ve been singing it very often ever since. As meditation. It is calming and I love its theme of gratitude for nature. Every day I’m grateful for the miraculous gift of nature.
After I sing “Cædmon’s Hymn” in Old English, I sing it in my modern English translation.
Nu sculon herigean heofonrices Weard,
Meotodes meahte ond his modgeþanc,
weorc Wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs,
ece Drihten, or onstealde.
He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig Scyppend.
þa middangeard monncynnes Weard,
ece Drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, Frea ælmihtig.
Now let’s sing everyday Mystery,
Maker’s matter and kind mindfulness,
our Parent’s gift of Creation and their Presence.
Our Friend made each wonder’s beginning,
first they shaped skies as a roof
for all the earth’s children.
Then sacred Shaper, present Friend
made the middle-world,
the solid ground
for everyone.
For these gifts we thank the kind Beloved!
This was recorded during an atmospheric river. So you hear the sump pump go off for a few seconds and also at the end you slightly hear some rain pattering down.
My translation makes the language more inclusive while cleaving to the original spirit and the words’ etymological roots. You can see the literal translation below if you wish.
Literal Translation:
Now we should praise the heavenly kingdom’s guardian!
I sing everyday. It’s my name. Carmen means “song or poem.” Even on days of challenging ways, I sing. I’ve always been thankful to live under and with and through a name that means “song or poem.” It’s like my very name reminds me, “Did you sing today?”
Kindness. We could be kind more.
Every true religion has kindness as its core. Same for every true philosophy and wisdom tradition. One way I listen to the Mystery at the heart of the Heart is I sing. While my brain swirls and loops and careens, like winds in March, my song holds my heart against love and I deepen into tenderness, as I sing.
A friend shared with me the Medicine Buddha Chant. Some 1400 years young, it’s as old as Beowulf. And totally otherwise has nothing in common with Grendel’s poem. It’s a prayer for healing from the fakery of duality. It’s a prayer for the dissolving of negative thoughts. It’s a prayer for the healing of past traumas. It’s a prayer for bringing calm energy.
A friend shared it with me. He’s a Buddhist teacher. I sing it often. Through the marsh. Down sidewalks. Folding clothes. Sitting at the computer. And in bed at night, quietly.
I think of the billions of souls and bodies and selves who’ve sung it before me and who sing it now with me and I with them, together. You see it spelled many different ways when transliterated. Here is what I am singing:
“Teyata om bekanze bekanze maha bekanze radza samudgate soha.”
Here is my meditative translation of that, with my friend’s approval:
“It’s like this. Om, sacred tone of the universe, holy body, holy speech, holy mind. Medicine Buddha, King, Supreme Healer. Eliminate and remove the pain of illness of mind and body, eliminate and remove the pain and illness of spiritual suffering, and greatly eliminate and remove any slightest imprints left on my consciousness by disturbing thoughts, Ocean of goodness and wisdom, may my prayer go to the highest, widest, deepest, in sincere intention, blessing, I offer this prayer and let it go out.”
I also made a short translation and a melody for the original and the English version, and I sing both:
“Teyata om bekanze bekanze maha bekanze radza samudgate soha.”
“Sacred Song of the Universe, heal me, heal us | Deeply heal us where our mind-heart wanders from Love.”
I’m posting these, sung, on my YouTube Channel, if you want to listen, sing with silently, or sing along aloud: https://www.youtube.com/@CarmenAcevedoButcherPresence
Remember, you’re singing for yourself, not as a performance.
The way life really is, for yourself, not performance.
I translated Brother Lawrence. I entered some dusty and beautiful books from the 1600s, and they brought me the gold in my shadow and new friends. Something similar happened with Cloud.
Many of these new friends I kind of knew already. If you count having read all of Mirabai Starr’s books friendship. Isn’t it though, in a way? Do you do that, too? You find one book by someone that really resonates, so you find all they’ve written and devour it?
So here are a few kind friends whom I’m grateful for and whom I met through translation. Here they are in no particular order, each in a few lines, that like the tip of an iceberg just suggest rather than represent the richness they bring into my life and into the world’s. Some hyperlinked URLs are here for those who want to delve deeper into the richness these wise friends contribute to the global community. Today, we can be grateful for their helpful videos, too, that we can find on the internet.
Mirabai Starr, whose way of living teaches me more about beyond-binary life than even any of her amazing books, acclaimed translations, creative non-fiction works, Wild Mercy, and one on-the-way.
Mark Dannenfelser of Contemplative Outreach International, a wise storyteller who also introduced me to David A. Treleaven’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.
Rev. SeiFu Anil Singh-Molares of Spiritual Directors International, who brings new life to conversations surrounding translation, spiritual companionship, and trying to live a life of tranquility and kindness.
Jon M. Sweeney, who cultivates meaningful conversations in “Off the Page” at Spirituality & Practice, and in his many books–I’m joyful anticipating his and Mark Burrows’s next Meister Eckhart translation!
