Monday, January 17, 2011
New Blog Address
After many happy years with blogger I decided to move my blog over to Wordpress. I hope you will all come with me!
What we mean by love
Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." … So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? - Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a holiday, and I am lucky that many of my friends have spent the day sharing quotes and reflecting on King’s legacy of firm love in the service of justice. I am partial to the quote above, and thought of it when I woke up this morning. I can’t think of a better challenge than to be an extremist for love.
Never satisfied by soundbyte answers, I asked myself this morning "what does love mean?" What does it mean to be an extremist for love? Most people think of themselves as loving, most people think that they are doing the right thing. History fixates on the obviously horrific practitioners of hate, but most people are not that sort of extremist. And yet we, motivated by love, reach wildly different conclusions about how to act justly.
I just started learning a song cycle by Lori Laitman that I will be singing in a recital in April. The last song of the cycle has captivated me – it feels like it was written for my voice, and the poem, like all the poetry in the cycle, regularly moves me to tears (this complicates my learning process, to say the least). The poem, Pioneer Child’s Doll, begins: Here, child, is what we mean by love.
The poet, Judith Sornberger, described her inspiration in an interview. She saw pioneer child’s doll in a Nebraska museum: The head of the doll was actually an old, beat-up bedpost. You know, the knob at the top of a bedpost. How hard up would you have to be able to love a doll with that kind of head?
Here, child, is what we mean by love:
a block head doll of coarse-grained wood,
eyes two knife-pricks, mouth a crooked stab.
As we are given to love land
that few would covet, where no tree
dares stand up to the sky,
So shall you love her whose grain sack skirt
covers not petticoats, but sticks
whose curls must be imagined in the wood.
And as we break the stubborn sod
of our backs to know what we
can be on this earth,
So by the sweat of your palm
on her brow will you bring
to her flat face a sheen.
We know that love can transform, and we know that we are in need of transformation. About 6 times a day I pray Ignatius’ prayer for generosity: “Lord, teach me to be generous…”. I pray to be loving, to be kind, to be patient, to be fortified and transformed, to be better. And these are the prayers I think of as selfless. Could I sacrifice my prayers and my love to transform others instead?
Could love be the willingness to look at an ugly doll and see something lovely? Could it be the determination to be devoted to that which others would throw away? Could it be beholding the beauty in others? We lament that the world needs transformation, but are the true acts of heroism to see the world and behold in it the possibility of goodness? Isn’t that why we still envision Dr. King’s dream?
Maybe it’s more self-centeredness to imagine that the world hinges on how I see it, that if I look on it with love it will meet my expectations. I’m not sure I know how to pray for anyone other than myself. A self-emptying prayer that turns me inside out could be the loving extreme to which Dr. King exhorts me. Perhaps I am called to an outward facing love that wills the other into grace.
Love, grace, God, prayer – these things are the types of wonderful mysteries that we could talk about for eternity and never explain or exhaust. Dr. King set big, lofty goals that stretch us and our world. For me, it’s goal enough to try each day to discover more of what we mean by love.
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Mary the Apostle
Does anyone really exist, or are people only who we make them into?
Yesterday a bunch of folks in my quirky Twitter world were tweeting away about St Mary of Magdala, the apostle to the Apostles. A lot of people in my circles are set on exonerating Mary, and with good reason. She picked up a bad reputation throughout the middle ages. I was fascinated to discover that a rise in a presentation of a penitent Magdelene occurred during the Catholic Reformation, when the whole Church was repenting and looking for a model of contrition. In retrospect, learning that was probably the turning point toward a favorable view of Church history and a frustration with retroactive indignance: no matter how we’ve messed up, there is always a reason why.
And boy, did we mess it up with Mary of Magdala. For better or worse she is part of our collective consciousness as a loose woman, a characterization which is found nowhere in Scripture. Better writers than I have documented the conflation of various biblical women into Mary. If we look at the evidence, we see that she was a dear disciple and a leader among the Apostles, but even those of us who struggle to proclaim this are evangelizing the in the shadow of myth, aware that what we are trying to do is fundamentally an un-doing.
Yesterday I was also privy to conversations about another Mary, and her sister, Martha, both stars of one of the few Bible stories that features two women. Unfortunately it also features sibling rivalry and the chastisement of a hard-working woman, something hard-working women everywhere have been trying to explain away ever since.
