The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames. - Isaiah 9: 1-5
Last night, as I sat at the midnight-now-10-pm mass, my second mass of four over this feast, surrounded by poinsettia and wearing jewelry that makes me think of my family, Isaiah 9: 5 jolted me out of my tired, carol-soaked mindlessness just before I headed up to the ambo to sing a peppy psalm.
Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood... I wouldn't be the first person to comment on the domestication of the Scripture. I'm not an expert on the prophetic books, and like too many people who have studied Scripture I feel like that precludes me from being moved by passages I don't know inside and out. That verse was so rich that I couldn't help but be shocked - cloaks rolled in blood, boots stomping through warfare: where can the promised one meet us if we don't know such experiences?
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." - Luke 4: 18-19
If what we celebrate today - the coming of God into the world as a human like us - is tied up with this message of liberation, what does it have to offer us who have not been oppressed. It's trendy to say that we need to be spiritually liberated, or that we are oppressed by our own bad attitudes, but that reads a lot into the message that Isaiah is drenched in: that God is on the side of those who suffer and has come to suffer with them.
In a realistic assessment, my life has seen a share of suffering, but nothing like the suffering of those in Isaiah or Jesus' historical contexts. I wore pearls to mass last night and was well compensated for singing in a warm, neat church and being highly praised afterward. How can I hear the message of deliverance when I'm not quite convinced there is anything from which I need to be delivered? And if I don't practice the art of being reliant on God for salvation, how will I know to whom to turn when I know need?
Christ came in an unexpected form to raise up those who are lowly, to cast the mighty from their thrones, to set captives free. How do we welcome the unexpected when we live expected lives? I am blessed that the times I have known brokenness my heart has turned to faith and hope in my need. That inclination did not come through my own virtue but through grace. That I have never had a boot that tramped in battle or a cloak rolled in blood is also a sign of my blessedness, but it leaves me at times unable to hear the message - or perhaps just unable to hold it in my heart.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A Soul that Shouts
One occupational hazard for a church musician is that we rarely come across traditional hymns that are new to us: we’ve literally heard it all before. But just a few years ago I got the gift of a new Advent/Christmas hymn when I heard Gabriel’s Message for the first time. I like the tune (when it’s not done too slowly!), the refrain is catchy, and the poetry is above-average. When I got to church last weekend I was happy to find it on the song sheet.
Like many singers, I have the capacity - either enviable or regrettable - to sing on auto-pilot while thinking about any number of things (for instance, yesterday I discovered I could sing the entire Halleluiah Chorus from memory while deciding what to have for dinner). Last Sunday I found myself analyzing the text to Gabriel’s Message. “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head/to me be as it pleaseth God, she said.” At the word "meek" I groaned, thankfully silently, since I was singing into a microphone.
“Mary was that mother mild.” “A Virgin pure both meek and mild/In Bethlehem brought forth her Child” “gentle Mary laid her child”… There are plenty of problems with the idea that all women will feel an unqualified affiliation with Mary, who is often presented as the only role model Christian women are allowed to have. There are even more problems with the relentless stereotyping of Mary as docile and tame. Do we really believe a shrinking violet would have had the nerve to do what she did?
This week we are hearing the Gospel readings from Luke 1, starting with the Annunciation on Monday and concluding with the Canticle of Zechariah. Today’s Gospel is Mary’s Magnificat, an unapologetically bold declaration of praise. This is a saint I can get behind. So with all due respect to late Romantic Marian piety, I’m taking Mary back.
The idea of an ideal woman as meek and submissive may seem like an anachronism, but we’ve kept her alive in our religious iconography, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’m sick of it. Give me a role model who questions an angel, bravely says yes, deals with a life lived in the rumor mill, does some bossy maneuvering at a wedding to restock the bar, and proclaims God’s praise and promises. When my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord it doesn’t do so timidly - my soul shouts, and there’s a possibility that Mary’s did too.
Like many singers, I have the capacity - either enviable or regrettable - to sing on auto-pilot while thinking about any number of things (for instance, yesterday I discovered I could sing the entire Halleluiah Chorus from memory while deciding what to have for dinner). Last Sunday I found myself analyzing the text to Gabriel’s Message. “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head/to me be as it pleaseth God, she said.” At the word "meek" I groaned, thankfully silently, since I was singing into a microphone.
“Mary was that mother mild.” “A Virgin pure both meek and mild/In Bethlehem brought forth her Child” “gentle Mary laid her child”… There are plenty of problems with the idea that all women will feel an unqualified affiliation with Mary, who is often presented as the only role model Christian women are allowed to have. There are even more problems with the relentless stereotyping of Mary as docile and tame. Do we really believe a shrinking violet would have had the nerve to do what she did?
This week we are hearing the Gospel readings from Luke 1, starting with the Annunciation on Monday and concluding with the Canticle of Zechariah. Today’s Gospel is Mary’s Magnificat, an unapologetically bold declaration of praise. This is a saint I can get behind. So with all due respect to late Romantic Marian piety, I’m taking Mary back.
The idea of an ideal woman as meek and submissive may seem like an anachronism, but we’ve kept her alive in our religious iconography, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’m sick of it. Give me a role model who questions an angel, bravely says yes, deals with a life lived in the rumor mill, does some bossy maneuvering at a wedding to restock the bar, and proclaims God’s praise and promises. When my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord it doesn’t do so timidly - my soul shouts, and there’s a possibility that Mary’s did too.
Monday, December 20, 2010
My other church
I received an unexpected blessing a few weeks ago. It took the form of an email stating "the campus ministers have decided there will be no 9 pm mass on December 19". I conduct and worship with a collegiate musical ensemble every Sunday at an hour that to me seems impossibly late. I've written before about how they inspire me, and the assembly with whom we worship has become an important part of my spiritual life.
Still, for someone who works early Monday mornings, a standing Sunday night gig can be a drag. I was not-so-secretly happy to squeeze one more week out of winter break. Ever busy, I had two other church gigs in my neighborhood this weekend. After last night's 6 pm mass I dashed home, got changed, and drove to the apartment of two newlywed friends who are also hosting another couple at whose wedding I sang and who now live in Germany.
We briefly did the basic "catching up" small talk and then conversation plowed right into education: Jesuit schools, charter schools, diocesan schools, rigor, standards, you name it. As the part moved from the living room to the dinner table we talked about the homilies we'd heard at our parishes that weekend, about how parishes (and their liturgies) feed people (or don't). The Dream Act, Vatican II, the SSPX, a train station in Stuttgart - nothing was outside our purview. We agreed and disagreed, challenged, supported and edified each other. And I thought "here is my other church".
I hold the sacramental life of the Church in a place of highest honor. It is the Church's public prayer made up of particular actions that give us grace. But I can only be as positive as I am about the communal prayer of the Church - its liturgy - because I have experience of church that is intimate, local, and relational.
People often roll their eyes at my devotion, because "the Church" does this or that that they - and maybe even I - don't like. In my heart the Church is not just a series of pronouncements or dogma or the College of Cardinals. My Church has always been my people: my family, my parish, my school, my work, my diocese.
If you don't 'get' community, I don't see how you could 'get' Church, or liturgy. Two nights ago with another group of friends - not from my Catholic circles and not monolithically religious - a dear friend looked around at everyone hollering and laughing in one couples' basement and whispered to me "this is magical". Magical it was. A group of people who a few years prior were strangers are now like family. This is my other church.
I come across people who want to get the Church out of the modern world. Let us go back into the fortress, drape the nuns in black habits, cover the women's heads and put back the altar rail to guard the table from the faithful. Let's bring the Church back to a different era (one we have arbitrarily chosen as 'the most Catholic' - give us the 19th century with indoor plumbing). While we're at it, let's make sure we know who's in and who's out . There are "real" - pure, elect - members of the Body of Christ, and then there's everyone else.
The people on that side of the culture war shout the loudest because they know they have lost. The world has turned and they are still in the past. I don't want an anachronistic Church, frozen in time. I like my Church in the here and now, around all the tables of my life. I recognize the current of grace in which I swim because of real people and relationships. No old-fashioned fantasy can compete with the living, breathing sanctity of my community drawn together by the Spirit of love.
Still, for someone who works early Monday mornings, a standing Sunday night gig can be a drag. I was not-so-secretly happy to squeeze one more week out of winter break. Ever busy, I had two other church gigs in my neighborhood this weekend. After last night's 6 pm mass I dashed home, got changed, and drove to the apartment of two newlywed friends who are also hosting another couple at whose wedding I sang and who now live in Germany.
We briefly did the basic "catching up" small talk and then conversation plowed right into education: Jesuit schools, charter schools, diocesan schools, rigor, standards, you name it. As the part moved from the living room to the dinner table we talked about the homilies we'd heard at our parishes that weekend, about how parishes (and their liturgies) feed people (or don't). The Dream Act, Vatican II, the SSPX, a train station in Stuttgart - nothing was outside our purview. We agreed and disagreed, challenged, supported and edified each other. And I thought "here is my other church".
I hold the sacramental life of the Church in a place of highest honor. It is the Church's public prayer made up of particular actions that give us grace. But I can only be as positive as I am about the communal prayer of the Church - its liturgy - because I have experience of church that is intimate, local, and relational.
People often roll their eyes at my devotion, because "the Church" does this or that that they - and maybe even I - don't like. In my heart the Church is not just a series of pronouncements or dogma or the College of Cardinals. My Church has always been my people: my family, my parish, my school, my work, my diocese.
If you don't 'get' community, I don't see how you could 'get' Church, or liturgy. Two nights ago with another group of friends - not from my Catholic circles and not monolithically religious - a dear friend looked around at everyone hollering and laughing in one couples' basement and whispered to me "this is magical". Magical it was. A group of people who a few years prior were strangers are now like family. This is my other church.
I come across people who want to get the Church out of the modern world. Let us go back into the fortress, drape the nuns in black habits, cover the women's heads and put back the altar rail to guard the table from the faithful. Let's bring the Church back to a different era (one we have arbitrarily chosen as 'the most Catholic' - give us the 19th century with indoor plumbing). While we're at it, let's make sure we know who's in and who's out . There are "real" - pure, elect - members of the Body of Christ, and then there's everyone else.
The people on that side of the culture war shout the loudest because they know they have lost. The world has turned and they are still in the past. I don't want an anachronistic Church, frozen in time. I like my Church in the here and now, around all the tables of my life. I recognize the current of grace in which I swim because of real people and relationships. No old-fashioned fantasy can compete with the living, breathing sanctity of my community drawn together by the Spirit of love.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Socks for Christmas
The Christmas after my apartment was burgled, my brother seized the opportunity to replace some of the items that had been taken. He didn’t buy me a new camera, or a new rosary ring, but hit up his college bookstore for the one thing he knew I couldn’t live without: socks.
Driven by motivations beyond the scope of this post, the burglar(s) had stolen most on my socks, and when my brother presented a new set to me with a mischievous grin after my Christmas morning gigs, I was somewhat relieved. A few days later my Godmother gave me another really nice three-pack of socks, for the same reason. Since then, I have had enough socks.
I was putting on the Fordham socks my brother gave me just the other day, and I smiled because they made me think of him. That same morning I drank my morning coffee from a mug that I had purchased when in Italy with family, and that too had made me smile because of the memories it held. When I wear a hat from my godmother, write with a pen from my father, sleep under an afghan from my grandmother, I have what I need and I have the memory and companionship of those who have provided it for me.
To be sacramental, to find God in water, oil, bread and wine, is to also find God in a pen, a pair of socks, even the set of dental picks that my mother puts in my stocking every year even though I prefer regular floss. I have great appreciation for the purposelessly beautiful – a vase of flowers, my claddagh ring – but what really moves me is the beautifully purposeful. Items I use every day are full of memories, infused with a Love beyond their evident purpose.
By virtue of the Creation & still more of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Driven by motivations beyond the scope of this post, the burglar(s) had stolen most on my socks, and when my brother presented a new set to me with a mischievous grin after my Christmas morning gigs, I was somewhat relieved. A few days later my Godmother gave me another really nice three-pack of socks, for the same reason. Since then, I have had enough socks.
I was putting on the Fordham socks my brother gave me just the other day, and I smiled because they made me think of him. That same morning I drank my morning coffee from a mug that I had purchased when in Italy with family, and that too had made me smile because of the memories it held. When I wear a hat from my godmother, write with a pen from my father, sleep under an afghan from my grandmother, I have what I need and I have the memory and companionship of those who have provided it for me.
To be sacramental, to find God in water, oil, bread and wine, is to also find God in a pen, a pair of socks, even the set of dental picks that my mother puts in my stocking every year even though I prefer regular floss. I have great appreciation for the purposelessly beautiful – a vase of flowers, my claddagh ring – but what really moves me is the beautifully purposeful. Items I use every day are full of memories, infused with a Love beyond their evident purpose.
By virtue of the Creation & still more of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. –Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Celebrating Christmas
One of the habits I nag my choirs about is singing too much consonant and not enough vowel on any particular word. It’s especially noticeable on words with the “s” sound: one song includes the phrase “this time” repeated on eighth notes, and results in a sputtering hiss upon which even my most sophisticated singers cannot improve.
I faced this challenge from the other side of the conductor’s podium this past weekend, when I had to try to make art out of singing the word “Christmas” over and over. At a certain point I admitted defeat, all the while wondering why I had never before noticed that this word gave choirs so much trouble.
Then I remembered that I conduct liturgical choirs, and we don’t sing about Christmas.
Now, before you get all “war on Christmas”, hear me out. I don’t celebrate Christmas. I celebrate the Nativity of the Lord, the Incarnation, the awesome generosity of a God who became human just like me. I celebrate these realities in the context of a larger year of grace that over the course of a turn of the earth tells the whole wonderful story of our salvation and looks forward to the salvation to come. I try to celebrate these things every day, and the liturgical calendar has given me special days to celebrate them, just in case I forget any part of the story.
When people huff and puff about people forgetting “the meaning of Christmas”, I have to laugh. There are plenty of people who celebrate Christmas by celebrating the celebration. It’s not a commemoration but a celebration, and that’s just how they like it. They didn’t forget anything, and our reminding them is not going to change them any more than their ignoring the origins of the feast would change my observance of the feast.
I sing songs that worship Christmas instead of Christ because it’s gig, and I frankly can’t see much harm in it. I am in the midst of celebrating Advent right now while half of the country is celebrating Christmas. If I could magically force them to wait until December 25th, would that make their celebration the same as my commemoration? We’re not celebrating the same thing.
This post sounds more “us vs. them” than I want to be, because in truth the line between us and them runs through every human heart. But I wish the people who try to fight the war on Christmas would accept that it has already been lost. The holiday has been transformed, and we are left to keep our Christmas as it suits us. We can be aggravated that the word was appropriated, but that is a bell that can’t be unrung. There are two Christmases now.