Lama Yeshe Rose, who shared with me about her adventures translating Tibetan scriptures, and I’ll never gladly be the same, for what I learned in two hours of our talking.
Aurelia Dávila Pratt, whose A Brown Girl’s Epiphany: Reclaim Your Intuition and Step into Your Power is a wise, powerful book, asking all of us to honor the sacred voice within us and be kind to others.
Renée Roden, a freelance reporter and writer, also member of St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago, whose deep listening and writing skills inspire me, and I hope for future books from her.
Josh Patterson and Greg Farrand who interviewed me for the podcast (Re)Thinking Faith and who gave me such grace of listening and who share their own journeys in ways that give me great hope and joy.
Annmarie Sanders, IHM, who interviewed me for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and shared such wisdom with me about what women religious are thinking and experiencing today.
Clifford Brooks III, who publishes The Blue Mountain Review, hosts the NPR podcast Dante’s Old South, and cultivates community through The Southern Collective Experience in the best, most lasting ways.
Cassidy Hall, Kevin Johnson, and Carl McColman, who through the Encountering Silence podcast, and in countless other ways teach us all what it looks like to really, really, really pay attention and listen.
Cynthia Bourgeault, a kind friend since Cloud days, is much cherished for how she creates newness from ancient wisdom and listens into the mysteries and brings us all back joy and new ways of seeing.
Shima Bagheri Ahranjani, is also my friend because of the Cloud. She emailed me a few years ago to say she loved the Cloud. Shima is a dear friend, she has a Ph.D. in Persian literature, and she has given me one of the greatest gifts I always yearned for–friendship with someone who knows Rumi in Farsi, inside and out.
And so many many more. Making me so grateful. Little wonder. From the last section of my Introduction to Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, we encounter the amazing friend Brother Lawrence, who has a way of cultivating friendships wherever he goes:
The best description I know of him is, unsurprisingly, by his good friend and mentee Joseph of Beaufort. It’s from the Profile:
The virtue of Brother Lawrence never made him harsh. His goodness made him gentle. He was a warm, welcoming person. He gave others confidence. When you met him, you felt you could tell him anything. You knew you’d found a friend. As for him, once he knew the person he was dealing with, he spoke freely and showed great kindness. He said simple things, but these were always to the point, and full of common sense and meaning. Once you got past his rough exterior, you discovered a unique wisdom, an openness of mind and a spaciousness beyond the reach of an ordinary lay brother. His depth of insight exceeded all expectation. . . . And you could consult him on anything.
On the pages that follow, you will meet this genuine soul who lives in these words. His authenticity flowed from his friendship with the Presence. His gentleness and warmth, great kindness and common sense, wisdom and openness of mind, which made him a wonderful friend, are the spiritual muscles that his practice of the presence prayer developed, over time.
Brother Lawrence is the reason this wise book has stayed alive through centuries of plague, famine, inequity, inhumanity, religious strife, wars, floods, and our ever-present human fragility. He extends friendship and wisdom to you.
Enjoy becoming friends, and spending time with him, returning now and again for conversation.
Friends have asked me to record these, so I am. You find them on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarmenAcevedoButcherPresence
You’re invited to subscribe there. I also work full-time teaching in College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley, so often there’s a few days’ wait for the recording. I’m mindful to make these pieces accessible to all, so they’re recorded and captioned.
I hope like me this Saturday morning 9/17/22, you have a day now and then in your life you can get up and not be diligent, productive, and conscientious. You can instead stay in pjs and dressing gown for some hours. Saying “nope” to getting dressed, going out. And just listen to your life. Hair askew. For me that means remembering my childhood joy when recording with a tape recorder and pretending I had a radio show. What brings you joy? I hope you can step back at times and just listen to the genuine in yourself, as Howard Thurman reminds us all.
This piece has a few French words and their definitions in English. When I read it, I omit the French words because I think it gets aurally confusing for listeners. If you want to know what’s happening word-wise in that way, though, simply visit carmenbutcher.com/blog.
Now to the piece itself. “Tumbling.” Subtitled: “Between and Among Life’s Everyday Realities.”
During the pandemic’s first summer and beyond, I translated Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence. My new translation of this spiritual classic offers the complete teachings of Brother Lawrence for the first time to a wide-ranging audience, and it has been praised for its accuracy and inclusive language. Why do you think being mindful of our language use in everyday life is considered by some an essential spiritual practice?
That’s a question I hope readers will ask with me. I ask it daily. For me, everyday use of language is an essential spiritual practice.
Words matter. Mary Oliver says of writing as craft: “As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood” (Winter Hours). Baked into some religious writing and translating, regardless of the original’s mystical beyond-binary perspective, a rigid binary of sinner-saint, bad-good, evil-virtuous, devil-angel, wrong-right, woman-man, and others can fabricate a hierarchical world where someone is up and someone is down, someone is in and someone is out, some of us are “us” and some of us are “them.” But as Lucille Clifton reminds all of us in her poem, “All of Us Are All of Us”: “oh all of us are / all of us and / this is a poem about / Love” (The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010).