I couldn’t help thinking, in the midst of both of these discussions, “how much does any of this matter?” If we get these women figured out, does it really change anything? They lived 2000 years ago and have long since gone to a place where their reputations cannot harm them. Reimagining them doesn’t change them – but it does change us.
We rely on our sacred narratives for permission on how to behave. If Mary and Martha is a story of passivity vs. activity, we know who wins. And for women, that’s what we’re stuck with, because so few of our sacred stories have female characters. I wonder if men pore over the characterizations of Peter, Thomas, or other Apostles, go searching for the “stories about men” the way some women scramble to find in “stories about women” evidence that God loves us, and that we matter too. I doubt it – all history is “stories about men”. Why would they imagine themselves Matthew or Zaccheus when they could be Paul? They could be Jesus.
This is not to disparage the exegetical or imaginative skills of the wonderful men I know who look to the Bible for guidance. They are lucky to have so many models, and in truth I often share their models – loving Zaccheus as inspiration to short people everywhere, and Peter as a model of loud-mouthed-bozo-makes-good. We should take inspiration where we get it. But I won’t pretend that women and men are on a level interpretive playing field.
The woman at the well tells me it’s ok to question and to challenge. Phew. The woman with the alabaster jar tells me I can be lavish in my giving. Good to know. The woman with the hemorrhage (are we noticing a theme of namelessness here?) tells me I can take initiative. That's a relief, since I probably would have anyway. When I look over my academic history I realize most of my Scripture study has been focused on these women. I have spent countless hours picking apart these stories, searching for historical context and literary types, and anything else that would help me understand these few, mostly nameless female characters.
So who is Mary of Magdala, and why does it matter? The historical Mary is long gone, lost forever to the mythologies that make figures a reflection of our age. Can our age allow her to be what the simplest evidence points to: a faithful follower of Jesus who stayed with him until the end, and a proclaimer of the Gospel?
Every year we read or sing the Easter Sequence, in a translation packed with facile rhymes. And every year when we get to the line “Speak, Mary, declaring what you saw, wayfaring” I literally thank God. Tucked away in that tiny couplet, in which the Church talks back to the Scripture that week by week talks to us, is permission to proclaim what we see. Sometimes that sliver of guidance is all we get, and it’s up to us to figure out the rest of what it means, for us and for history.
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| St. Mary of Magdala by Eileen Cantlin Verbus. Copyright FutureChurch. For more information about St. Mary of Magdala celebrations, go to www.futurechurch.org |
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Imagination
My suspicion is that I am unbearable to shop with. I have no problem traipsing all over a store, stopping to look at any bright thing, touching everything soft, smelling every candle. I imagine each item in my life - shoes on my feet, vases in my kitchen, linens on my bed. And then I walk out without buying a thing. Part of the reason is my miserly nature, but I also am skeptical that owning whatever I'd looked at could compare to my imagination.
Last summer I heard a series of lectures by John Bell, who snarkily referred to the imagination as "the bogus gift of the Holy Spirit". The magic of what happens inside our heads is intangible, so we don't value it, or talk about its power. My beloved Augustine declared "to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go" - but unless we have imagined our goal we can't begin the journey.
The great story of the conversion of Ignatius is that he read the lives of the saints, and when he imagined himself doing great things like they did, rather than the "great" things he read in his chivalric novels, he was filled with a satisfaction that didn't abate. And so his imagination propelled him into heroic action because he listened to it and made it reality.
I was captivated by the line in President Obama's speech last night about expanding our moral imagination. I'm not going to parse every line of the speech or imply that he was making a sweeping statement about the role of imagination in our moral development. I will simply say I was happy to hear the use of our imaginations stated as a worthy aspiration. What is empathy if not the imagining of the inner life of another?
Beyond empathy, our imaginations shape our moral life. I try every day to be better than I was the day before, because I can imagine a life in which I am better than I am. The relentless pursuit of improvement to which we are called can be exhausting. We are guided in that pursuit by a vision that is ours alone, purportedly trapped in our imaginations yet freer than our habits.
Last summer I heard a series of lectures by John Bell, who snarkily referred to the imagination as "the bogus gift of the Holy Spirit". The magic of what happens inside our heads is intangible, so we don't value it, or talk about its power. My beloved Augustine declared "to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go" - but unless we have imagined our goal we can't begin the journey.