With every year that goes by I become a little more complacent, but I still maintain my subversive core. At this time of year, it doesn’t yearn to remind everyone that Christmas is about Jesus, or harangue consumers. But it thrills a little to know that I am keeping my Advent and Christmas seasons in my heart and in my faith community, even if the media and the world is suggesting something different. We can keep the traditions and hope that people will join us.
God so loved the world… Nothing anyone can do or say or know or forget or struggle with or insist upon can negate that or improve upon it. All I can do is create small spaces of grace where God can come again. Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
I faced this challenge from the other side of the conductor’s podium this past weekend, when I had to try to make art out of singing the word “Christmas” over and over. At a certain point I admitted defeat, all the while wondering why I had never before noticed that this word gave choirs so much trouble.
Then I remembered that I conduct liturgical choirs, and we don’t sing about Christmas.
Now, before you get all “war on Christmas”, hear me out. I don’t celebrate Christmas. I celebrate the Nativity of the Lord, the Incarnation, the awesome generosity of a God who became human just like me. I celebrate these realities in the context of a larger year of grace that over the course of a turn of the earth tells the whole wonderful story of our salvation and looks forward to the salvation to come. I try to celebrate these things every day, and the liturgical calendar has given me special days to celebrate them, just in case I forget any part of the story.
When people huff and puff about people forgetting “the meaning of Christmas”, I have to laugh. There are plenty of people who celebrate Christmas by celebrating the celebration. It’s not a commemoration but a celebration, and that’s just how they like it. They didn’t forget anything, and our reminding them is not going to change them any more than their ignoring the origins of the feast would change my observance of the feast.
I sing songs that worship Christmas instead of Christ because it’s gig, and I frankly can’t see much harm in it. I am in the midst of celebrating Advent right now while half of the country is celebrating Christmas. If I could magically force them to wait until December 25th, would that make their celebration the same as my commemoration? We’re not celebrating the same thing.
This post sounds more “us vs. them” than I want to be, because in truth the line between us and them runs through every human heart. But I wish the people who try to fight the war on Christmas would accept that it has already been lost. The holiday has been transformed, and we are left to keep our Christmas as it suits us. We can be aggravated that the word was appropriated, but that is a bell that can’t be unrung. There are two Christmases now.
With every year that goes by I become a little more complacent, but I still maintain my subversive core. At this time of year, it doesn’t yearn to remind everyone that Christmas is about Jesus, or harangue consumers. But it thrills a little to know that I am keeping my Advent and Christmas seasons in my heart and in my faith community, even if the media and the world is suggesting something different. We can keep the traditions and hope that people will join us.
God so loved the world… Nothing anyone can do or say or know or forget or struggle with or insist upon can negate that or improve upon it. All I can do is create small spaces of grace where God can come again. Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.
Friday, December 10, 2010
My Lord, What a Morning
What are the chances that on the same morning one decides to sleep a few extra minutes and one's car is a ten minute walk from the house, one would discover dampness seeping through the ceiling tiles in one's apartment and gathering in puddles on the floor?
If the chances are unfavorable, then I beat the odds today with just such an unfortunate discovery. I had my coat on and my bag packed, and had to drop everything to frantically clean so that when someone came to look at the leak they wouldn't immediately assume the apartment had been ransacked. After a surprising phone call from a maintenance guy announcing "I'm outside of your building...can you let me in?" I dashed home from work just before lunch.
As we were going into the apartment he told me that the upstairs apartment had an overflowed sink which had caused the drip and the water damage. I was immediately embarrassed that I hadn't knocked harder on the upstairs neighbors door to ask about the leak in the morning. "I wish you had told me that on the phone, you could have saved yourself a trip", I apologized.
He looked up at the dry-but-stained ceiling tile, and then back at me with a look of astonishment. "Don't you want me to replace that?"
In all honesty, it would never have occurred to me to replace a perfectly good yet hideously ugly ceiling tile. I think my initial response was "geez, if I replaced everything in this apartment that was ugly I'd have my hands full". On my way back to work, after leaving with an agreement that he'd replace the tile (and some others that have been stained for years), I had to laugh at myself, even calling a family member from whom I inherited my tendency to stick it out with the not-ideal-yet-functional.
The desire to conserve resources is a trait that I am stuck with, as evidenced by the watch with a cracked face that I have been wearing for over a year. I could think of worse traits to have. In so many ways I am hung up on beauty - I love liturgy, poetry, music, architecture: all things that rise and fall on the aesthetic. Despite this, I don't make always make beauty a priority in my own life, or even make it available to myself. Is there part of me that takes pride in doing without?
The truth lies somewhere between the two poles. I don't need to live in luxury, but I don't need to live in squalor either. I still am trying to determine how I can be hospitable to myself, making my life more comfortable and beautiful. It may require money, resources, and time. It may require mental commitment to treat myself better (on some days, I think it may require therapy).
During Advent, we look forward to something we can't predict or understand with firm hope that it will be better than what we know. I think I get lazy sometimes, putting my own transformations on hold while I wait for that something better. I consider myself an imaginative person, but can't always imagine improvement. There's certain virtue in being content with what one has, but it needs to be balanced by a vision of something even more beautiful.
If the chances are unfavorable, then I beat the odds today with just such an unfortunate discovery. I had my coat on and my bag packed, and had to drop everything to frantically clean so that when someone came to look at the leak they wouldn't immediately assume the apartment had been ransacked. After a surprising phone call from a maintenance guy announcing "I'm outside of your building...can you let me in?" I dashed home from work just before lunch.
As we were going into the apartment he told me that the upstairs apartment had an overflowed sink which had caused the drip and the water damage. I was immediately embarrassed that I hadn't knocked harder on the upstairs neighbors door to ask about the leak in the morning. "I wish you had told me that on the phone, you could have saved yourself a trip", I apologized.
He looked up at the dry-but-stained ceiling tile, and then back at me with a look of astonishment. "Don't you want me to replace that?"
In all honesty, it would never have occurred to me to replace a perfectly good yet hideously ugly ceiling tile. I think my initial response was "geez, if I replaced everything in this apartment that was ugly I'd have my hands full". On my way back to work, after leaving with an agreement that he'd replace the tile (and some others that have been stained for years), I had to laugh at myself, even calling a family member from whom I inherited my tendency to stick it out with the not-ideal-yet-functional.
The desire to conserve resources is a trait that I am stuck with, as evidenced by the watch with a cracked face that I have been wearing for over a year. I could think of worse traits to have. In so many ways I am hung up on beauty - I love liturgy, poetry, music, architecture: all things that rise and fall on the aesthetic. Despite this, I don't make always make beauty a priority in my own life, or even make it available to myself. Is there part of me that takes pride in doing without?
The truth lies somewhere between the two poles. I don't need to live in luxury, but I don't need to live in squalor either. I still am trying to determine how I can be hospitable to myself, making my life more comfortable and beautiful. It may require money, resources, and time. It may require mental commitment to treat myself better (on some days, I think it may require therapy).
During Advent, we look forward to something we can't predict or understand with firm hope that it will be better than what we know. I think I get lazy sometimes, putting my own transformations on hold while I wait for that something better. I consider myself an imaginative person, but can't always imagine improvement. There's certain virtue in being content with what one has, but it needs to be balanced by a vision of something even more beautiful.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
At the end of the day
At the end of an off-the-charts exhausting day, one that began with a parking ticket, included mishaps galore and wall hangings crashing to the floor, questions I couldn’t answer and tasks I couldn’t accomplish, I was not far from home tonight when I spied in my rearview mirror the flashing of blue lights, signaling I should pull over.
It wasn’t just blue lights I saw. I saw my insurance going up, a bill to pay. I saw another 10 minute delay before I could fall into my apartment and take off my heels. I saw another way to be disappointed in myself, another reason to feel like I can’t keep it together.
I pulled over, rolled down the window, rested my head against the headrest, and waited. He came around the side of the car and I just looked at him. I couldn’t be clever or cute or cool. Maybe my day was written on my face; I’m not sure, but he kindly, humorously chastised me and sent me on my way.
Mercy. The rest of the way home that word rolled around in my head. I had simply been let off, not because of anything I had done or because I deserved it. Someone else had made a choice about how to treat me, and I, with my head leaned back wearily, had passively accepted that treatment.
I would have accepted anything at that point, but that magnanimity came as a shock. I was powerless. I was too broken down to try to muscle my way to a particular outcome. Someone else chose for me, and the choice they made was mercy.
The last few years have been one long meditation on mercy - how deeply I believe in it, how I can show it to others, how God can show it to others. Never have I considered how it could be shown to me. As I walked down the hill from my car to the apartment tonight, I prayed from my gut that someday I would be shown deeper mercy. I have done worse than traffic violations.
If I hadn’t been so weak, would I have been able to accept the gift? Would I have tried to control the situation and manipulated my way into a less gracious outcome? Is our weakness the only place we find the strength to let ourselves be swallowed up in forgiveness?
It wasn’t just blue lights I saw. I saw my insurance going up, a bill to pay. I saw another 10 minute delay before I could fall into my apartment and take off my heels. I saw another way to be disappointed in myself, another reason to feel like I can’t keep it together.
I pulled over, rolled down the window, rested my head against the headrest, and waited. He came around the side of the car and I just looked at him. I couldn’t be clever or cute or cool. Maybe my day was written on my face; I’m not sure, but he kindly, humorously chastised me and sent me on my way.
Mercy. The rest of the way home that word rolled around in my head. I had simply been let off, not because of anything I had done or because I deserved it. Someone else had made a choice about how to treat me, and I, with my head leaned back wearily, had passively accepted that treatment.
I would have accepted anything at that point, but that magnanimity came as a shock. I was powerless. I was too broken down to try to muscle my way to a particular outcome. Someone else chose for me, and the choice they made was mercy.
The last few years have been one long meditation on mercy - how deeply I believe in it, how I can show it to others, how God can show it to others. Never have I considered how it could be shown to me. As I walked down the hill from my car to the apartment tonight, I prayed from my gut that someday I would be shown deeper mercy. I have done worse than traffic violations.
If I hadn’t been so weak, would I have been able to accept the gift? Would I have tried to control the situation and manipulated my way into a less gracious outcome? Is our weakness the only place we find the strength to let ourselves be swallowed up in forgiveness?
Monday, December 6, 2010
A Blessed Unrest
There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it.I have learned that my books of music tear in a certain place when I throw them aggravatedly across the practice room with my left hand (and for whatever reason, it’s always my left hand). Today during a coaching I added another volume to my collection with torn covers as a result of a minor tantrum.
It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. - Martha Graham
Everything my coach asked me to do was met with discouraged resistance. “Find a higher resonance” I don’t know how. “Relax the breath” I’ve never been able to do that. “Use less pressure” I don’t know what that means. So after about fifteen minutes of hating the sound of my voice, I abandoned all pretense of maturity and threw my score across the room.
My patient coach was laughing at me, commenting that he had just finished congratulating me on winning an award, and I was still so down on myself that I could barely see straight. What could I say? The award, though an honor, hadn’t satisfied me, didn't mean I was singing as I should be. My last few practice sessions had been crap - I couldn’t sing in tune, couldn’t even out my vibrato, and sometimes couldn’t get through a phrase. What good does an award do me if I sound like garbage? I thought.
I know I don’t sound like garbage. Still, I always want to be better, which is probably not an uncommon desire among people who are already very good at something. Driving home from my coaching a delivery van from “Wacky Wings” rolled up next to me, and the driver gave a creepy stare. Rather than being unnerved I indulged one of my worst habits: Imagining life is easier for other people. “I bet he’s not hung up on evening out his coloratura”, I thought. More remarkable evidence of my emotional maturity.
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like to be satisfied. It’s not that I don’t feel accomplishment: I go to bed most evenings happy about and thankful for all that has happened that day. Yet every night at bedtime I have even higher hopes for tomorrow. What would it be like not to be constantly pushing to improve?
As a teenager I had that quote from Martha Graham hanging above my bed, even though I didn’t really understand the last paragraph. Suddenly tonight, I do. I will live my whole life knowing I can always be just a little bit better, and knowing that improvement is the duty one owes to a gift.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Remembering the Four Churchwomen
"The church's role is to accompany those who suffer the most, and to witness our hope in the resurrection." - Maura Clarke
On December 2 we remembered the four churchwomen killed on that date in El Salvador in 1980. Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan were raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran military during the terrible period of oppressive violence that lasted in that country for more than a decade.
One news report commemorating the event mentioned that the killings of these women opened the world’s eyes to the atrocities being committed in El Salvador. It’s important that we look at the context in which this awful event occurred, and that there is plenty of blame to go around. Conversations I've had this week about these women often turned to a number of topics- the School of the Americas, Oscar Romero, US involvement in Latin American conflicts (with a healthy dose of my guiltiest pleasure: Reagan-bashing).
At what point do our saints stop being people and become symbols? Can we remember these women as individuals in their own right and as part of a grander narrative? I think there’s a tendency in hagiography (particularly when it comes to women) to miss the trees for the forest. We miss the particularity of their holiness by focusing on What The World Learned From Them.
"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for--maybe even worth dying for." -Ita Ford
If these women were merely victims caught up in the world-wide turmoil of the late Cold War, if this were only about the lingering effects of European colonization of the Americas, or the American support of oppressive regimes, or a civil war in which few were acting morally, we wouldn’t admire them. Through the memories of those who knew them and through their writings, we find evidence of an integrity that both put them in harm’s way and gave their lives purpose. They knew who they were and what they were called to do, and they didn’t let the world around them muddy the waters.
Integrity is the quality we need from our modern saints. To stand firm among the swirl of our complex world, to remember one’s mission while being bombarded by competing values, to keep the spark of divine love alive in our hearts while being told that we should fill our hearts with only ourselves, that is to be holy. We may think that we have something new going on here, but wasn’t Jesus also caught up in a complex political and social environment, and put to death for refusing to deny who he was?
The four churchwomen followed Jesus by not denying who they were, even though the path they were on led to martyrdom. Their conviction is admirable (or foolish, depending on how you look at it), and shouldn’t be ignored when examining the bigger conflict in which they were caught up. It’s a horror that simply living an honest life of service can lead to a brutal death. We do a disservice to the women’s memories if we focus only on the salaciousness and drama of their death and fail to notice the simple holiness of their lives.
We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us. - Ita Ford
[I will never be a successful blogger if I don’t lose this habit of thinking things through before I post about them. What good does a post about the four churchwomen do two days after the anniversary of their killings? If I don’t cut out my processing time I may never be a successful blogger, but I just might turn into a writer. ]
On December 2 we remembered the four churchwomen killed on that date in El Salvador in 1980. Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan were raped and murdered by members of the Salvadoran military during the terrible period of oppressive violence that lasted in that country for more than a decade.
One news report commemorating the event mentioned that the killings of these women opened the world’s eyes to the atrocities being committed in El Salvador. It’s important that we look at the context in which this awful event occurred, and that there is plenty of blame to go around. Conversations I've had this week about these women often turned to a number of topics- the School of the Americas, Oscar Romero, US involvement in Latin American conflicts (with a healthy dose of my guiltiest pleasure: Reagan-bashing).
