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
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
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.
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.
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 wíll 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 wíll 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.
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, 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.
Monday, August 9, 2010
The will for adventure
Once upon a time there was a woman who loved to stay home. She knew that she should love adventure and sometimes she truly did, but most of the time she wanted access to the familiar, to sleep in her own bed, and to know where all the light switches were.
I inherited this homebody streak from a family member who shall remain nameless, and I also inherited the willpower to beat it when I know I should make an effort. That is why this morning I set out for Colorado for another “opera camp” experience like my trip to Novafeltria (documentation of which was the purpose for starting this blog in the first place).
That was two years ago, and it feels it. These past two years have been really transformative and maturing – but I didn’t start this post to talk about how old I feel. I’m still young enough to have been happy that my flight was out of Hartford this morning so my Mommy could drive me to the airport before dawn.
My enormous pink suitcase was overweight when I finally got to the front of the line (a line which I believe I saw an entire family cut – really?). I already had to pay a fee just to check the bag – and I’m not one to get all “airlines these days”, but I do find that a little annoying. The extra weight was going to result in another fee. They asked if I wanted to take out 7 pounds worth of stuff to get it under the limit. I looked at my already overstuffed shoulder bag I was carrying on, and I looked at the lock on the suitcase, and I thought of the cash back I get on my credit card and responded “No.” (Is that another sign of my age? My willingness to throw money at problems?) The clerk looked shocked. I said “It’s six in the morning, and I just want to get on the plane” as I handed over my Capital One card.
I had the dreaded middle seat on the flight to Dallas. The man on the aisle was very large, and I spent most of my time balancing myself so that I wouldn’t be in his space (which, of course, was my space). A screaming child was behind me and I battled through the early morning exhaustion only to land in the Central Time Zone - and then again in Mountain Time Zone - and have to battle through those same hours all over again.
A few folks on the 10 am flight from Dallas to Denver had brought their Chinese food on the plane. Another moment of ‘really?’ And I thought I was rude for having had an onion bagel in the terminal. The flight was uneventful (a few more screaming babies), and I landed in Denver about an hour before our rides were to pick us up.
I got pretty lucky with my car-mates on the four hour drive up to Steamboat. If there’s anything worse than spending two weeks at a program with people who irritate you, it’s spending four hours trapped in a car. The company was good, and we even enjoyed my family tradition of singing "On the Road Again". Despite a little altitude uneasiness when we were up particularly high, by the time we got to Steamboat I felt fine (despite having been up since 2:30 Mountain Time and only having eaten a bagel).
Check-in, dinner, were all the usual blend of mildly awkward introductions and asking where the towels are kept, and then we got to the best part of the evening: rehearsal for an arias concert. As tough as it is to have to sing on such little rest, it is nice to get that first see-and-be-seen sing-off out of the way. We got a very kind speech about not being nervous, and I sat back and thought “I’m not nervous at all”. I don’t think I would have made it this long if I were still affected by other peoples’ opinions of my voice. In the end, I sang like I was dehydrated and had been up all night - which was pretty much true. But my high notes were nice.
I inherited this homebody streak from a family member who shall remain nameless, and I also inherited the willpower to beat it when I know I should make an effort. That is why this morning I set out for Colorado for another “opera camp” experience like my trip to Novafeltria (documentation of which was the purpose for starting this blog in the first place).
That was two years ago, and it feels it. These past two years have been really transformative and maturing – but I didn’t start this post to talk about how old I feel. I’m still young enough to have been happy that my flight was out of Hartford this morning so my Mommy could drive me to the airport before dawn.
I had the dreaded middle seat on the flight to Dallas. The man on the aisle was very large, and I spent most of my time balancing myself so that I wouldn’t be in his space (which, of course, was my space). A screaming child was behind me and I battled through the early morning exhaustion only to land in the Central Time Zone - and then again in Mountain Time Zone - and have to battle through those same hours all over again.
A few folks on the 10 am flight from Dallas to Denver had brought their Chinese food on the plane. Another moment of ‘really?’ And I thought I was rude for having had an onion bagel in the terminal. The flight was uneventful (a few more screaming babies), and I landed in Denver about an hour before our rides were to pick us up.
I got pretty lucky with my car-mates on the four hour drive up to Steamboat. If there’s anything worse than spending two weeks at a program with people who irritate you, it’s spending four hours trapped in a car. The company was good, and we even enjoyed my family tradition of singing "On the Road Again". Despite a little altitude uneasiness when we were up particularly high, by the time we got to Steamboat I felt fine (despite having been up since 2:30 Mountain Time and only having eaten a bagel).