The great story of the conversion of Ignatius is that he read the lives of the saints, and when he imagined himself doing great things like they did, rather than the "great" things he read in his chivalric novels, he was filled with a satisfaction that didn't abate. And so his imagination propelled him into heroic action because he listened to it and made it reality.
I was captivated by the line in President Obama's speech last night about expanding our moral imagination. I'm not going to parse every line of the speech or imply that he was making a sweeping statement about the role of imagination in our moral development. I will simply say I was happy to hear the use of our imaginations stated as a worthy aspiration. What is empathy if not the imagining of the inner life of another?
Beyond empathy, our imaginations shape our moral life. I try every day to be better than I was the day before, because I can imagine a life in which I am better than I am. The relentless pursuit of improvement to which we are called can be exhausting. We are guided in that pursuit by a vision that is ours alone, purportedly trapped in our imaginations yet freer than our habits.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Stuffed with grace
What part of speech is "religious"? If you answered “adjective” you’re right, except, of course, when religious is a noun. Now remember: a religious is religious, but you can be religious without being a religious. Teaching is difficult for countless reasons, but one very time-consuming part of what I teach is that I am constantly clarifying what we mean by words that over centuries have acquired mind-boggling pluralities of meaning. Take Church: I am going to Church, that building on the corner is my Church, she’s part of my Church, I teach Church history. The more ordinary the word, the more meanings it has. Fathers of the Church, desert fathers, our Father, bless me Father for I have sinned, I have to ask my father. Eucharist is a meal, a sacrifice, a gathering, a thanksgiving. And don’t even get me started on water, the simplest of symbols used in Christian worship. Water gives us life, water kills us, water cleans us, water gets us wet. It’s confusing and comforting – the simplest things in our lives are exploding with meaning. I was talking to a colleague recently about the time my apartment was burgled, and because we both work in theology I pretty quickly turned the conversation to how a concept of sacramentality helped me deal with the loss of objects. Things are important to us. Things, like people, can be stuffed with grace. I didn’t have to feel guilty mourning the loss of things because my sacramental faith allows me to recognize their meaning. That’s what was on my mind recently when, with a wise and thoughtful group of people, the conversation turned to detachment. I get why detachment is attractive, and brilliant people have promoted it as a path to contentment, but I’m going to take a pass. Give me attachment , a passionate devotion to things, relationships, people, and life. I’ll take the pain when it comes – I’ve known grief, and it has shown me not the foolishness of my attachments but of the blazing heat of my love. Grace allows the ordinary to be transformed into the extraordinary, and gives us permission to love the thing because we love the grace. | ||||||
Saturday, January 8, 2011
They'll know we are Christians by our love.
Something awful happened today.
The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords is a specific, personal tragedy, and I don't want to distract from it's specificity by making her a symbol. Yet we can't deny the country was shocked into awareness today, and many of us are thinking about the consequences of mean-spiritedness.
I think a lot about mean-spiritedness in my own religious context. Sometimes I wonder if anyone can be quite as mean as Catholics can be. So many of my fellow Catholics have bought the current politicial us-vs-them mentality hook, line and sinker. They are embattled, in the fortress, sole and indispensible defenders of the Body of Christ. If they do not keep the unworthy from the community, no one will! I don't have the heart for that sort of combat, and I have the historical perspective to know it's not up to me to decide who is in and who is out.
That's where my head was when I got to mass this afternoon. The first thing I did with the organist was run the psalm - "The Lord will bless his people with peace". It was almost laughable in light of the heartwrenching afternoon. The Lord will bless us with peace - will we have it?
The first reading announced a favored one of God who "shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street." How often do we who cry out think we are being prophetic when we are really just being loud? The 'soldiers in the army of Christ' who profess a Church militant, who want to root out those who are unworthy of the faith - they may be as misguided as those who expected a zealous and violent Messiah.
God confounds us, and rather than drawing the boundaries we would like upon the Chosen People, God opens wide the doors and does what we least expect.
Fast-forward to the second reading. "In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him." Remember, this is Peter talking - not exactly one for welcoming the stranger and opening wide the doors. If a primary theme of Acts is the demarcation of boundaries, its ultimate conclusion is that the net Christ cast was much wider than initially imagined. However you want to put it: "All God's critters got a place in the choir" or "Here comes everybody", the message is clear. Those who fear God and act justly are acceptable.