At what point do our saints stop being people and become symbols? Can we remember these women as individuals in their own right and as part of a grander narrative? I think there’s a tendency in hagiography (particularly when it comes to women) to miss the trees for the forest. We miss the particularity of their holiness by focusing on What The World Learned From Them.
"I hope you come to find that which gives life a deep meaning for you. Something worth living for--maybe even worth dying for." -Ita Ford
If these women were merely victims caught up in the world-wide turmoil of the late Cold War, if this were only about the lingering effects of European colonization of the Americas, or the American support of oppressive regimes, or a civil war in which few were acting morally, we wouldn’t admire them. Through the memories of those who knew them and through their writings, we find evidence of an integrity that both put them in harm’s way and gave their lives purpose. They knew who they were and what they were called to do, and they didn’t let the world around them muddy the waters.
Integrity is the quality we need from our modern saints. To stand firm among the swirl of our complex world, to remember one’s mission while being bombarded by competing values, to keep the spark of divine love alive in our hearts while being told that we should fill our hearts with only ourselves, that is to be holy. We may think that we have something new going on here, but wasn’t Jesus also caught up in a complex political and social environment, and put to death for refusing to deny who he was?
The four churchwomen followed Jesus by not denying who they were, even though the path they were on led to martyrdom. Their conviction is admirable (or foolish, depending on how you look at it), and shouldn’t be ignored when examining the bigger conflict in which they were caught up. It’s a horror that simply living an honest life of service can lead to a brutal death. We do a disservice to the women’s memories if we focus only on the salaciousness and drama of their death and fail to notice the simple holiness of their lives.
We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us. - Ita Ford
[I will never be a successful blogger if I don’t lose this habit of thinking things through before I post about them. What good does a post about the four churchwomen do two days after the anniversary of their killings? If I don’t cut out my processing time I may never be a successful blogger, but I just might turn into a writer. ]
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Fear of being fast
Against all odds I made it out for a run after work today, running at dusk the route I usually run at dawn. Eager to get home for the evening, I pushed a little harder than usual, zipping along the well-lit streets that I jog when the sun isn’t out. As I turned along the harbor I marveled at the deep navy blue sky and water, both the unreal color you see in paintings, not in real life. I was having a nice run, was feeling good, and started to really push myself. I don’t run to be fast, so that was an unusual thing for me. I’ve always been slow, and I have enough things in my life that I work hard at that it has never occurred to me to work hard at getting faster.
This evening, inspired by warmer temperatures than I expected and a strong desire to get home, I ran much faster than usual. For once I felt my recalcitrant little body shift from a canter to a gallop, and I was amazed. Yet as soon as I did that I became hyper-vigilant, watching each crack in the sidewalk, checking over my shoulder. My heart was racing, and not from exertion. I was afraid.
My reaction to my fear was not surprise - I’ve always been one to ease on the brakes while cycling downhill, not convinced I’d remember the exhilaration of speed while I was having my chin stitched up. As I thought more about it, though, I was mildly baffled. Longtime readers have been regaled with stories of the wages of my recklessness. What made today different from other days that I ran carelessly until I fell?
Caution can be thrown to the wind, not so with fear. There can be something deeply frightening about an accomplishment - we fear we’ll be punished for success, or we won’t know what to do with what we’ve learned. I remember one of the first times I really opened up my voice and let it out the big sound I had inside. I had two thoughts. 1. “Well, I guess I’m not a soubrette” and 2. “What the heck am I going to do with this voice?”
Doing something you didn’t think you could do changes the landscape of your life. The parameters you thought were there prove imaginary, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to set new ones. We lament that our boundaries limit us, but how many of us are secretly comforted by the security of those boundaries? For me, at least, freedom is terrifying. If I had fallen down today, it would have been another funny story about something I’m bad at. It would have fit the narrative of my life. I’m still willing myself to accept the uneasiness that results when things go well.
This evening, inspired by warmer temperatures than I expected and a strong desire to get home, I ran much faster than usual. For once I felt my recalcitrant little body shift from a canter to a gallop, and I was amazed. Yet as soon as I did that I became hyper-vigilant, watching each crack in the sidewalk, checking over my shoulder. My heart was racing, and not from exertion. I was afraid.
My reaction to my fear was not surprise - I’ve always been one to ease on the brakes while cycling downhill, not convinced I’d remember the exhilaration of speed while I was having my chin stitched up. As I thought more about it, though, I was mildly baffled. Longtime readers have been regaled with stories of the wages of my recklessness. What made today different from other days that I ran carelessly until I fell?
Caution can be thrown to the wind, not so with fear. There can be something deeply frightening about an accomplishment - we fear we’ll be punished for success, or we won’t know what to do with what we’ve learned. I remember one of the first times I really opened up my voice and let it out the big sound I had inside. I had two thoughts. 1. “Well, I guess I’m not a soubrette” and 2. “What the heck am I going to do with this voice?”
Doing something you didn’t think you could do changes the landscape of your life. The parameters you thought were there prove imaginary, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to set new ones. We lament that our boundaries limit us, but how many of us are secretly comforted by the security of those boundaries? For me, at least, freedom is terrifying. If I had fallen down today, it would have been another funny story about something I’m bad at. It would have fit the narrative of my life. I’m still willing myself to accept the uneasiness that results when things go well.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Try, try again
My immediate family has never had a birthday present ritual. If someone sees something they like want to give someone, they buy it, and maybe give it to them on their birthday, or maybe give it to them whenever, or maybe they just buy the person a burrito the next time they see them. Because my birthday is always around Thanksgiving, I usually see my parents in the week before my birthday, and we take that as an excuse to eat cake. On my 25th birthday my mother brought out an Entertainment Book, dropped it on the kitchen table with a clatter and announced "Happy Birthday...your brother had to sell these for school".
Still, two nights ago my mother slipped into another room after dinner and returned with a familiar looking box from a local jewelry store. She handed it to me and laughed "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." When I opened it I wasn't surprised to find a gold chain with a single, small pearl.
When my apartment was broken into a few years ago all that was taken was jewelry, because that was all that I had. There were only one or two things that I truly lamented losing, and one was the little Add-a-pearl necklace I'd had since I was a girl. Most of my cousins also have them, and as birthdays and holidays passed we'd get another pearl here and there and have them added to our necklaces. Mine only had thirteen or so pearls on it (or maybe seventeen? For whatever reason I'm certain it was a prime number), and since I'd reached adulthood and passed the age of getting little gold boxes on my birthday, it seemed destined to stay at that number of pearls.
It wasn't until I realized that it was gone that I started to cry. My grandmother had been dead two decades, and I knew that the loss of this sign of her love didn't mean she loved me any less. The other wonderful women in my family, my aunts and my mother, were all still in my life - in fact, no one in my mother's large family had died since my grandmother's passing twenty years prior. Still, I was raised among sacramental people, treasuring signs and objects, and the loss of that particular object was devastating.
Not only was I raised to be sacramental, I was raised on Roman time, so it's no surprise that it took 2+ years to replace the necklace. I couldn't help but think of my mother's admonition to 'try, try again' as I heard the readings for the First Sunday of Advent (and not just because they mention a house being broken into).
Most of us are probably familiar with that quote attributed to Mother Teresa to the effect of "some jerk on the beach might knock down your sand castle - build one anyway". I worry that people are tempted to take the suggestion that "we know not the day or the hour" as an excuse to do nothing, because who knows when Christ will return and transform it all?
It's true, we don't know what's coming. I try to believe in the liberation of uncertainty. If I really don't know what's coming - when the Lord will return to us, when the bottom will fall out, when my stuff will be stolen - I am free to just build. For all we know someone could yank my necklace off my neck tomorrow - that didn't stop my mother from giving me a tangible sign of her love and our memories. My apartment could burn down tomorrow - that didn't stop me from cleaning up this afternoon. The people I love, everything I love, could be taken from me in a heartbeat - that does not stop me from loving with my whole heart every minute of the day.
We can't predict when destruction and sorrow will come for us, but we can't predict when redemption will knock on our door either. So we 'try, try again', building and rebuilding. When the unexpected comes all I can hope is that I am caught doing that which creates the world as it should be. Until we can enjoy the world as it should be, we keep trying, doing our part to increase beauty and love, clothing ourselves in the armor of light.
Still, two nights ago my mother slipped into another room after dinner and returned with a familiar looking box from a local jewelry store. She handed it to me and laughed "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." When I opened it I wasn't surprised to find a gold chain with a single, small pearl.
When my apartment was broken into a few years ago all that was taken was jewelry, because that was all that I had. There were only one or two things that I truly lamented losing, and one was the little Add-a-pearl necklace I'd had since I was a girl. Most of my cousins also have them, and as birthdays and holidays passed we'd get another pearl here and there and have them added to our necklaces. Mine only had thirteen or so pearls on it (or maybe seventeen? For whatever reason I'm certain it was a prime number), and since I'd reached adulthood and passed the age of getting little gold boxes on my birthday, it seemed destined to stay at that number of pearls.
It wasn't until I realized that it was gone that I started to cry. My grandmother had been dead two decades, and I knew that the loss of this sign of her love didn't mean she loved me any less. The other wonderful women in my family, my aunts and my mother, were all still in my life - in fact, no one in my mother's large family had died since my grandmother's passing twenty years prior. Still, I was raised among sacramental people, treasuring signs and objects, and the loss of that particular object was devastating.
Not only was I raised to be sacramental, I was raised on Roman time, so it's no surprise that it took 2+ years to replace the necklace. I couldn't help but think of my mother's admonition to 'try, try again' as I heard the readings for the First Sunday of Advent (and not just because they mention a house being broken into).
Most of us are probably familiar with that quote attributed to Mother Teresa to the effect of "some jerk on the beach might knock down your sand castle - build one anyway". I worry that people are tempted to take the suggestion that "we know not the day or the hour" as an excuse to do nothing, because who knows when Christ will return and transform it all?
It's true, we don't know what's coming. I try to believe in the liberation of uncertainty. If I really don't know what's coming - when the Lord will return to us, when the bottom will fall out, when my stuff will be stolen - I am free to just build. For all we know someone could yank my necklace off my neck tomorrow - that didn't stop my mother from giving me a tangible sign of her love and our memories. My apartment could burn down tomorrow - that didn't stop me from cleaning up this afternoon. The people I love, everything I love, could be taken from me in a heartbeat - that does not stop me from loving with my whole heart every minute of the day.
We can't predict when destruction and sorrow will come for us, but we can't predict when redemption will knock on our door either. So we 'try, try again', building and rebuilding. When the unexpected comes all I can hope is that I am caught doing that which creates the world as it should be. Until we can enjoy the world as it should be, we keep trying, doing our part to increase beauty and love, clothing ourselves in the armor of light.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
The Power and the Glory
There is a type of Christian spirituality that is heavily focused on the strength and majesty of the second person of the Trinity. It has spawned movies and music and mega churches, and on occasion results in an unfortunate idea that the followers of Christ are as exalted as Christ himself.
Even when this spirituality doesn’t lead to that rare but icky Christian triumphalism, I still don’t get it. It’s not that I don’t believe that Our God Reigns, Is An Awesome God, Praise Him etc, but that it just doesn’t do anything for me spiritually. So I was excited tonight that cycle C gave us the Lukan Gospel for Christ the King.
For whatever reason, I’m more comfortable with a God who deals in ambiguity, who came to glory by way of the cross. We worship a God who turns our expectations upsidedown, whose coming into the world not only saves us but confounds us. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those obnoxiously “complicated” people that I take comfort in the complicated story of Jesus and paradoxical existence of Christ. Our Awesome God wasn’t a Superman Jesus wearing the disguise of one who suffers until the time came for him to change into the King. He was always the King, ruling through service and reigning through love. We await his return when he will teach us the truth about power and glory.
Even when this spirituality doesn’t lead to that rare but icky Christian triumphalism, I still don’t get it. It’s not that I don’t believe that Our God Reigns, Is An Awesome God, Praise Him etc, but that it just doesn’t do anything for me spiritually. So I was excited tonight that cycle C gave us the Lukan Gospel for Christ the King.
For whatever reason, I’m more comfortable with a God who deals in ambiguity, who came to glory by way of the cross. We worship a God who turns our expectations upsidedown, whose coming into the world not only saves us but confounds us. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those obnoxiously “complicated” people that I take comfort in the complicated story of Jesus and paradoxical existence of Christ. Our Awesome God wasn’t a Superman Jesus wearing the disguise of one who suffers until the time came for him to change into the King. He was always the King, ruling through service and reigning through love. We await his return when he will teach us the truth about power and glory.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Stage moms
I really need new headshots.
I keep putting off getting new ones until the magic day when my hair is trimmed, I've gotten enough sleep, my skin has stopped being weird, and I have the right outfit to wear.
On the train into NYC today, across from me were two girls. They boarded somewhere on the shoreline with their mothers, and took out binders that had their headshots slid into the clear pockets on the outside. My first emotional reaction was the familiar self-disgust I feel when someone who should have fewer survival resources than I do accomplishes a simple task that I have yet to master (yes, I feel that way a lot. A LOT.) They were teenagers, though, and were being pretty cute about agonizing about their 16-bar cuts, so I smiled to myself while I tried not to eavesdrop too obviously.
The mother of one of them was little more vocal and a little more vulgar, and she proceeded to harangue her daughter for her choice of 16-bars, criticize everyone the four women knew, and conclude by saying "your hair looks like sh*t" to her daughter as they exited the train. Charming.
I'm pretty sure my mom never told me my hair looked like sh*t. In fact, I'm pretty sure my mom never gave a sh*t what my hair looked like. I had the opposite of a stage mom. She and the rest of my family were always my biggest fans and continue to be, but they never bought into the myth that any sort of recognition or even success really matter. They made sure I knew how to tell a joke, do a crossword, push in my chair, enjoy a book. They never got me headshots.
In some ways, I paid for it. Whenever I was trying to really pass in music circles during high school or college there was a lot I didn't know. I missed out on some training I can't make up for (for instance, I'm sure both of the tweens across from me on the train are better dancers than I will ever be).
Still, I'll take it. Being perfect, being a star, is overrated. There are things I've lost and things I've gained because I didn't have an artsy upbringing. But what I have is better than what I can imagine.
I keep putting off getting new ones until the magic day when my hair is trimmed, I've gotten enough sleep, my skin has stopped being weird, and I have the right outfit to wear.
On the train into NYC today, across from me were two girls. They boarded somewhere on the shoreline with their mothers, and took out binders that had their headshots slid into the clear pockets on the outside. My first emotional reaction was the familiar self-disgust I feel when someone who should have fewer survival resources than I do accomplishes a simple task that I have yet to master (yes, I feel that way a lot. A LOT.) They were teenagers, though, and were being pretty cute about agonizing about their 16-bar cuts, so I smiled to myself while I tried not to eavesdrop too obviously.