Check-in, dinner, were all the usual blend of mildly awkward introductions and asking where the towels are kept, and then we got to the best part of the evening: rehearsal for an arias concert. As tough as it is to have to sing on such little rest, it is nice to get that first see-and-be-seen sing-off out of the way. We got a very kind speech about not being nervous, and I sat back and thought “I’m not nervous at all”. I don’t think I would have made it this long if I were still affected by other peoples’ opinions of my voice. In the end, I sang like I was dehydrated and had been up all night - which was pretty much true. But my high notes were nice.
To wrap up the day someone was generous enough to drive to the grocery, where I stocked up on hummus and fudgcicles, the two things that have sustained me most of the summer. We also passed a neon bunny that looks like it’s on drugs.
The picture didn’t’ really come out, but that might actually suit the mood. Nearly 24 hours after my adventure anxiously began, I am at a picnic table under bright stars in the mountains, and it all seems perfectly normal.
When I went to bed last night and even when I woke up this morning I didn’t really want to go, what with all the uncertainty, meeting new people, unfamiliar beds and light-switch-placements. But I have trained myself to swallow my anxiety and just get on the plane. Inside me there is one person who loves adventure and one who loves consistency, and I’ve learned to let the two battle it out.
I hope to post once a day as I did in Italia due anni fa. I had the same hesitation about sharing my travel plans then as I do now, and I refer back to my warnings to potential thieves that I wrote in my very first post on this blog. I would also add that my upstairs neighbor sent me off with a promise not to let anyone touch my sh*t. So watch yourselves.
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| The stairs I will fall down in the night. Note their close proximity to the bedroom door. |
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Wrapping beautiful presents
Sometime I imagine that I will wake up in the morning and magically be the sort of person who can wrap presents beautifully. I will keep a clean desk, I will keep a clean house. I will be able to wear clothes that fasten with ties without looking like I just escaped from being tied to a stake. I will speak softly and prudently and above all calmly, I won’t ever have to look back with chagrin at having run off at the mouth, I won’t rush into things without thinking or get spacy while trying to get things done. I will wrap beautiful presents.
None of this has happened yet. In a recent conversation with my mother we joked about the frequency with which I fall, and she took great pleasure in regaling me with stories from my toddler-hood of my life on the border of reckless and fearless (I remember the time you charged into the water in Rhode Island and the wave knocked you over, I remember the time you took a flying leap onto the sled and the sled didn’t move and you slammed your face into the snow…she takes a bit more joy in these stories than is seemly). That’s where I have always lived my life, on the edges of good taste and good sense, hoping that there is enough room for me to spaz out and not hit anything.
Discipline and control have always been my biggest challenges, and when the reserved and soft-spoken tell me they admire how I express myself, I tell them how I admire them, able to be calm, able to be quiet. I have to work hard at neatness of all kinds – in my house, in my communication, in my appearance, and in my demeanor.
I imagine I will wake up in the morning and all this will be easier. Instead, I wake up every morning with sheets all over the floor, leave my pajamas somewhere in the path between the bed and shower, drip water all over the bathroom, empty the coffee pot and don’t rinse it, slop cream cheese on a bagel while poppy seeds fly all over the kitchen, and leave my dishes in the sink for later. But I realized today that I wake up nearly every morning genuinely excited to take on the day , ready to take flying leap onto the sled or sprint into the crashing waves (or, as I did in another one of my mother’s favorite anecdotes, run into the first day of tumbling class shouting “Come on new friends, let’s go!”).
I imagine I will wake up in the morning and be able to wrap beautiful presents. Until that day, I won’t stop giving my big sloppy gifts. If I give in a warm and loving spirit, I trust that everyone will ignore the disheveled exterior to see that inside, there’s something they’re really going to like.
None of this has happened yet. In a recent conversation with my mother we joked about the frequency with which I fall, and she took great pleasure in regaling me with stories from my toddler-hood of my life on the border of reckless and fearless (I remember the time you charged into the water in Rhode Island and the wave knocked you over, I remember the time you took a flying leap onto the sled and the sled didn’t move and you slammed your face into the snow…she takes a bit more joy in these stories than is seemly). That’s where I have always lived my life, on the edges of good taste and good sense, hoping that there is enough room for me to spaz out and not hit anything.
Discipline and control have always been my biggest challenges, and when the reserved and soft-spoken tell me they admire how I express myself, I tell them how I admire them, able to be calm, able to be quiet. I have to work hard at neatness of all kinds – in my house, in my communication, in my appearance, and in my demeanor.