And then the familiar Gospel reading, with it's beautiful climax: "he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'" That's what I expected to blog about when I woke up this morning, how we need to listen to the voices that tell us we are pleasing, and listen for God's voice among them. After I was shocked by violence today, the Scripture did its marvelous work of meeting me where I am. The voice did not whisper to only a few. God's voice thundered to all.
I give a lot of thought to ecclesiology, enough to know that no religion exists without some sort of boundaries. How much damage do we do when we draw the lines too violently, when we presume the worst of people and don't act with charity?
As we prepared our altar to participate in Christ's sacrifice and the Church's feast, we sang "They'll know we are Christians by our love". Love is not pompous, nor rude, nor self-interested. I have to work as hard as anyone to live the love that Paul describes in 1 Cor 13. I know there are people who claim to be acting out of "tough love" when they harangue Christians who don't meet their expectations. Sorry folks, but I have to call shenanigans on that. I know what charity looks like, and vitriolic criticism it ain't.
It's not good for any of us to live in a constant state of defensiveness, ready to throw a punch at anyone who endangers our Church (or our country, or our paradigm, or...). I for one am ready to relax, to let my guard down against a Them who may not even exist, and trust that God can take care of us, of the Church, and even of God's self.
The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords is a specific, personal tragedy, and I don't want to distract from it's specificity by making her a symbol. Yet we can't deny the country was shocked into awareness today, and many of us are thinking about the consequences of mean-spiritedness.
I think a lot about mean-spiritedness in my own religious context. Sometimes I wonder if anyone can be quite as mean as Catholics can be. So many of my fellow Catholics have bought the current politicial us-vs-them mentality hook, line and sinker. They are embattled, in the fortress, sole and indispensible defenders of the Body of Christ. If they do not keep the unworthy from the community, no one will! I don't have the heart for that sort of combat, and I have the historical perspective to know it's not up to me to decide who is in and who is out.
That's where my head was when I got to mass this afternoon. The first thing I did with the organist was run the psalm - "The Lord will bless his people with peace". It was almost laughable in light of the heartwrenching afternoon. The Lord will bless us with peace - will we have it?
The first reading announced a favored one of God who "shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street." How often do we who cry out think we are being prophetic when we are really just being loud? The 'soldiers in the army of Christ' who profess a Church militant, who want to root out those who are unworthy of the faith - they may be as misguided as those who expected a zealous and violent Messiah.
God confounds us, and rather than drawing the boundaries we would like upon the Chosen People, God opens wide the doors and does what we least expect.
Fast-forward to the second reading. "In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him." Remember, this is Peter talking - not exactly one for welcoming the stranger and opening wide the doors. If a primary theme of Acts is the demarcation of boundaries, its ultimate conclusion is that the net Christ cast was much wider than initially imagined. However you want to put it: "All God's critters got a place in the choir" or "Here comes everybody", the message is clear. Those who fear God and act justly are acceptable.
And then the familiar Gospel reading, with it's beautiful climax: "he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'" That's what I expected to blog about when I woke up this morning, how we need to listen to the voices that tell us we are pleasing, and listen for God's voice among them. After I was shocked by violence today, the Scripture did its marvelous work of meeting me where I am. The voice did not whisper to only a few. God's voice thundered to all.
I give a lot of thought to ecclesiology, enough to know that no religion exists without some sort of boundaries. How much damage do we do when we draw the lines too violently, when we presume the worst of people and don't act with charity?
As we prepared our altar to participate in Christ's sacrifice and the Church's feast, we sang "They'll know we are Christians by our love". Love is not pompous, nor rude, nor self-interested. I have to work as hard as anyone to live the love that Paul describes in 1 Cor 13. I know there are people who claim to be acting out of "tough love" when they harangue Christians who don't meet their expectations. Sorry folks, but I have to call shenanigans on that. I know what charity looks like, and vitriolic criticism it ain't.
It's not good for any of us to live in a constant state of defensiveness, ready to throw a punch at anyone who endangers our Church (or our country, or our paradigm, or...). I for one am ready to relax, to let my guard down against a Them who may not even exist, and trust that God can take care of us, of the Church, and even of God's self.
In all things, charity
In essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty. In all things, charity. - Attributed to St Augustine.
Something awful happened today.