The mother of one of them was little more vocal and a little more vulgar, and she proceeded to harangue her daughter for her choice of 16-bars, criticize everyone the four women knew, and conclude by saying "your hair looks like sh*t" to her daughter as they exited the train. Charming.
I'm pretty sure my mom never told me my hair looked like sh*t. In fact, I'm pretty sure my mom never gave a sh*t what my hair looked like. I had the opposite of a stage mom. She and the rest of my family were always my biggest fans and continue to be, but they never bought into the myth that any sort of recognition or even success really matter. They made sure I knew how to tell a joke, do a crossword, push in my chair, enjoy a book. They never got me headshots.
In some ways, I paid for it. Whenever I was trying to really pass in music circles during high school or college there was a lot I didn't know. I missed out on some training I can't make up for (for instance, I'm sure both of the tweens across from me on the train are better dancers than I will ever be).
Still, I'll take it. Being perfect, being a star, is overrated. There are things I've lost and things I've gained because I didn't have an artsy upbringing. But what I have is better than what I can imagine.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Light through the leaves
Not long ago, over the phone my mother lamented with a laugh that the tree that split in a recent batch of storms had changed the way the light shines on her face through the window at sunrise. Half the leaves that once rose tall now touch the grass, and she knows that they'll never get around to cutting the tree down.
Where I sleep it's never really dark and I'm always hearing something, so the morning is never a surprise. There's always a part of me awake. Where she is, the morning light is red through leaves that burst against the sky's pure blue, and the yellow of the trees on the way into town matches the stripe down the center of the road.
When she told me all this I knew that the next time I was home she'd suggest I lie down on her spot on the bed to observe the red shadows of the tree at dawn.
Where I sleep it's never really dark and I'm always hearing something, so the morning is never a surprise. There's always a part of me awake. Where she is, the morning light is red through leaves that burst against the sky's pure blue, and the yellow of the trees on the way into town matches the stripe down the center of the road.
When she told me all this I knew that the next time I was home she'd suggest I lie down on her spot on the bed to observe the red shadows of the tree at dawn.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Retroactive indignance
A dear friend who works in politics once admitted he occasionally tells people he is a social security actuary in order to avoid the ridiculous political comments people make when he reveals his true line of work. I have considered doing the same thing at times, because when I tell people I teach Church History - or even that I am committed to the Church - I get negative responses ranging from disbelief to horror, from an implied “But you seemed so normal!” to a sputtering “But- but- but - WHAT ABOUT THE CRUSADES??”
Uh, they were bad?
Seriously, I get the Crusades question a lot, almost as often as I get invasive lines of questioning about my take on sexual ethics, a field in which I have no academic background, no professional purview, and which is the topic of another post entirely. Either way there are a lot of assumptions made right off the bat, and as often as not a visible disapproval of my line of work This disapproval frequently manifests as a list of wrongs committed throughout history. Clearly, my interlocutors would have handled things differently.
Of course they would have, because they were born in the 20th century in America, they’re mostly middle-class, mostly well-educated, swimming in the postmodern current like all the rest of us. So I find their retroactive indignance alternately annoying and amusing. It’s almost childlike the way they imagine time-travel, that they could plop themselves down in the driver’s seat 1000 years ago.
There’s always a context. There’s always a culture. There’s always a why. Even our famed “religious wars” (which I frequently remind my students, had little to do with doctrine and a lot to do with “stuff”) was partially prompted by the fact that there were bored knights running all over the empire getting in fights, and Pope Urban thought to himself “I have a way to get them all far away from here…”
We laugh at the 19th century Popes clinging to temporal power (because to our 21st century minds that’s not what a Pope is ‘supposed to do’), but you can’t understand that without understanding the rest of the story. Pius IX acted the way he did because Constantine moved the capital of the Empire in the 300s…because Leo the Great met Attila the Hun in the 400s…because Pepin the Short foresaw a prudent alliance in the 700s… With our 21st century minds sometimes we just don’t get it, and it’s ok to admit that.
I’m not advocating a retroactive indifference either - we should look at history with a critical eye, with dismay or admiration or even horror. But to be smug about decisions made centuries ago is silly. For how will history judge our own era of ‘tolerance’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘peace’? When in the year 2500 someone judges our social sins of action and inaction will they interpret it in light of our world, or will they immediately condemn us?
There is so much progress still to be made in our world, and I admire those prophetic voices who insist the change must come immediately and without delay. But in my heart I’m not convinced we can change the outcomes without changing the context. When I think of the issues that distress me the most - particularly issues of gender, both in and out of the Church - the great sadness for me is not that I can’t have my way. I mourn that the world is not with me in my desire. I don’t just want the outcome, I want the world to be ready for it, I want the world to want it too.
We will get there, but it takes time. If the study of history has taught me anything it’s that it takes a long time to turn around a big boat. When I started studying Popes I never thought it would make me more patient, but there you have it.
Uh, they were bad?
Seriously, I get the Crusades question a lot, almost as often as I get invasive lines of questioning about my take on sexual ethics, a field in which I have no academic background, no professional purview, and which is the topic of another post entirely. Either way there are a lot of assumptions made right off the bat, and as often as not a visible disapproval of my line of work This disapproval frequently manifests as a list of wrongs committed throughout history. Clearly, my interlocutors would have handled things differently.
Of course they would have, because they were born in the 20th century in America, they’re mostly middle-class, mostly well-educated, swimming in the postmodern current like all the rest of us. So I find their retroactive indignance alternately annoying and amusing. It’s almost childlike the way they imagine time-travel, that they could plop themselves down in the driver’s seat 1000 years ago.
There’s always a context. There’s always a culture. There’s always a why. Even our famed “religious wars” (which I frequently remind my students, had little to do with doctrine and a lot to do with “stuff”) was partially prompted by the fact that there were bored knights running all over the empire getting in fights, and Pope Urban thought to himself “I have a way to get them all far away from here…”
We laugh at the 19th century Popes clinging to temporal power (because to our 21st century minds that’s not what a Pope is ‘supposed to do’), but you can’t understand that without understanding the rest of the story. Pius IX acted the way he did because Constantine moved the capital of the Empire in the 300s…because Leo the Great met Attila the Hun in the 400s…because Pepin the Short foresaw a prudent alliance in the 700s… With our 21st century minds sometimes we just don’t get it, and it’s ok to admit that.
I’m not advocating a retroactive indifference either - we should look at history with a critical eye, with dismay or admiration or even horror. But to be smug about decisions made centuries ago is silly. For how will history judge our own era of ‘tolerance’ and ‘prosperity’ and ‘peace’? When in the year 2500 someone judges our social sins of action and inaction will they interpret it in light of our world, or will they immediately condemn us?
There is so much progress still to be made in our world, and I admire those prophetic voices who insist the change must come immediately and without delay. But in my heart I’m not convinced we can change the outcomes without changing the context. When I think of the issues that distress me the most - particularly issues of gender, both in and out of the Church - the great sadness for me is not that I can’t have my way. I mourn that the world is not with me in my desire. I don’t just want the outcome, I want the world to be ready for it, I want the world to want it too.
We will get there, but it takes time. If the study of history has taught me anything it’s that it takes a long time to turn around a big boat. When I started studying Popes I never thought it would make me more patient, but there you have it.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
The stranger in the mirror
With some reluctance I spent this holiday going down and back to New York for an audition, splitting the trip between the car and a train and a night at my parents’ house. This morning I got into the city with enough time to warm up, and I hustled uptown to the practice room I’d reserved in order to wake up my voice (my audition was before noon) and get myself settled a bit.
I tend to use warm-up rooms as dressing rooms as well, running some scales while I’m layering on more mascara, and sometimes even perching on a piano bench to hoist on some hose. The room I was in today was a little dark, so it is possible I put on way too much makeup, but there was a nice mirror taking up one entire wall that I used to make sure I was presentable.
After sprucing up and warming up, I started running my arias. I took advantage of the mirror, which I don’t always have in my practice spaces, to examine posture, tension, gestures, and the like. I stood across from myself in an expensive dress, fashionable sweater, cute heels, with my hair all fluffy and my face coated in paint. Even as I was singing I heard a voice speak in my ear so clearly that I was surprised not to see my own self saying it in the mirror. It was my own voice in my mind’s ear, and it was looking in the mirror and saying “Who is that?”
My reflection was everything it is supposed to be: pretty, chic, pulled together. I was more than presentable, and yet I’d never felt like more of an imposter in my whole life? I’m wild and spastic and out of touch. I wake up with unimaginably large hair. My clothes are covered with spills and full of tears. I don’t cut an impressive figure. Who was I trying to fool?
Which one of those is the myth? The sloppy spaz who always dressed and acted like a tomboy? The polished performer who has finally figured out how to use eye-makeup? Are neither of them myths? Can I be both?
I’ve written before how easy it is to feel out of place when trying to pass in professional music circles, and what a challenge it is to stay authentic while being your own brand. My guess is this is a challenge for everyone, not just singers or artists - how do we mature without losing who we were?
Is it somehow inauthentic to grow up? How much of a façade can I put up before I lose myself? Why does success make me feel like I am betraying someone?
There’s a photo I keep on my fridge because it reminds me of who I am - silly and wild and intense and honest, with a little food on my face. I need to remember that’s who I always am.
I tend to use warm-up rooms as dressing rooms as well, running some scales while I’m layering on more mascara, and sometimes even perching on a piano bench to hoist on some hose. The room I was in today was a little dark, so it is possible I put on way too much makeup, but there was a nice mirror taking up one entire wall that I used to make sure I was presentable.
After sprucing up and warming up, I started running my arias. I took advantage of the mirror, which I don’t always have in my practice spaces, to examine posture, tension, gestures, and the like. I stood across from myself in an expensive dress, fashionable sweater, cute heels, with my hair all fluffy and my face coated in paint. Even as I was singing I heard a voice speak in my ear so clearly that I was surprised not to see my own self saying it in the mirror. It was my own voice in my mind’s ear, and it was looking in the mirror and saying “Who is that?”
My reflection was everything it is supposed to be: pretty, chic, pulled together. I was more than presentable, and yet I’d never felt like more of an imposter in my whole life? I’m wild and spastic and out of touch. I wake up with unimaginably large hair. My clothes are covered with spills and full of tears. I don’t cut an impressive figure. Who was I trying to fool?
Which one of those is the myth? The sloppy spaz who always dressed and acted like a tomboy? The polished performer who has finally figured out how to use eye-makeup? Are neither of them myths? Can I be both?
I’ve written before how easy it is to feel out of place when trying to pass in professional music circles, and what a challenge it is to stay authentic while being your own brand. My guess is this is a challenge for everyone, not just singers or artists - how do we mature without losing who we were?
Is it somehow inauthentic to grow up? How much of a façade can I put up before I lose myself? Why does success make me feel like I am betraying someone?
There’s a photo I keep on my fridge because it reminds me of who I am - silly and wild and intense and honest, with a little food on my face. I need to remember that’s who I always am.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Because of Prayer
For someone as Church-y as I am, I came somewhat late to prayer, or at least to talking about it. In college I was too cool for prayer: you could be contemplative or you could be active, and I knew what side I was on. I didn't have any of the incense-laden moments one might describe as prayer, and I saw that sort of talk as the purview of athletes pointing to the sky after a homerun on the one hand, and of the simperingly pious kids who judged ones spirituality on how many hours they'd spent in Eucharistic adoration that week on the other. Plus, I wasn't convinced I knew how to pray, and despite all appearances I really do try not to talk about things I don't know anything about.
That's why it was so shocking to me a few weeks ago when this thought popped into my head, the kind of thought that if I heard anyone say it out loud I'd either roll my eyes or throw up a little: If I have succeeded in anything in life, it is because of prayer.
I still don't know anything about prayer. I know that I am only able to perform because I am used to seeking out what is real. I know God best when I am dealing honestly with reality. So when I'm put in front of people to sing or act or speak, and I am expected to give them something real, I can fall back on the habit of searching for truth rather than for the easier fiction.
I know that I am only able to minister because I have experienced love in my life, then examined it and called it by name. When I am called on to be a loving presence, I am well served by this diligence in learning love. Prayer involves listening and paying attention, and when I fail at loving well I can use those habits to seek out and seal up the cracks in the armor of light. When I don't give myself time for silence and stillness I fail more often than not, often in spectacular, hideous ways that make me feel like someone I don't know. I need to check in often with that which is most real if I have any hope of staying real myself.
I don't know anything about prayer. I'm scared to write about it but I can't stay silent. If I have succeeded at anything in life, it is because of prayer. That doesn't mean I write my request on a slip of paper and God answers me with a magic trick. I think it means that I am willing to keep searching and to accept how high the stakes are. It means I listen and I pay attention. It means I give care to remembering who I am so that I can live fully as a one Created rather than as a caricature. I think it means I have re-tooled my definition of success to include all those things that build up God's Reign. When I am successful it is because I have allowed myself to collaborate with Creation, entering into the Goodness for which we were made, assenting to the Beauty we can only glimpse when we open ourselves to the glory we've named God in the rush we've named prayer.
That's why it was so shocking to me a few weeks ago when this thought popped into my head, the kind of thought that if I heard anyone say it out loud I'd either roll my eyes or throw up a little: If I have succeeded in anything in life, it is because of prayer.
I still don't know anything about prayer. I know that I am only able to perform because I am used to seeking out what is real. I know God best when I am dealing honestly with reality. So when I'm put in front of people to sing or act or speak, and I am expected to give them something real, I can fall back on the habit of searching for truth rather than for the easier fiction.
I know that I am only able to minister because I have experienced love in my life, then examined it and called it by name. When I am called on to be a loving presence, I am well served by this diligence in learning love. Prayer involves listening and paying attention, and when I fail at loving well I can use those habits to seek out and seal up the cracks in the armor of light. When I don't give myself time for silence and stillness I fail more often than not, often in spectacular, hideous ways that make me feel like someone I don't know. I need to check in often with that which is most real if I have any hope of staying real myself.
I don't know anything about prayer. I'm scared to write about it but I can't stay silent. If I have succeeded at anything in life, it is because of prayer. That doesn't mean I write my request on a slip of paper and God answers me with a magic trick. I think it means that I am willing to keep searching and to accept how high the stakes are. It means I listen and I pay attention. It means I give care to remembering who I am so that I can live fully as a one Created rather than as a caricature. I think it means I have re-tooled my definition of success to include all those things that build up God's Reign. When I am successful it is because I have allowed myself to collaborate with Creation, entering into the Goodness for which we were made, assenting to the Beauty we can only glimpse when we open ourselves to the glory we've named God in the rush we've named prayer.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
My voice is who I am?