Reflecting on the friar’s graceful, grounded use of words, we remember he had no chance for a formal education and lived over forty years with a disability causing him to limp and experience constant pain. His language in my translation grounds us in love awareness, as the original language does, and reading him mimics meditation, and is itself an act of meditation, as with the Cloud of Unknowing.
Reading the friar’s organic teaching in the original Early Modern French feels like drops of dew sparkling in the sunlight on the web of wisdom. It’s an awakening experience of reflecting on the friar’s graceful, grounded, loving use of words. Their histories or etymologies affirm his kind, beyond-binary wisdom. In his emphasis on and repetition of amour,for example, he brings to mind fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich. I call him the “friar of amour.” And also, sometimes, Nic, in my mind, from his first name, Nicolas Herman.
Brother Lawrence’s intentional use of two French verbs—manqué (“fallen short”) and “tomber” (“stumble”)—teaches how we cause harm to ourselves and others, and can heal from this in the liminal loving spaciousness created by practicing the presence prayer. In a conversation the friar tells Joseph: “When I know I’ve fallen short (manqué) or been distracted, I accept it, saying: That’s typical for me. It’s all I can do. If I have not disappointed or been inattentive, but instead have done well, I thank God for it, and confess that this grace comes from them.” His choice of manqué communicates grace as embodied.
Past translations use a binary term, “failed” for manqué (“fallen short”). In the 1600s manqué is “lacking, missing, inattentive” (“lame”). The accurate “fallen short” shows the friar’s understanding of grace. Also, knowing the word’s history is profoundly illuminating, because manqué is from the Latin mancus “maimed,” as Brother Lawrence was by war.
In Letter 2 the friar uses another verb of embodiment, tomber (“to tumble”), to describe his earliest difficulties with his monkey mind and the presence prayer: “During this period Ioften fell (je tombais-I fell), but I got back up immediately.” His nondualistic eye also shows when he repeats this verb in describing to Joseph his earliest difficulties at the monastery in Paris when he regularly spent the entire time set aside for mental prayer “rejecting thoughts and then tumbling back (retomber) into these same thoughts” (“Second Conversation”).
The friar’s nondualistic view of “sin” is also crucial to understanding his beyond-binary mindset-heartset-soulset-selfset. He doesn’t see sin as a permanent or underlying badness of self, nor as a persistent consequence of something some have named “original sin.” The friar’s internal compass is set on “original blessing” instead, on God’s kindness and goodness and on the kindness and goodness of each person and of all of creation. Just once he calls himself pécheur “sinner,” from Old French pécher. In that one rare time, we are also reminded that pécher is from Latin peccāre / peccō “I walk, fall, stumble” from *ped- “foot.” So even pécheur sees that he is writing of his stumbling, doing acts of harm/péchés, and then he writes of asking forgiveness of Love and of atoning, changing, to become one of “the wisest lovers of God.”
The friar’s somatic wakefulness also shows in his use of grounded verbs like “tenir” “hold” and “attention” (“stretch toward”) Love. These show he integrated the presence prayer with his job as cook—making soup, peeling potatoes—which was work he detested (had an aversion to), and with his job as sandal maker—repairing some 100 pairs of his brothers’ sandals: “I fill myself up/m’occupe only with always holding/tenir myself in that holy presence, where I hold myself/me tiens through a simple stretching toward/attention Love and through a general and loving/amoureuxlookingagain/regard at God.”
The friar’s vocabulary is kind also in using words like “friend” / ami for God and telling us to “work gently” / travailler doucement where the root of ami is “love” and the root of doucement is “sweet.”
The friar’s kind vocabulary also imagines the relationship between humans and divinity in beyond-binary terms like reduce/réduit, a being “lead back,” the act of “returning” to Love, as conversation/entretien, “a stretching between two or more people” with Love, as contentment/“a stretching together” in Love, as being distracted/“pulled away” from Love, as perfecting Love/“doing acts of love thoroughly,” as respecting God/“looking at again,” as being absent/“away from” Love, and as knowing Love’s presence/“being right in front of.”
When you get into the weeds of Brother Lawrence’s words, you see why, as his good friend Joseph of Beaufort said in his eulogy for his friend (Last Words): “The more hopeless things seemed to him, the more he hoped”:
From this living faith came [Brother Lawrence’s] certain hope in God’s kindness, his childlike trust in God’s providence, and his total and all-embracing self-surrender into God’s hands. He did not even worry what would become of him after his death, something we will see in more detail when we consider his attitude and the feelings he experienced during his last illness. During the greater part of his life, he was not content with basing his salvation passively on the power of God’s grace and the worth of Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, he forgot himself and all his own interests, and in the Prophet’s words, he threw himself headlong into the arms of infinite mercy. The more hopeless things seemed to him, the more he hoped. He was like a rock that when beaten by the waves of the sea becomes a stronger refuge in the middle of the storm.