A politician was shot and people made it political and then they were criticized for being political. We heard she died and were horrified, we heard the reports were wrong and were relieved, then were sad again as the death toll rose to include a child, then relieved again to hear that the shooter was likely not motivated by politics but by mental illness - as if the lunacy of the violent one could undo the reality that was present long before this event: we live in a world that is horribly broken, and it is our own brokenness that makes it so.
I am partisan and constantly wavering between being proud and ashamed of the fact. When I am in a good mood I truly believe that most people want what's best for all people, and we just disagree on how to achieve it. I tend to side with one political party, but I try with all my might to look for the best intentions in the agendas of those with whom I disagree politically. Believe me, this suspension of contentiousness goes against all of my natural inclinations.
It is hard for me, but I do my best, which leaves me frustrated with those who won't at least try to be charitable in their discourse. Politicians get elected by fearmongering and mudslinging, playing to the worst parts of our nature. Our society and our government become about a Them - sometimes nameless, sometimes those who voted the "wrong" way, or "activist" judges, or "Kenyan" presidents - anyone who is out to get us. We should hate Them, defend ourselves from Them, target Them, maybe even destroy Them.
Coming under fire today (pun intended) was Sarah Palin. I try not to comment much on Sarah Palin, for a number of reasons. First, I honestly don't know where my general distaste for the far right ends and a legitimate critique of her begins. Also, I am sensitive to how rare her aggressiveness is in a female public figure, and I don't want to come down hard on someone with whom I disagree when she is demonstrating a brashness that I adopt myself. It was reading some excerpts from her recent book that convinced me of a mean-spiritedness in her public persona that is offensive and unhelpful.
We use politics as an excuse to be mean-spirited, and that us-vs-them lack of charity bleeds into our other interactions as well. That mindset in Christian circles will be the subject of another post. And while I don't expect politics to follow the same rules as faith, it would be nice if the ubiquitous lip-service paid to Christianity manifested in something other than a further widening of the imagined chasm between us and them.
Friday, January 7, 2011
New Bookshelves
My cramped apartment mandates a Spartan decorating style, with which my simple tastes have easily jived. The one challenge since I moved in was what to do with all the books. For years they lived on teetering bookshelves which one by one were removed from the apartment as shelves sagged or fell off and joints hinged at angles that were not right. Books migrated under the bed, out in the hall, in unused drawers – anywhere that I could fit them. I bought one new shelf for music, and kept one old shelf by the bed.
My brother helped me put that shelf together in the middle of the big room I had all to myself during my volunteer year in New Bedford (I would later find out that enormous bedroom had once been the upstairs unit’s living room when our house was a two-family). It was cheap and flimsy when I bought it, and even my dear brother’s best efforts could only make it last for so long. Like most things in my life, I stretched it way beyond it’s life-expectancy, and every morning I opened my eyes to see a wobbly, dusty bookshelf topped with a row of language books on top of which my alarm clock (more than a decade old, natch) was uneasily perched.
Last summer I took a course in arts and worship that was not at all what I expected, which aggravated me at the time (and, to be honest, still aggravates me a bit). It was a lot more talking-at-collages and a lot less liturgical-theology than I hoped, but in the course of all the quiet time it offered us I gave a lot of thought to hospitality, particularly the hospitality I offer myself. I love beauty but surround myself with unbeautiful things. I try to be a person of good quality, but I content myself with an atmosphere of poor quality. My bookshelves sag and I leave them be.
I wrote many reflections on that over the summer, some of which are too personal to share [Sidebar: Yes, there are things I consider too personal to share, despite my aggressive oversharing.] One I found today offered this: To what am I being invited? To simplify and beautify. I deserve beautiful things in my life. I deserve cleanliness, neatness and health. What holds me back here? Am I too lazy to care for myself even though I find energy for a million other things? Is it that self-care doesn’t build me up in peoples’ eyes the way accomplishment of other kind does?
And today I wonder too – when I have been acclaimed or praised, when I have accomplished what I set out to do, does coming home to an ugly bookshelf satisfy the corner of my heart that knows that the praise is bullshit? When people tell me that I’m good or smart or beautiful or kind or talented, and I don’t believe them, does an ugly apartment give solace to the part of me that feels like a fraud? At least here, where I’m alone, I get what I truly deserve.
Two days ago I remembered the promise of hospitality I made to myself over the summer and replaced the stupid bookshelf. Now I just have to do something about those ugly walls.