This cold and rainy evening I was in the art museum at my alma mater, talking to current students about careers in the arts. There is nothing like being asked “how did you get to where you are?” over and over to get me thinking about that question: How did I get here? And being there with fellow alums - a few of whom I knew as an undergrad - had me thinking the whole way home about how different things were when I was a big musical fish in the wonderful humanistic pond of Boston College.
I have vague recollections of a time before my voice was a commodity. I hadn’t invested a ton of money in it, it wasn’t making me very much money, and I was still getting to know it. People told me my voice was beautiful and I believed them, and it was true. I enjoyed my beautiful voice and used it as often as I could.
If that romantically Edenic memory sounds ridiculous, there’s a reason for that. My relationship with my voice in late adolescence was not pure or innocent. Burdened with deep insecurity, part of me believed that people would only admire or want to be around me if they knew I could sing, and I saw that as the only way of drawing people to me. At the same time, though, I could see through the illusion that there is anything virtuous about having a gift I never asked for, and felt shamed for using a false virtue in hope of attracting people.
I still try to take time to just enjoy my voice, even though using my voice is work for me now. It’s a source of income and a big investment. I have been told a million things about it, and often spent more time picking it apart than celebrating it. I listen to my recordings so many times that I have no idea what they sound like anymore. In order to improve (and to appropriately market myself) I need to think about the things my voice doesn’t do well, and sometimes it causes more anxiety than joy.
At the same time that I have this preoccupation, I feel paradoxically free because I know that it is not what makes me who I am. My voice does not make me holy or lovable. It is an unexplainable blessing that I can never earn but that I do my best to serve. I don’t need to have people hear me or know that I have this particular skill because I know that at the most fundamental level it’s nothing special.
When I was an undergrad there was so much I didn’t know, for better and for worse. Because everyone’s journey is different, it doesn’t make much sense to share all of that at a career night. What I was able to share was that I wake up every day and do what I love. That I’ve never had a thing planned for my future and have just made the best decisions I can, day by day. That you need to work your tail off to make it, and you had better find other things that can give you joy because a career is never going to love you back.
My voice is who I am, and at the same time it’s not, and I can live with that.
I have vague recollections of a time before my voice was a commodity. I hadn’t invested a ton of money in it, it wasn’t making me very much money, and I was still getting to know it. People told me my voice was beautiful and I believed them, and it was true. I enjoyed my beautiful voice and used it as often as I could.
If that romantically Edenic memory sounds ridiculous, there’s a reason for that. My relationship with my voice in late adolescence was not pure or innocent. Burdened with deep insecurity, part of me believed that people would only admire or want to be around me if they knew I could sing, and I saw that as the only way of drawing people to me. At the same time, though, I could see through the illusion that there is anything virtuous about having a gift I never asked for, and felt shamed for using a false virtue in hope of attracting people.
I still try to take time to just enjoy my voice, even though using my voice is work for me now. It’s a source of income and a big investment. I have been told a million things about it, and often spent more time picking it apart than celebrating it. I listen to my recordings so many times that I have no idea what they sound like anymore. In order to improve (and to appropriately market myself) I need to think about the things my voice doesn’t do well, and sometimes it causes more anxiety than joy.
At the same time that I have this preoccupation, I feel paradoxically free because I know that it is not what makes me who I am. My voice does not make me holy or lovable. It is an unexplainable blessing that I can never earn but that I do my best to serve. I don’t need to have people hear me or know that I have this particular skill because I know that at the most fundamental level it’s nothing special.
When I was an undergrad there was so much I didn’t know, for better and for worse. Because everyone’s journey is different, it doesn’t make much sense to share all of that at a career night. What I was able to share was that I wake up every day and do what I love. That I’ve never had a thing planned for my future and have just made the best decisions I can, day by day. That you need to work your tail off to make it, and you had better find other things that can give you joy because a career is never going to love you back.
My voice is who I am, and at the same time it’s not, and I can live with that.
Monday, November 1, 2010
A cold and broken hallelujah
Every year my mother takes great delight in ‘changing the clocks’, because rather than fuss with the hands on the clocks in the great room she actually switches the clocks, pulling out the winter clocks and stuffing the summer ones away. With the time change coming even later than usual this year, I have spent the last few mornings stumbling around trying to get out of the house in the dark, going so far as to walk directly into a door late last week.
Leaving my late afternoon class a few days ago the teacher commented that starting soon the sun would be going down closer to the beginning of class than the end. I looked out the windows of the new class building as dusk fell at dismissal time and thought “for someone who gets sad in the fall, I’m doing OK. The sun is setting and my mood is all right”.
Then I got in the car and put on Rufus Wainright and that all changed.
The first time I remember having an emotional response to the autumn was while I was still in elementary school. I felt nostalgic and a little melancholy and very confused about why these feelings had seemed to come from nowhere. Even now, away from the town where I spent the autumns of my youth, the smell - rare in the city - of burning leaves takes me back to that revelatory afternoon on the swingset, a little amazed that the seasons could affect me so powerfully, and a little, well, sad.
Every year I think maybe this is the year I can write about seasonal depression, and despite always writing a bit that springs from it, I can never quite write about it. For a while it was because I was embarrassed and ashamed, but that’s not really it any more. Now when I try to write about it I become totally stuck, because I just don’t understand it.
Can I live with that mystery? I have no idea why, at this time of year, every goodbye and disappointment I’ve ever had becomes wrapped up in each sunset. I don’t know why the way the falling leaves match the stripe of yellow down the center of the road makes my eyes well up through all of October. Maybe this is just when I mark the passage of time - New Year’s never really did it for me, but I can mark the time by each somber, sensitive fall.
Tonight’s sunset, marking the bridge between the commemorations of All Saints and All Souls, really threw me, even though I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other people talking about nothing that had anything to do with sadness or darkness. Without my knowledge or will thoughts crept in of those who are on the other side whose closeness we celebrate these days. There’s a reason so many cultures remember their dead this time of year. I beg the forgiveness of my Southern Hemisphere/Equatorial friends, on whom some of the fall-in-New-England imagery might be lost.
The evenings get dark and I do too. Even though I can’t explain the darkness, I fear a part of me has started to take comfort in the yearly ritual of staring out the window at sunset, brooding, or as Hopkins writes in verses that could have been written for me “grieving over Goldengrove unleaving”. Despite the heartache there’s something oddly beautiful about being pushed and pulled by nature, year after year. I didn’t always know what I know now: that this will pass, and that April will see us all alive again. Despite Eliot’s claim that April is the cruelest month, I know the cruelest is October, mixing memory and desire even as our dull roots grow duller, well aware of the long sleep that is coming next.
I have spent some stretches in very dark places, and my spirituality has been shaped by that. Life is hard; it’s a blessing anyway. We are confronted with incomprehensible suffering; God exists anyway. Sadness can stretch us across herself like we’re prisoners on a rack; we worship anyway. In our cold and broken halleluiah faith breaks forth, quietly resolute, sometimes too weak to even be a sign of determination, just there, in a silent confidence that defies the present pain.
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
--G. M. Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wÃll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Leaving my late afternoon class a few days ago the teacher commented that starting soon the sun would be going down closer to the beginning of class than the end. I looked out the windows of the new class building as dusk fell at dismissal time and thought “for someone who gets sad in the fall, I’m doing OK. The sun is setting and my mood is all right”.
Then I got in the car and put on Rufus Wainright and that all changed.
The first time I remember having an emotional response to the autumn was while I was still in elementary school. I felt nostalgic and a little melancholy and very confused about why these feelings had seemed to come from nowhere. Even now, away from the town where I spent the autumns of my youth, the smell - rare in the city - of burning leaves takes me back to that revelatory afternoon on the swingset, a little amazed that the seasons could affect me so powerfully, and a little, well, sad.
Every year I think maybe this is the year I can write about seasonal depression, and despite always writing a bit that springs from it, I can never quite write about it. For a while it was because I was embarrassed and ashamed, but that’s not really it any more. Now when I try to write about it I become totally stuck, because I just don’t understand it.
Can I live with that mystery? I have no idea why, at this time of year, every goodbye and disappointment I’ve ever had becomes wrapped up in each sunset. I don’t know why the way the falling leaves match the stripe of yellow down the center of the road makes my eyes well up through all of October. Maybe this is just when I mark the passage of time - New Year’s never really did it for me, but I can mark the time by each somber, sensitive fall.
Tonight’s sunset, marking the bridge between the commemorations of All Saints and All Souls, really threw me, even though I was sitting in a room with a bunch of other people talking about nothing that had anything to do with sadness or darkness. Without my knowledge or will thoughts crept in of those who are on the other side whose closeness we celebrate these days. There’s a reason so many cultures remember their dead this time of year. I beg the forgiveness of my Southern Hemisphere/Equatorial friends, on whom some of the fall-in-New-England imagery might be lost.
The evenings get dark and I do too. Even though I can’t explain the darkness, I fear a part of me has started to take comfort in the yearly ritual of staring out the window at sunset, brooding, or as Hopkins writes in verses that could have been written for me “grieving over Goldengrove unleaving”. Despite the heartache there’s something oddly beautiful about being pushed and pulled by nature, year after year. I didn’t always know what I know now: that this will pass, and that April will see us all alive again. Despite Eliot’s claim that April is the cruelest month, I know the cruelest is October, mixing memory and desire even as our dull roots grow duller, well aware of the long sleep that is coming next.
I have spent some stretches in very dark places, and my spirituality has been shaped by that. Life is hard; it’s a blessing anyway. We are confronted with incomprehensible suffering; God exists anyway. Sadness can stretch us across herself like we’re prisoners on a rack; we worship anyway. In our cold and broken halleluiah faith breaks forth, quietly resolute, sometimes too weak to even be a sign of determination, just there, in a silent confidence that defies the present pain.
Spring and Fall: to a Young Child
--G. M. Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wÃll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Great women are like meteors
Last week I took yet another tour of the state house, an activity that always brings my civics nerd-dom to the fore. I love history, politics, policy, and majestic buildings, so this oft-repeated trip inspires and interests me. I have no illusions about the inclusion of my people in most of Massachusetts history: women, Catholics, and even the iconic Irish were absent from most of the decision making for a large portion of the history of the Commonwealth. So I know how significant it is when we walk by the sign on Senate President Therese Murray's door, and my heart aches a little when we stand in the House chambers, beneath a ceiling encircled with names of Massachusetts greatest (white, anglo-saxon, protestant) men.
Most days I can be patient about the progress women have made. Things are easier for me than they were for my mother, and were easier for her than for her mother. I went to a college my mother couldn't have gone to and have the freedom to live on my own, have a job that I love, and basically do what I want. Things are OK.
At the very end of the tour, in a side hallway near the stairs, we viewed the Portrait Gallery of six of the Commonwealth's most extraordinary women. It was a challenge to listen to our tour guide and read the quotes and look at the portraits. I was struck by this quotation of Lucy Stone:
In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen that disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.
Then I heard the tour guide say "Not only does this gallery honor these six women, it honors all women". I'm sure our well-spoken and bright guide was just following her script, and I'm sure most of the people I was with were thinking "isn't that nice", but I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something snide. Don't pretend that portraints of six women make up for centuries of grave injustice, and don't imaging that just because Lucy Stone was a woman, she'd be content with sharing her honor with everyone else just to be nice. This is better than nothing, but it's not even close to justice.
I'm glad we honor Dorothea Dix and Florence Luscomb and the other leaders whose faces are on those brass plaques. In no way does that make it right that so many people's voices were excluded from decision making just because of their gender (or race, or religion). It doesn't make it right that we criticize our successful female politicians for being pushy or unbecoming, and then ridicule the other half who we keep in the public eye in order to have someone at whom to laugh and gawk.
Most days I can be patient about the progress women have made. Things are easier for me than they were for my mother, and were easier for her than for her mother. I went to a college my mother couldn't have gone to and have the freedom to live on my own, have a job that I love, and basically do what I want. Things are OK.
At the very end of the tour, in a side hallway near the stairs, we viewed the Portrait Gallery of six of the Commonwealth's most extraordinary women. It was a challenge to listen to our tour guide and read the quotes and look at the portraits. I was struck by this quotation of Lucy Stone:
In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything disappointment is the lot of women. It shall be the business of my life to deepen that disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.
Then I heard the tour guide say "Not only does this gallery honor these six women, it honors all women". I'm sure our well-spoken and bright guide was just following her script, and I'm sure most of the people I was with were thinking "isn't that nice", but I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something snide. Don't pretend that portraints of six women make up for centuries of grave injustice, and don't imaging that just because Lucy Stone was a woman, she'd be content with sharing her honor with everyone else just to be nice. This is better than nothing, but it's not even close to justice.
I'm glad we honor Dorothea Dix and Florence Luscomb and the other leaders whose faces are on those brass plaques. In no way does that make it right that so many people's voices were excluded from decision making just because of their gender (or race, or religion). It doesn't make it right that we criticize our successful female politicians for being pushy or unbecoming, and then ridicule the other half who we keep in the public eye in order to have someone at whom to laugh and gawk.
Earlier that same day, at the JFK Library, I saw an inscription Jackie Kennedy wrote in a gift to her husband: "great men are like meteors, consuming themselves as they light the earth". Fifty years after she quoted Napoleon, women deserve their chance to be meteoric and powerful - and it's not because they are women but because they are human, skilled (or not), wise (or not), strong (or not) like all other humans. The meteoric trajectory is not for every woman nor is it for every man, but everyone deserves a chance to have her photo among the legislative leadership, her name painted above the house chamber, her visage sculpted in bronze.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Keep turning it 'til it fits
When I was quite young I had a puzzle of Bert and Ernie that I really liked. It was a young child's puzzle with only a few thick cardboard pieces and often my mother would help me put it together. If I would get stumped with what piece went where, she would instruct me to pick up a piece, try it in a certain spot, and "keep turning it 'til it fits".
Somehow that expression made it into our familial language, and I still think of it frequently, much more often than I think of that flimsy puzzle that has surely outlived its usefulness just as surely as it still lives in the corner of the basement my mother reserves for memories.
I wonder if our lives are puzzles, and we spend most of our lives trying to get the pieces to fit. Few of us live in a constant state of disshevelment, but most of us know the feeling of playing whack-a-mole with our lives: when we finally get one thing in order, another pops up.
So we keep trying to fit our pieces in together. As soon as we find the right place for prudence, prayer becomes displaced. Then we get charity just as it ought to be and the jigsawed edges of chastity protrude from what should be the puzzles' smooth edge. There's a part of each of us that knows what the puzzle is supposed to look like and isn't satisfied until it is just so. A part of us knows that holy = whole.
It has been suggested to me before that since I work in ministry I 'teach virtue'. That could not be farther from the truth. Teaching virtue is impossible: virtue lies in all of us, and at best I walk with people as they uncover it. But finding our virtue is not so much a clearing away the clutter but turning traits the right way, making foul tempers into zealousness, shyness into contemplative patience, mouths inclined to harmful chatter into those that blabber the goodness of God.