DISCLAIMER: This was written under the influence of a Tori Amos CD
My brother helped me put that shelf together in the middle of the big room I had all to myself during my volunteer year in New Bedford (I would later find out that enormous bedroom had once been the upstairs unit’s living room when our house was a two-family). It was cheap and flimsy when I bought it, and even my dear brother’s best efforts could only make it last for so long. Like most things in my life, I stretched it way beyond it’s life-expectancy, and every morning I opened my eyes to see a wobbly, dusty bookshelf topped with a row of language books on top of which my alarm clock (more than a decade old, natch) was uneasily perched.
Last summer I took a course in arts and worship that was not at all what I expected, which aggravated me at the time (and, to be honest, still aggravates me a bit). It was a lot more talking-at-collages and a lot less liturgical-theology than I hoped, but in the course of all the quiet time it offered us I gave a lot of thought to hospitality, particularly the hospitality I offer myself. I love beauty but surround myself with unbeautiful things. I try to be a person of good quality, but I content myself with an atmosphere of poor quality. My bookshelves sag and I leave them be.
I wrote many reflections on that over the summer, some of which are too personal to share [Sidebar: Yes, there are things I consider too personal to share, despite my aggressive oversharing.] One I found today offered this: To what am I being invited? To simplify and beautify. I deserve beautiful things in my life. I deserve cleanliness, neatness and health. What holds me back here? Am I too lazy to care for myself even though I find energy for a million other things? Is it that self-care doesn’t build me up in peoples’ eyes the way accomplishment of other kind does?
And today I wonder too – when I have been acclaimed or praised, when I have accomplished what I set out to do, does coming home to an ugly bookshelf satisfy the corner of my heart that knows that the praise is bullshit? When people tell me that I’m good or smart or beautiful or kind or talented, and I don’t believe them, does an ugly apartment give solace to the part of me that feels like a fraud? At least here, where I’m alone, I get what I truly deserve.
Two days ago I remembered the promise of hospitality I made to myself over the summer and replaced the stupid bookshelf. Now I just have to do something about those ugly walls.
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| The new shelves |
DISCLAIMER: This was written under the influence of a Tori Amos CD
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Sick Day
After an odd and, frankly, frightening bout of fever and chills last night, I took a sick day today from work and devoted myself to the task of getting better. For those who don't personally know me it's hard to communicate just how extraordinary this is. My mother recently reminded me that I insisted on getting my wisdom teeth out at the beginning of February vacation week so I wouldn't miss any school. My first year at my current job I had a wracking cough for six weeks and didn't take a day off. If I counted all the sick days I have taken since kindergarten, they might number a dozen.
No one is a workhorse without some sort of pathology. We're avoiding something else, we're convinced no one else can do it right, we are unrecovered oldest children. We are hung up on being needed. In a few weeks I will leave my position as PR director of Boston Opera Collaborative after a total of four years on the leadership team. Two years ago I finished my term as President and left the office in the more-than-capable hands of a colleague and dear friend, and I will leave this directorship to an equally extraordinary woman. I need the time, and the organization needs fresh blood and fresh ideas, but it is so hard to walk away.
When I decided not to run for a second term as President I was willing myself into humility. I needed to say "this will go on with out me" and I needed to mean it. That I was dragooned into another leadership position (an experience for which, despite initial reluctance, I am grateful) mitigated the withdrawal symptoms.
Graveyards are full of indispensable people. Of all the maxims that roll around inside my head, that may be the one I need to hear most. Everything will go on without me. Everything will go on if I am not in charge of everything, if I don't always have my way. When I realize that I am "nothing special" I can be overwhelmed with the grace of knowing I am everything special, that my specialness doesn't come from doing what no one else can do but from the uniqueness of my Creation. I have already been loved into being. Running the world won't improve on that.
So this morning, when I woke at 5:00 am shivering and sweating, I got out of bed, emailed everyone to say I wasn't coming in, sent enough guidance to people filling in for me, and lay down again. Everything would go on without me. I could rest without disappointing anyone and without ceding my power. Life went on while I slept: a reality I can finally accept.
No one is a workhorse without some sort of pathology. We're avoiding something else, we're convinced no one else can do it right, we are unrecovered oldest children. We are hung up on being needed. In a few weeks I will leave my position as PR director of Boston Opera Collaborative after a total of four years on the leadership team. Two years ago I finished my term as President and left the office in the more-than-capable hands of a colleague and dear friend, and I will leave this directorship to an equally extraordinary woman. I need the time, and the organization needs fresh blood and fresh ideas, but it is so hard to walk away.