I doubt the work of our turning ever stops. Is an outcome of original sin that we are never put together quite right this side of eternity? If in my minds eye I can see what the puzzle should look like - or even if I can't - I can keep feeling my way to its completion. No discouragement or apparent failure can stop me plowing forward, piece by piece, if I just keep turning it 'til it fits.
Somehow that expression made it into our familial language, and I still think of it frequently, much more often than I think of that flimsy puzzle that has surely outlived its usefulness just as surely as it still lives in the corner of the basement my mother reserves for memories.
I wonder if our lives are puzzles, and we spend most of our lives trying to get the pieces to fit. Few of us live in a constant state of disshevelment, but most of us know the feeling of playing whack-a-mole with our lives: when we finally get one thing in order, another pops up.
So we keep trying to fit our pieces in together. As soon as we find the right place for prudence, prayer becomes displaced. Then we get charity just as it ought to be and the jigsawed edges of chastity protrude from what should be the puzzles' smooth edge. There's a part of each of us that knows what the puzzle is supposed to look like and isn't satisfied until it is just so. A part of us knows that holy = whole.
It has been suggested to me before that since I work in ministry I 'teach virtue'. That could not be farther from the truth. Teaching virtue is impossible: virtue lies in all of us, and at best I walk with people as they uncover it. But finding our virtue is not so much a clearing away the clutter but turning traits the right way, making foul tempers into zealousness, shyness into contemplative patience, mouths inclined to harmful chatter into those that blabber the goodness of God.
I doubt the work of our turning ever stops. Is an outcome of original sin that we are never put together quite right this side of eternity? If in my minds eye I can see what the puzzle should look like - or even if I can't - I can keep feeling my way to its completion. No discouragement or apparent failure can stop me plowing forward, piece by piece, if I just keep turning it 'til it fits.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Lessons from the latest race
One of the reasons I love running is that it gives me long stretches of time alone with my thoughts. I have designed retreats, planned events, and written lots of posts and poetry while thumping along on my training runs and races. Yesterday I completed the Hartford Half-Marathon for the fifth year in a row. Usually finishing races yields some of my trademark Profound Thoughts, but yesterday was an anomaly – a more difficult course added to poorer preparation yielded a distracted and miserable race. Still, there were a few takeaways. What I learned from this race:
1. Spectators never expect you to cheer for them first.
Without going in to great detail, I would like to apologize to the meek young woman in the Boston College sweatshirt who I apparently scared out of her mind. My bad.
2. “The new course moved all the hills to the front of the race” is code for “the first nine miles are hilly as hell!”
So yeah, this course was hilly, and hilly in all the worst areas. We would turn onto a residential street, suddenly be all crunched together, and hill would come up and everyone would change their pace in a different way. Chaos. I honestly don’t know why they even mentioned the hills when they were explaining the new route. What would have just been a more difficult route now feels like a bait and switch since they tried to convince us it was going to be easier. I should admit, some of the blame falls on we runners – did I really think that the run into Asylum Hill between miles 11 and 12 was going to be flat?
3. Sometimes the most trying experiences result in success, not failure.
OK, I know I promised not to get all Profound Thoughts ™ about this, but it can’t be avoided. I was miserable yesterday. Everything hurt. I hadn’t trained enough, I hadn’t done enough hills, my feet, thighs, knees, and hips were all screaming by the mid-point of the race. As I stumbled through Elizabeth Park , what was supposed to be the most beautiful part of the race, I was mad at everyone: myself for not training enough, the people who kept me late at work Friday so I had to miss packet pick up and go in at 6:30 am on race day, those organizers who changed the course, the other runners who kept me from starting off at a comfortable pace, and God for making everything athletic so damn hard for me my whole life. I wanted to show everyone how badly I’d been wronged. I wanted to punish them by failing.
But then I checked my timer. I was making better pace than I ever had, and that tiny part of me that had enough energy to be positive said “don’t waste this by crapping out now”. I did my best to turn my brain off and keep running hard. In the last two years or so I have cut almost a minute off of my mile and my body still doesn’t know what to do with that – it knows it is working harder than it is used to, but also knows it can’t slow down.
I thundered across the finish line without having cried once – quite a feat for me during my most difficult runs. I finally was able to check my time today and it was 20 seconds faster than my time on my last race. Barely a PR, but I’ll take it.
I run because it is hard for me, and when I succeed I know it is not because I am just doing what comes naturally – it is because I am striving to accomplish something in the field that challenges me the most. Sometimes I want an excuse, a reason why I can’t do what I’ve set out to do, and it is tempting to give in to the frustration of not being naturally gifted. Then, just as I think my body and my pride can’t take any more challenge I turn the corner into the park, run through the crowds to the Arch, and have something else of which to be proud.
1. Spectators never expect you to cheer for them first.
Without going in to great detail, I would like to apologize to the meek young woman in the Boston College sweatshirt who I apparently scared out of her mind. My bad.
2. “The new course moved all the hills to the front of the race” is code for “the first nine miles are hilly as hell!”
So yeah, this course was hilly, and hilly in all the worst areas. We would turn onto a residential street, suddenly be all crunched together, and hill would come up and everyone would change their pace in a different way. Chaos. I honestly don’t know why they even mentioned the hills when they were explaining the new route. What would have just been a more difficult route now feels like a bait and switch since they tried to convince us it was going to be easier. I should admit, some of the blame falls on we runners – did I really think that the run into Asylum Hill between miles 11 and 12 was going to be flat?
3. Sometimes the most trying experiences result in success, not failure.
OK, I know I promised not to get all Profound Thoughts ™ about this, but it can’t be avoided. I was miserable yesterday. Everything hurt. I hadn’t trained enough, I hadn’t done enough hills, my feet, thighs, knees, and hips were all screaming by the mid-point of the race. As I stumbled through Elizabeth Park , what was supposed to be the most beautiful part of the race, I was mad at everyone: myself for not training enough, the people who kept me late at work Friday so I had to miss packet pick up and go in at 6:30 am on race day, those organizers who changed the course, the other runners who kept me from starting off at a comfortable pace, and God for making everything athletic so damn hard for me my whole life. I wanted to show everyone how badly I’d been wronged. I wanted to punish them by failing.
But then I checked my timer. I was making better pace than I ever had, and that tiny part of me that had enough energy to be positive said “don’t waste this by crapping out now”. I did my best to turn my brain off and keep running hard. In the last two years or so I have cut almost a minute off of my mile and my body still doesn’t know what to do with that – it knows it is working harder than it is used to, but also knows it can’t slow down.
I thundered across the finish line without having cried once – quite a feat for me during my most difficult runs. I finally was able to check my time today and it was 20 seconds faster than my time on my last race. Barely a PR, but I’ll take it.
I run because it is hard for me, and when I succeed I know it is not because I am just doing what comes naturally – it is because I am striving to accomplish something in the field that challenges me the most. Sometimes I want an excuse, a reason why I can’t do what I’ve set out to do, and it is tempting to give in to the frustration of not being naturally gifted. Then, just as I think my body and my pride can’t take any more challenge I turn the corner into the park, run through the crowds to the Arch, and have something else of which to be proud.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
I contain multitudes
I'm a vegetarian with glue traps in her kitchen.
I'm sure Walt Whitman won't mind me stealing his line to add "I contain multitudes".
The best answer to this mouse problem is the decidedly inhumane sticky trap. I'm not thrilled about it, but it's what I have to do and it doesn't totally offend my morals. So when the exterminator put down the traps, I didn't complain.
But as a vegetarian, isn't that something that "people like me" don't do? That supposition is one major reason I don't talk about my food choice: I don't need anyone making assumptions or judgments. Because I self-identify with a number of groups, I fall prey to those assumptions all the time. Certain things are expected from "that" group, whatever "that" may be.
When I was a teenager I spend a lot of time trying to be a variety of "that"s, using an image as my guide and basing my choices on whatever image I aspired to at the time: rebel, punk, social radical, even that most elusive of all images - normal.
Eventually I got sick of my rebellion always getting me in trouble, I discovered I don't have the stomach for radical poverty, and I spend enough time with people to discover there is no normal. That's when the hard work began: getting to know myself well enough that being me could be my ideal. The behaviors I ruled out weren't avoided because they didn't fit my image, but because they didn't match my integrity. The statement changed from "I'm not that kind of person" to "that's not me".
To be sure, there's a place for "that kind of person" in our choices. Kids don't lie because we teach them not to look up to liars. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays in Lent because "that's what Catholics do". And sometimes I put down a leather item in the shoe store because "I'm not that kind of person" (and frankly the dirty looks aren't worth it).
We can do better than that. A person is much more likely to follow their conviction if they truly believe that a lie is a betrayal of the credulousness of another person, and not just another thing on the list of actions "we don't do". Still I won't begrudge someone not lying "just because" - or even only because they over heard one of my "there's nothing I hate more than a filthy liar" speeches.
Occasionally one of more outrageous comments or actions will earn the shocked response "but you're a religion teacher!" as if that vocation came alongside a basket of other qualities that society has deemed appropriate for good Christian ladies. My goal is never to scandalize, but I know from experience how painful it is to try to fit into a mold and I'm not going to do it, no matter how pious the mold.
Instead, I mold myself according to my conscience, prayer, and the guidance of my community. Chances are the person I become won't fit one of the world's molds. I trust that somewhere there is a me-shaped-mold, with just the right fit for a loud-laughing Catholic, a left-brained artist, a complacent rebel, a mouse-killing vegetarian.
I'm sure Walt Whitman won't mind me stealing his line to add "I contain multitudes".
The best answer to this mouse problem is the decidedly inhumane sticky trap. I'm not thrilled about it, but it's what I have to do and it doesn't totally offend my morals. So when the exterminator put down the traps, I didn't complain.
But as a vegetarian, isn't that something that "people like me" don't do? That supposition is one major reason I don't talk about my food choice: I don't need anyone making assumptions or judgments. Because I self-identify with a number of groups, I fall prey to those assumptions all the time. Certain things are expected from "that" group, whatever "that" may be.
When I was a teenager I spend a lot of time trying to be a variety of "that"s, using an image as my guide and basing my choices on whatever image I aspired to at the time: rebel, punk, social radical, even that most elusive of all images - normal.
Eventually I got sick of my rebellion always getting me in trouble, I discovered I don't have the stomach for radical poverty, and I spend enough time with people to discover there is no normal. That's when the hard work began: getting to know myself well enough that being me could be my ideal. The behaviors I ruled out weren't avoided because they didn't fit my image, but because they didn't match my integrity. The statement changed from "I'm not that kind of person" to "that's not me".
To be sure, there's a place for "that kind of person" in our choices. Kids don't lie because we teach them not to look up to liars. Catholics avoid meat on Fridays in Lent because "that's what Catholics do". And sometimes I put down a leather item in the shoe store because "I'm not that kind of person" (and frankly the dirty looks aren't worth it).
We can do better than that. A person is much more likely to follow their conviction if they truly believe that a lie is a betrayal of the credulousness of another person, and not just another thing on the list of actions "we don't do". Still I won't begrudge someone not lying "just because" - or even only because they over heard one of my "there's nothing I hate more than a filthy liar" speeches.
Occasionally one of more outrageous comments or actions will earn the shocked response "but you're a religion teacher!" as if that vocation came alongside a basket of other qualities that society has deemed appropriate for good Christian ladies. My goal is never to scandalize, but I know from experience how painful it is to try to fit into a mold and I'm not going to do it, no matter how pious the mold.
Instead, I mold myself according to my conscience, prayer, and the guidance of my community. Chances are the person I become won't fit one of the world's molds. I trust that somewhere there is a me-shaped-mold, with just the right fit for a loud-laughing Catholic, a left-brained artist, a complacent rebel, a mouse-killing vegetarian.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do
When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, 'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.' (Luke 17: 10)
I distinctly remember the first time I noticed these verses, which must have been two Cycle Cs ago. They left a strong impression, both because they captured so perfectly a sentiment I share, and because they seem harsh and counter-cultural. I almost felt guilty for agreeing with the idea that we don’t deserve a pat on the back for discipleship or moral behavior.
This is the type of attitude that gives Catholics a reputation, and I don’t care. Obligation is an important part of our lives. There are things we do simply because they are that which should be done. I run into a lot of people who think the purpose of religion or worship is to make us feel all warm and squishy inside. I’m not wise enough to say what the “purpose” is, but it ain’t that. To congratulate ourselves on our faithfulness is not the same as to affirm the grace of faith. We can be content with our faith and our deeds and still be unprofitable – perhaps we can never truly exceed what we are obliged to do because God’s expectations of us are so high?
Paul writes in today’s reading from 2 Timothy to “to stir into flame the gift of God that you have...For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (1: 6-17). We are endowed with great spiritual gifts, every one of us, and we choose whether to stir them into flame or to cower and let them decay. Claiming our gifts is dangerous business, because it makes us agents in the world. Our power, inspired by love and tempered by self-control, makes us capable of doing every good thing that God expects of us.
The first reading today is from the small-but-mighty book of Habbakuk. The prophet cries out to the Lord, lamenting the destruction and violence surrounding him. The Lord responds:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late. (2:2-3)
Living in hope gives us a vision of what the world could be, with all people responding to the invitation of grace and living together in love and charity. We write this vision on the tablets of our lives, doing our best to manifest the hope that lives inside of us. This is what is expected of us, and may even be what we’re made for. Our labors toward the fulfillment our mission and duty may give us plenty to be proud of, but are nothing more than what we are required to do.
say, 'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.' (Luke 17: 10)
I distinctly remember the first time I noticed these verses, which must have been two Cycle Cs ago. They left a strong impression, both because they captured so perfectly a sentiment I share, and because they seem harsh and counter-cultural. I almost felt guilty for agreeing with the idea that we don’t deserve a pat on the back for discipleship or moral behavior.
This is the type of attitude that gives Catholics a reputation, and I don’t care. Obligation is an important part of our lives. There are things we do simply because they are that which should be done. I run into a lot of people who think the purpose of religion or worship is to make us feel all warm and squishy inside. I’m not wise enough to say what the “purpose” is, but it ain’t that. To congratulate ourselves on our faithfulness is not the same as to affirm the grace of faith. We can be content with our faith and our deeds and still be unprofitable – perhaps we can never truly exceed what we are obliged to do because God’s expectations of us are so high?
Paul writes in today’s reading from 2 Timothy to “to stir into flame the gift of God that you have...For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (1: 6-17). We are endowed with great spiritual gifts, every one of us, and we choose whether to stir them into flame or to cower and let them decay. Claiming our gifts is dangerous business, because it makes us agents in the world. Our power, inspired by love and tempered by self-control, makes us capable of doing every good thing that God expects of us.