When I decided not to run for a second term as President I was willing myself into humility. I needed to say "this will go on with out me" and I needed to mean it. That I was dragooned into another leadership position (an experience for which, despite initial reluctance, I am grateful) mitigated the withdrawal symptoms.
Graveyards are full of indispensable people. Of all the maxims that roll around inside my head, that may be the one I need to hear most. Everything will go on without me. Everything will go on if I am not in charge of everything, if I don't always have my way. When I realize that I am "nothing special" I can be overwhelmed with the grace of knowing I am everything special, that my specialness doesn't come from doing what no one else can do but from the uniqueness of my Creation. I have already been loved into being. Running the world won't improve on that.
So this morning, when I woke at 5:00 am shivering and sweating, I got out of bed, emailed everyone to say I wasn't coming in, sent enough guidance to people filling in for me, and lay down again. Everything would go on without me. I could rest without disappointing anyone and without ceding my power. Life went on while I slept: a reality I can finally accept.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Use Words When Necessary
I’m not really one for New Year’s Resolutions, but the one commitment I made to myself for the last calendar year was that I would write in a journal every night before I went to bed. It didn’t have to be long or profound. I figured that if I didn’t have something worth saying at the end of each day, then the day hadn’t been a success.
I have a hard time pinpointing why I write. On my best days it is because I think I have something to say, on my worst it is because I am desperate for someone to care what I have to say. When I look over my writing on this blog, I see a decline in the number of posts I have written, but an increase in focus: in other words, more of my posts have a point. I usually tell myself that if my post can’t fit one or more of the tabs I already have it’s too rambly to be shared. I need to know what I want to say.
When I was still cutting my teeth in singing, my performances must have been painful to watch. I was stone-faced, unexpressive, dead behind the eyes. I waffled between not knowing what I had to say and being terrified of saying it. If I tried to be expressive and failed, everyone would know I was a failure, and worse yet, everyone would know that I thought I was worth listening to. I was a moderately unhappy late -adolescent, and the idea of anyone knowing that I wanted to express myself was a terror beyond imagining.
As time has gone on I have made progress toward singing with a message, and I struggle to make that message into something I live all day. That we were created by a God who loves us and who is just as real as the suffering that smacks us in the face every day; that we owe something to each other; that duty and discipline are as important as liberty; that beauty matters; that learning has intrinsic value; that the intensity of our emotions is the key to our humanity; that life can be so much fun if you do it right: if that is what I want to say, am I living in a way that shares that all day long?
Like most of us, I fail too often in my attempts to make my actions match my heart. I do not do the good that I want but I do the evil I do not want. (Rom 7:19) And so I turn to feeble words to get my point across, knowing that the words may help me find my heart and further help me live.
I have a hard time pinpointing why I write. On my best days it is because I think I have something to say, on my worst it is because I am desperate for someone to care what I have to say. When I look over my writing on this blog, I see a decline in the number of posts I have written, but an increase in focus: in other words, more of my posts have a point. I usually tell myself that if my post can’t fit one or more of the tabs I already have it’s too rambly to be shared. I need to know what I want to say.
When I was still cutting my teeth in singing, my performances must have been painful to watch. I was stone-faced, unexpressive, dead behind the eyes. I waffled between not knowing what I had to say and being terrified of saying it. If I tried to be expressive and failed, everyone would know I was a failure, and worse yet, everyone would know that I thought I was worth listening to. I was a moderately unhappy late -adolescent, and the idea of anyone knowing that I wanted to express myself was a terror beyond imagining.
As time has gone on I have made progress toward singing with a message, and I struggle to make that message into something I live all day. That we were created by a God who loves us and who is just as real as the suffering that smacks us in the face every day; that we owe something to each other; that duty and discipline are as important as liberty; that beauty matters; that learning has intrinsic value; that the intensity of our emotions is the key to our humanity; that life can be so much fun if you do it right: if that is what I want to say, am I living in a way that shares that all day long?
Like most of us, I fail too often in my attempts to make my actions match my heart. I do not do the good that I want but I do the evil I do not want. (Rom 7:19) And so I turn to feeble words to get my point across, knowing that the words may help me find my heart and further help me live.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood
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.
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.
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.
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