The first reading today is from the small-but-mighty book of Habbakuk. The prophet cries out to the Lord, lamenting the destruction and violence surrounding him. The Lord responds:
Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late. (2:2-3)
Living in hope gives us a vision of what the world could be, with all people responding to the invitation of grace and living together in love and charity. We write this vision on the tablets of our lives, doing our best to manifest the hope that lives inside of us. This is what is expected of us, and may even be what we’re made for. Our labors toward the fulfillment our mission and duty may give us plenty to be proud of, but are nothing more than what we are required to do.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
A Mouse in the House
Dear Mice -
You have to admit, we had a good thing going for while, with you not making yourselves visible to me, and me pretending that I didn't hear you running around in the walls. But since you decided last night to venture across my line of vision, I'm afraid our alliance has ended. You are in for a world of hurt, and although you likely have me outnumbered, I certainly am bigger, smarter, and meaner.
Love, the girl in 23 B
********
When I was five my parents and I moved into a big red house with an enormous barn on an old farm that my parents had no intention of ever populating with animals or even with produce. Despite their best intentions, however, we picked up a little livestock along the way, inheriting with the farmhouse a smattering of mice that took a few years to eradicate. That experience from years ago is why I suspected that the sound across the ceiling the last few weeks was not, as I hoped, a sign that my upstairs neighbor had gotten a small dog.
Last night, when little Mickey scampered across the kitchen floor as I was reading on the couch, my mind immediately recalled all of the mouse-related anecdotes from those first years in that house. There are too many to mention, but one favorite involves one flying out of the silverware drawer and giving my mother the scare of a lifetime in the week before my brother was born. We sometimes say that's why he's a little wacky.
What sticks out from all of these stories is that we find them funny. Even today when I was telling my mother that there's some critters in my apartment, she made a joke about hearing the snapping of mousetraps in the night. My family has always put a high priority on laughter - some of my fondest memories are of all four of us doubled over in laughter at something one of us had done.
There's no way I can write about humor - it's something you do, not something you talk about (although I often say the same thing about liturgy, and then waste a lot of words writing and talking about it). Although a definition of humor eludes me, its opposite does not: taking things too seriously. We laugh because we know what matters, and it's not the frustration of an unwelcomed furry guest. We laugh because we know that our pride is silly and that life doesn't go as you plan.
Life can be much more serious than a mouse in the house, but I'm happy to have laughed through tough times too. If I didn't laugh things would simply eat me alive - sprinkling our trauma with levity can be our only hope. Maybe humor is a coping mechanism, but what's the alternative? I'll cope rather than be destroyed.
Few character traits I truly can't abide, but one is taking ones' self too seriously. Someone who can't laugh might as well be speaking a different language than I am. Laughter sustains me through infestations and disappointments, through surprises and grief. Out of respect for the mice, I won't laugh when I trap them, but I will try to find a funny way to tell the story later.
You have to admit, we had a good thing going for while, with you not making yourselves visible to me, and me pretending that I didn't hear you running around in the walls. But since you decided last night to venture across my line of vision, I'm afraid our alliance has ended. You are in for a world of hurt, and although you likely have me outnumbered, I certainly am bigger, smarter, and meaner.
Love, the girl in 23 B
********
When I was five my parents and I moved into a big red house with an enormous barn on an old farm that my parents had no intention of ever populating with animals or even with produce. Despite their best intentions, however, we picked up a little livestock along the way, inheriting with the farmhouse a smattering of mice that took a few years to eradicate. That experience from years ago is why I suspected that the sound across the ceiling the last few weeks was not, as I hoped, a sign that my upstairs neighbor had gotten a small dog.
Last night, when little Mickey scampered across the kitchen floor as I was reading on the couch, my mind immediately recalled all of the mouse-related anecdotes from those first years in that house. There are too many to mention, but one favorite involves one flying out of the silverware drawer and giving my mother the scare of a lifetime in the week before my brother was born. We sometimes say that's why he's a little wacky.
What sticks out from all of these stories is that we find them funny. Even today when I was telling my mother that there's some critters in my apartment, she made a joke about hearing the snapping of mousetraps in the night. My family has always put a high priority on laughter - some of my fondest memories are of all four of us doubled over in laughter at something one of us had done.
There's no way I can write about humor - it's something you do, not something you talk about (although I often say the same thing about liturgy, and then waste a lot of words writing and talking about it). Although a definition of humor eludes me, its opposite does not: taking things too seriously. We laugh because we know what matters, and it's not the frustration of an unwelcomed furry guest. We laugh because we know that our pride is silly and that life doesn't go as you plan.
Life can be much more serious than a mouse in the house, but I'm happy to have laughed through tough times too. If I didn't laugh things would simply eat me alive - sprinkling our trauma with levity can be our only hope. Maybe humor is a coping mechanism, but what's the alternative? I'll cope rather than be destroyed.
Few character traits I truly can't abide, but one is taking ones' self too seriously. Someone who can't laugh might as well be speaking a different language than I am. Laughter sustains me through infestations and disappointments, through surprises and grief. Out of respect for the mice, I won't laugh when I trap them, but I will try to find a funny way to tell the story later.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Baruch atah Adonai
I spent the better part of the last 24 hours singing Yom Kippur services as a “ringer”in a temple choir. I also sang for Rosh Hashanah this year, and while I’d never suggest that this experience gives me any license to make claims about the Jewish liturgical life, I found (as I often do) that praying with a less-familiar religious group helped me to clarify my thoughts about worship.
I felt more at home at the High Holidays services than I have at many at services of Christian denominations. My guess is that this comfort has to do with two elements that were present in these Reform Jewish rites: focus on God and focus on community.
One would think that focus on God could go without saying when describing a worship service, but this is not always the case. This weekend there was no doubt on whom the focus lay. The assembly declared the attributes of God, the promises of God, God’s working in the world throughout history. Over and over we sang Baruch atah Adonai, blessing the One who has no need of blessing but who believe treasures our blessings. These blessings are seemingly frivolous, unneeded, but they are to us essential. Our souls exhaust themselves attempting to describe that which cannot be described and to praise that alone which can be praised.
While looking out to God the prayers of the liturgy also focused on the community, on the “us”. In my view, the best liturgy reminds those worshipping that we are an “us”, a group gathered in time and place, connected across time and place with those who also worship. Our “us” is not just a gathering of individuals but the intangible ties between people that create true communities.
If we focus on God and on “us“, there is little room left to focus on “me”. As indulgent as navel-gazing can be, if we truly seek salvation we cannot be looking inward. It is through others that virtue is expressed, that we respond to God’s call to live in grace. Worship is not a place for our personal devotion, even less a place to examine ourselves. I spend enough time focusing on myself.
These thoughts are incomplete, but since I’ve committed myself to academic study of liturgy it would be a bit anti-climactic to exhaust all my reflections on it in one blog post. I have no plans to change cult anytime soon, but things felt right today as joined another community in their worship. I find freedom in blessing the name of the Lord, setting aside any other concerns, remembering the appropriate object of my attention and expressing the praise I was created to express.
(NB: I really struggled with whether to use G_d or God when writing this post, or whether to use other titles in each reference I made to the Creator. Something feels icky about using Judaism as a springboard for my reflections and then tromping all over one of their customs, but I decided using G_d would just be too precious.)
I felt more at home at the High Holidays services than I have at many at services of Christian denominations. My guess is that this comfort has to do with two elements that were present in these Reform Jewish rites: focus on God and focus on community.
One would think that focus on God could go without saying when describing a worship service, but this is not always the case. This weekend there was no doubt on whom the focus lay. The assembly declared the attributes of God, the promises of God, God’s working in the world throughout history. Over and over we sang Baruch atah Adonai, blessing the One who has no need of blessing but who believe treasures our blessings. These blessings are seemingly frivolous, unneeded, but they are to us essential. Our souls exhaust themselves attempting to describe that which cannot be described and to praise that alone which can be praised.
While looking out to God the prayers of the liturgy also focused on the community, on the “us”. In my view, the best liturgy reminds those worshipping that we are an “us”, a group gathered in time and place, connected across time and place with those who also worship. Our “us” is not just a gathering of individuals but the intangible ties between people that create true communities.
If we focus on God and on “us“, there is little room left to focus on “me”. As indulgent as navel-gazing can be, if we truly seek salvation we cannot be looking inward. It is through others that virtue is expressed, that we respond to God’s call to live in grace. Worship is not a place for our personal devotion, even less a place to examine ourselves. I spend enough time focusing on myself.
These thoughts are incomplete, but since I’ve committed myself to academic study of liturgy it would be a bit anti-climactic to exhaust all my reflections on it in one blog post. I have no plans to change cult anytime soon, but things felt right today as joined another community in their worship. I find freedom in blessing the name of the Lord, setting aside any other concerns, remembering the appropriate object of my attention and expressing the praise I was created to express.
(NB: I really struggled with whether to use G_d or God when writing this post, or whether to use other titles in each reference I made to the Creator. Something feels icky about using Judaism as a springboard for my reflections and then tromping all over one of their customs, but I decided using G_d would just be too precious.)
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Being Prodigal
When we’re just plodding through Ordinary Time, I don’t expect to hear one of the Greatest Hits readings. But it’s the Twenty-Fourth Sunday today, and one of the parishes where I sang this weekend read the long form of the Gospel, including one of the Top-Ten Parables: the Prodigal Son.
People who get fussy over this sort of thing like to point out that it should be called the “Prodigal Father”, because it is the father whose lavishness we celebrate. But the son is lavish too, just with the wrong resources. In the narrative he gets all the action (in more ways than one), he goes on an “emotional journey”, as they say. He is the main character.
He remains the main character because it is he to whom we are meant to relate. We are the sinful and broken in need of forgiveness. Blessed are those of us who have known a love that celebrates our arrival no matter the circumstances and welcomes us back into home and heart. Not everyone knows that acceptance, and I am fortunate beyond measure to have friends and especially family who love me despite my selfishness and faults.
Although my experience of being loved helps me to believe in a God who loves, the core of my belief comes from turning the parable on its head. I have also had cause to be the father. There has sprung up in me a mercy that is not self-satisfied pardon, nor an absolution that congratulates itself on its own benevolence, but is a love that simply overpowers any offence. If I, a sinner, can feel that love, then I do not question that God can do that and more.
People who get fussy over this sort of thing like to point out that it should be called the “Prodigal Father”, because it is the father whose lavishness we celebrate. But the son is lavish too, just with the wrong resources. In the narrative he gets all the action (in more ways than one), he goes on an “emotional journey”, as they say. He is the main character.
He remains the main character because it is he to whom we are meant to relate. We are the sinful and broken in need of forgiveness. Blessed are those of us who have known a love that celebrates our arrival no matter the circumstances and welcomes us back into home and heart. Not everyone knows that acceptance, and I am fortunate beyond measure to have friends and especially family who love me despite my selfishness and faults.
Although my experience of being loved helps me to believe in a God who loves, the core of my belief comes from turning the parable on its head. I have also had cause to be the father. There has sprung up in me a mercy that is not self-satisfied pardon, nor an absolution that congratulates itself on its own benevolence, but is a love that simply overpowers any offence. If I, a sinner, can feel that love, then I do not question that God can do that and more.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Set Me as a Seal on Your Heart
During my summer of crazy tri-training I had a little phone trouble. There were a few days when I wasn’t getting notifications of messages, so when trying to organize my standing swim-breakfast date with Brendan and Nicole they left message after message and I thought they were blowing me off.
It seemed reasonable that they would want a morning off from me stomping up the vine-covered back stairs at 7:30 to eat their English muffins, so I went straight from the pool to class and didn’t think too much about it. Around noon-time I checked my email and saw about 15 different messages from them. Where are you? Are you ok? What did you do this morning? We went to the pool and looked for you.
For some reason I take great comfort in the image of Brendan, dressed for work, standing at the front desk of the pool in the humidity and heat, asking our favorite lifeguard to check the bottom of the pool.
Those two were married yesterday, in a liturgy that was sacramental in every sense of the word. Over pasta and breadsticks about six weeks ago we put together a ritual that included four languages, three blessings, two pieces by Handel, and a procession to beat the band.
The Gospel reading was the Beatitudes, and as I listened to those words read while my beautiful friends stood side by side, and our other friends and their families surrounded them in joy, my breath was taken away by how perfect everything was. They already live the Beatitudes, they already live the Good News. They are peacemakers who hunger and thirst for justice. They are pure of heart and merciful. The truth that was confirmed in the light of that Gospel passage isn’t displayed in piety or lofty speech, but in the work those two do for other people, the love they show their friends, and that they went out of their way to look for me at the bottom of the pool.
Yes, there is a special grace involved in their sacramental marriage. Still, even before the vows, the air in the church was simply crackling with grace. By doing good work their whole lives they have surrounded themselves with other generous and loving people, and the power of the community’s love was nearly tangible.
Because I’m so practical (and cynical) I know it seems a little incongruous that I am often talking or writing of love. If love were only the romantic, indulgent kind displayed on all of the wedding cards that I browsed the other day, then I doubt I could be bothered for very long. But because of God and the people in my life I know fierce, diligent love. I know productive, gritty love. I know relentless, inescapable, sustaining, thrilling love. I have learned Father Zosima’s lesson that “active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared to love in dreams”, and led by the example of the people in my life I have tried to plunge into that love.
Nicole and Brendan let me tag along on their adventures in goodness, and I am so grateful. This morning I congratulated them once more and sat on the Common with a few of our other friends from our volunteer year. The sun was shining and the breeze was cool: a perfect September morning. We talked about work and family and told dumb jokes, and then I went off to noon mass. Sitting in the pew (a rare occurrence) I had trouble focusing, thinking about the previous day. In my distractedness clarity hit me like a ton of bricks: my whole life is a sacrament. The outward signs of grace are not objects - not my apartment or car or job. Relationships manifest grace, and I have better ones than I deserve.
Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.
Song of Songs 8: 6-7a
It seemed reasonable that they would want a morning off from me stomping up the vine-covered back stairs at 7:30 to eat their English muffins, so I went straight from the pool to class and didn’t think too much about it. Around noon-time I checked my email and saw about 15 different messages from them. Where are you? Are you ok? What did you do this morning? We went to the pool and looked for you.
For some reason I take great comfort in the image of Brendan, dressed for work, standing at the front desk of the pool in the humidity and heat, asking our favorite lifeguard to check the bottom of the pool.
Those two were married yesterday, in a liturgy that was sacramental in every sense of the word. Over pasta and breadsticks about six weeks ago we put together a ritual that included four languages, three blessings, two pieces by Handel, and a procession to beat the band.
The Gospel reading was the Beatitudes, and as I listened to those words read while my beautiful friends stood side by side, and our other friends and their families surrounded them in joy, my breath was taken away by how perfect everything was. They already live the Beatitudes, they already live the Good News. They are peacemakers who hunger and thirst for justice. They are pure of heart and merciful. The truth that was confirmed in the light of that Gospel passage isn’t displayed in piety or lofty speech, but in the work those two do for other people, the love they show their friends, and that they went out of their way to look for me at the bottom of the pool.
Yes, there is a special grace involved in their sacramental marriage. Still, even before the vows, the air in the church was simply crackling with grace. By doing good work their whole lives they have surrounded themselves with other generous and loving people, and the power of the community’s love was nearly tangible.
Because I’m so practical (and cynical) I know it seems a little incongruous that I am often talking or writing of love. If love were only the romantic, indulgent kind displayed on all of the wedding cards that I browsed the other day, then I doubt I could be bothered for very long. But because of God and the people in my life I know fierce, diligent love. I know productive, gritty love. I know relentless, inescapable, sustaining, thrilling love. I have learned Father Zosima’s lesson that “active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared to love in dreams”, and led by the example of the people in my life I have tried to plunge into that love.
Nicole and Brendan let me tag along on their adventures in goodness, and I am so grateful. This morning I congratulated them once more and sat on the Common with a few of our other friends from our volunteer year. The sun was shining and the breeze was cool: a perfect September morning. We talked about work and family and told dumb jokes, and then I went off to noon mass. Sitting in the pew (a rare occurrence) I had trouble focusing, thinking about the previous day. In my distractedness clarity hit me like a ton of bricks: my whole life is a sacrament. The outward signs of grace are not objects - not my apartment or car or job. Relationships manifest grace, and I have better ones than I deserve.
Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love,
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.
Song of Songs 8: 6-7a
Sunday, August 29, 2010
To reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go
“Too late have I loved you, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new!” Yesterday was the Memorial of St Augustine, one of Christianity’s most celebrated theologians, who had quite a way with words (who could forget “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet”!). His Confessions is considered the first autobiography, and the honesty with which he writes about his sordid youth and spiritual growth is quite moving.
Just over a year ago I rhapsodized about Ted Kennedy, and how rare it was in modern politics to find someone who was able to reinvent himself and improve while in the public eye. Because I can be such a silly, foolish person, I take great comfort in the examples of people who accomplish great things despite being real dopes sometimes.
Augustine is really my kind of saint. Give me someone messy over somebody neat anyday. Don’t get me wrong, I hold the precocious little saints like Dominic Savio in high regard, but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be friends with him. So many people want saints to be neat and tidy – born with some sort of magic that allows them to be heroic. Does that let us off the hook a bit, if we were born without the magic?
I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered thy will and covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter, extolling it to the skies. The way therein is not by ships or chariots or feet--indeed it was not as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were seated. For to go along that road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go. But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and swaying about this way and that--a changeable, twisting, fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as another rises. (Confessions, Book VIII.8.19)
You don’t live with a mouth like mine for as long as I have without learning how to apologize. For sure, sometimes my apologies are just words, crafted to get me out of something. But the upside of frequent apologizing is that it causes me to really evaluate my thoughts, words, and actions, and occasionally to do what true conversion requires: to change.
On separate occasions over the last two weeks people described me as “athletic” and “happy all the time”. I was really touched by those observations, because they are both things that I had to work so hard for. (I feel the same way when people say that my top notes are easy – not always so!) More than a magic blessing or earth-shattering conversion, I think that most of our change is as simple as deciding who we want to be, and working on it. I wanted to be athletic because I saw all my friends having fun at races, I wanted to be happy because I knew that negativity was a drain on the people around me. (I wanted to have an easy top because I wanted to get hired). Every time I get on stage I try to improve one thing from a previous performance – making those baby steps is all we can do. I wish I didn’t need so much improvement, but like Augustine (and Ignatius, and both Francises, and Dorothy Day, and...) I’m imperfect. Luckily, like them, I too am graced.
Just over a year ago I rhapsodized about Ted Kennedy, and how rare it was in modern politics to find someone who was able to reinvent himself and improve while in the public eye. Because I can be such a silly, foolish person, I take great comfort in the examples of people who accomplish great things despite being real dopes sometimes.
Augustine is really my kind of saint. Give me someone messy over somebody neat anyday. Don’t get me wrong, I hold the precocious little saints like Dominic Savio in high regard, but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be friends with him. So many people want saints to be neat and tidy – born with some sort of magic that allows them to be heroic. Does that let us off the hook a bit, if we were born without the magic?
I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered thy will and covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter, extolling it to the skies. The way therein is not by ships or chariots or feet--indeed it was not as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were seated. For to go along that road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go. But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and swaying about this way and that--a changeable, twisting, fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as another rises. (Confessions, Book VIII.8.19)
You don’t live with a mouth like mine for as long as I have without learning how to apologize. For sure, sometimes my apologies are just words, crafted to get me out of something. But the upside of frequent apologizing is that it causes me to really evaluate my thoughts, words, and actions, and occasionally to do what true conversion requires: to change.
On separate occasions over the last two weeks people described me as “athletic” and “happy all the time”. I was really touched by those observations, because they are both things that I had to work so hard for. (I feel the same way when people say that my top notes are easy – not always so!) More than a magic blessing or earth-shattering conversion, I think that most of our change is as simple as deciding who we want to be, and working on it. I wanted to be athletic because I saw all my friends having fun at races, I wanted to be happy because I knew that negativity was a drain on the people around me. (I wanted to have an easy top because I wanted to get hired). Every time I get on stage I try to improve one thing from a previous performance – making those baby steps is all we can do. I wish I didn’t need so much improvement, but like Augustine (and Ignatius, and both Francises, and Dorothy Day, and...) I’m imperfect. Luckily, like them, I too am graced.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Una sola, ma grande come il mare
When covering Musetta in La Boheme two summers ago, I easily watched Mimi die 40 times. Because the rehearsal process was so intense and private time was so scarce, every time the opening chords of Sono andati sounded I would turn into a total basket case, channeling every emotion that I didn’t have time or space to process, pretending it was grief for a fictional character. To this day I can’t make it through that moment of the fourth act without crying.
In the opening lines of the aria Mimi sings one of my favorite lines in all of opera: Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire, o una sola, ma grande come il mare. (There are many things that I would like to tell you, or one thing, but large as the ocean). Between Puccini’s melody, the way the vocal line descends amid the sparse orchestration, and the beauty of the poetry, that line simply tears me apart every time I hear it.
What is the one thing worth saying, that is as large as the ocean? Maybe it’s because I’m an over-emotional Italian, but I know the feeling of having something to say that is beyond words: a feeling that is deeper than feelings, that comes from our foundation. We long to express it - in art, in poetry, in music, in gesture, in prayer. There is something holy about that infinite expression.
I sometimes wonder if we try to define our God before we decide whether or not we believe in one. Rather that accept that there is something out there that is as large as the ocean, wholly integral to who we are and undeniable, we build a god and then decide if it suits us. One of the most liberating things I was ever told was that when my emotions run away with me, that is prayer. God is in the beautiful yearning that wants to share something too big to express. We don’t learn “about” God, using our reason to build a deity we can worship, but we find God in big beautiful spaces, and then start to name that God as we continue the encounter.
Similarly, I often wonder if we attempt to figure out what it is we want to say before we commit to saying it. As I write those words it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do (commonly referred to as “thinking before you speak”, an activity about which I know very little). But if there is truly something that is big as the ocean, and if we truly spend our whole lives exploring it, perhaps we should commit to sharing it even if we don’t know where that path will lead.
Sometimes when we start singing we don’t know what sounds are going to come out of our mouth, but we start anyway. What moves me so about Mimi’s moment in Sono andati is that she is saying what she wants - needs? - to say in her final moments, rather than ruminating on the depth of her emotion privately or keeping her truth under wraps. With her last breath she struggles to express the inexpressible: love. Although Puccini might not have put it there consciously, I find God in that moment, propelling devotion and affection toward our highest goal: sharing love and ourselves with other people.
In the opening lines of the aria Mimi sings one of my favorite lines in all of opera: Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire, o una sola, ma grande come il mare. (There are many things that I would like to tell you, or one thing, but large as the ocean). Between Puccini’s melody, the way the vocal line descends amid the sparse orchestration, and the beauty of the poetry, that line simply tears me apart every time I hear it.
What is the one thing worth saying, that is as large as the ocean? Maybe it’s because I’m an over-emotional Italian, but I know the feeling of having something to say that is beyond words: a feeling that is deeper than feelings, that comes from our foundation. We long to express it - in art, in poetry, in music, in gesture, in prayer. There is something holy about that infinite expression.
I sometimes wonder if we try to define our God before we decide whether or not we believe in one. Rather that accept that there is something out there that is as large as the ocean, wholly integral to who we are and undeniable, we build a god and then decide if it suits us. One of the most liberating things I was ever told was that when my emotions run away with me, that is prayer. God is in the beautiful yearning that wants to share something too big to express. We don’t learn “about” God, using our reason to build a deity we can worship, but we find God in big beautiful spaces, and then start to name that God as we continue the encounter.
Similarly, I often wonder if we attempt to figure out what it is we want to say before we commit to saying it. As I write those words it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do (commonly referred to as “thinking before you speak”, an activity about which I know very little). But if there is truly something that is big as the ocean, and if we truly spend our whole lives exploring it, perhaps we should commit to sharing it even if we don’t know where that path will lead.
Sometimes when we start singing we don’t know what sounds are going to come out of our mouth, but we start anyway. What moves me so about Mimi’s moment in Sono andati is that she is saying what she wants - needs? - to say in her final moments, rather than ruminating on the depth of her emotion privately or keeping her truth under wraps. With her last breath she struggles to express the inexpressible: love. Although Puccini might not have put it there consciously, I find God in that moment, propelling devotion and affection toward our highest goal: sharing love and ourselves with other people.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Where I am, What I miss
I haven't posted much this week, mostly because I hate writing those "today I got up. Then I walked to the window. Then I ate a sandwich" play-by-play posts. We have been working so hard here and been so busy that I haven't had time for any of the Deep Thoughts that I take such pride in sharing on my blog.
In lieu of Deep Thoughts there has been plenty of Little Advances and Hard Work, which is why I am here. Masterclasses and coachings have kept us busy, and I have learned so much from watching my colleagues on stage. We sang a truly lovely concert in a botanic garden a few days ago. The setting was so beautiful it made up for all the challenges of singing outside.
In lieu of Deep Thoughts there has been plenty of Little Advances and Hard Work, which is why I am here. Masterclasses and coachings have kept us busy, and I have learned so much from watching my colleagues on stage. We sang a truly lovely concert in a botanic garden a few days ago. The setting was so beautiful it made up for all the challenges of singing outside.
Last night was the mainstage production of Carmen. We had guest artists singing principal roles who had also been the faculty this week, and all of the Young Artists sang in the chorus. Having just done the show a year ago with BOC, I really enjoyed spending more time with the score and the drama. The orchestra was rip-roaring, the principals were to die for, and the audience was thrilled.
There is something nice about getting out of the big cities. Last fall and winter I did a few gigs up in New Hampshire, and it was a completely different world. Everyone was so friendly, our venues fed us, and people said things like "you have the most beautiful voice I've ever heard!" You just don't find that audience warmth in the big cities.
Speaking of big cities I just walked away from my computer and left it unattended. Apparently in Colorado people don't steal things, which has been another bit of culture shock. When I wrote my earlier post entitled "all the doors are unlocked" I didn't realize how much of a theme that would be here.
Despite all its charms, I am ready to leave the middle of the country and head back to my beloved coast. In a few days I will fly out back to the land of fast walkers, rude drivers and blunt neighbors. Steamboat is charming and kind and picturesque, but I will take real over picturesque any day. I am glad there are people who cherish this place the same way that I cherish New England, whose 'real' doesn't include a gritty neighborhood and a can lady, or a Podunk hometown.
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| What I miss |
Monday, August 16, 2010
Working hard
I often joke that as a brunette soprano of average height, the only thing that could every set me apart from the pack is my work ethic. I have never been afraid of hard work, as the saying goes, and I am generally happier when I am being productive than when I am overindulging in leisure.
In a masterclass this afternoon I was worked hard. I sang one of the arias I have been singing forever, and I tried to incorporate all of the notes that I have gotten on it all week - clean up some of the diction, focus the tone, and that perennial bit of wisdom: stand up straight. The opportunity that was pointed out to me today is one I have heard before and not worked hard enough at: to sing through the end of each phrase keeping breath support strong until the very end. The work doesn’t end when I have begun the phrase but when I have finished it.
Even though I love hard work, there is always a part of me that thinks “why can’t it be easier? I already work hard! I sacrifice so much for this, why does it always demand more?” When I reflect honestly on it, however, I can’t imagine not working so hard. In all areas of my life, I can’t imagine not always trying to improve in some way. In singing, in teaching, in being a friend, in virtue - the only sin is not trying to get better.
If I truly believe that what I am doing is good, that it is something I am meant to do and that serves the world, then it’s not work - it’s what I’m wired for. All the work we do to become who we are isn’t work when it is oriented toward our own success and completion. And all that we do, even if it has nothing to do with singing, or teaching, or whatever it is at which we are capable of excelling, makes us more who we are if we are willing to fight for this fundamental orientation toward growth.
Last night we had no rehearsals or coachings, and we all went to the home of a generous trustee who filled us with burgers and salads and snacks. We played volleyball and lay in hammocks, watched the sunset over a lake and sang around a fire pit. Being with others and growing in fellowship is as important an element of artistic growth as diligent practice in a tiny practice room. As the moon rose I was able to relax away from my own work ethic and allow my companions to guide me along in the path to better which I am always seeking.
In a masterclass this afternoon I was worked hard. I sang one of the arias I have been singing forever, and I tried to incorporate all of the notes that I have gotten on it all week - clean up some of the diction, focus the tone, and that perennial bit of wisdom: stand up straight. The opportunity that was pointed out to me today is one I have heard before and not worked hard enough at: to sing through the end of each phrase keeping breath support strong until the very end. The work doesn’t end when I have begun the phrase but when I have finished it.
Even though I love hard work, there is always a part of me that thinks “why can’t it be easier? I already work hard! I sacrifice so much for this, why does it always demand more?” When I reflect honestly on it, however, I can’t imagine not working so hard. In all areas of my life, I can’t imagine not always trying to improve in some way. In singing, in teaching, in being a friend, in virtue - the only sin is not trying to get better.
If I truly believe that what I am doing is good, that it is something I am meant to do and that serves the world, then it’s not work - it’s what I’m wired for. All the work we do to become who we are isn’t work when it is oriented toward our own success and completion. And all that we do, even if it has nothing to do with singing, or teaching, or whatever it is at which we are capable of excelling, makes us more who we are if we are willing to fight for this fundamental orientation toward growth.
Last night we had no rehearsals or coachings, and we all went to the home of a generous trustee who filled us with burgers and salads and snacks. We played volleyball and lay in hammocks, watched the sunset over a lake and sang around a fire pit. Being with others and growing in fellowship is as important an element of artistic growth as diligent practice in a tiny practice room. As the moon rose I was able to relax away from my own work ethic and allow my companions to guide me along in the path to better which I am always seeking.
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