I imagine I will wake up in the morning and all this will be easier. Instead, I wake up every morning with sheets all over the floor, leave my pajamas somewhere in the path between the bed and shower, drip water all over the bathroom, empty the coffee pot and don’t rinse it, slop cream cheese on a bagel while poppy seeds fly all over the kitchen, and leave my dishes in the sink for later. But I realized today that I wake up nearly every morning genuinely excited to take on the day , ready to take flying leap onto the sled or sprint into the crashing waves (or, as I did in another one of my mother’s favorite anecdotes, run into the first day of tumbling class shouting “Come on new friends, let’s go!”).
I imagine I will wake up in the morning and be able to wrap beautiful presents. Until that day, I won’t stop giving my big sloppy gifts. If I give in a warm and loving spirit, I trust that everyone will ignore the disheveled exterior to see that inside, there’s something they’re really going to like.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Searching for the Real
Not only do I keep the seemingly anachronistic phone books that appear annually on my doorstep, I use them from time to time, and this weekend I found myself searching for the directory’s latest incarnation in order to look up an address. I needed to find a service center for the wireless device I reluctantly purchased a few months ago so that I wouldn’t spend most of my time without access to the internet. My trip to the store was of the universally aggravating sort that need not be explained, and I left the store with another broadband card coming in the mail, and this wry thought on repeat in my head: A book never let me down like this.
I don’t like the idea of relying on ‘stuff’ to entertain me. Although I am a devotee of Facebook and Twitter (and, of course, blogging) I am equally wary of the barrage of contact and stimulation they can provide. I don’t want gadgets, I don’t want a million TV channels, and I want it to be easy to unplug and to look for something real. I look at new technology and see new passwords to memorize, new directions to uncode, new chargers to clutter the basket under the couch. I also see things that pass away – why get attached to something that will be out in a few years? I’m not opposed to technology in general: for example, I am quite glad that it exists when I am at the doctor, and despite doing most of my writing by hand, I still use the Internet to share my ideas with a world that may or may not care. I’m just opposed to the more-is-better attitude that is quickly becoming sacrosanct. My phone does nothing but call and text, my TV does nothing but show network channels. I know I can live without them, and from time to time I do.
Now we can “read books” on an electronic device – convenient for travelling, I suppose, but at what cost? There are two books with which I have spent more time than with any other: the Bible and The Brothers Karamazov. Both of those are as precious to me as objects as they are as repositories of the written word. The sections that fall open tell the story of what has intrigued and moved me, and the many years of underlining and scribbling in the margins track how I have changed in relation to these unchangeable texts. Almost every dinner with my parents and brother ends with some good-natured factual dispute or confusion that requires the use of a reference book. Someone fetches the dictionary, atlas, encyclopedia, or Bible and we resolve whatever has come up. The act of dashing up the stairs or digging through a stack of books to retrieve the information gives it more value, and as the book goes back on the shelf we know that it will be there the next time we need it.
We can read these books on a screen. We can take online tours of great museums, and listen to “choirs” of singers who have recording themselves individually in their bedrooms. We can look at the Grand Canyon on Google Earth. None of this can come close to the real thing.
We label these experiences “virtual” – virtual tours, virtual performances, etc. When I started thinking about that word I couldn’t pin down the definition, but imagined it was in the ballpark of “not real, imaginary, a substitute for that which is real”. The true definition (which, incidentally, I looked up in an old-fashioned hardcover dictionary) horrified me: being in essence or effect, though not formally recognized or admitted. In other words, pretty much the real thing, even if no one will say that out loud.
Let’s not delude ourselves that any of this is real. Turning that last corner at the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo’s David is real. Feeling the breeze on your face is real. Hearing a live chorus (or better yet, experiencing the camaraderie and intimacy of singing in one, of having your artistry affected by the person standing next to you) is real. Looking in someone’s eyes, holding someone’s hand – those things are realer than any Facebook status or Direct Message. Our ‘virtual’ activities are fine substitutes when circumstances prevent our experiencing reality, but too often we use them to escape the power of the real.
In the end, I’m willing to sacrifice convenience for simplicity, staying unplugged for stretches of time, using old paper maps and phone books on my search for the real – in books, art, nature and people.
I don’t like the idea of relying on ‘stuff’ to entertain me. Although I am a devotee of Facebook and Twitter (and, of course, blogging) I am equally wary of the barrage of contact and stimulation they can provide. I don’t want gadgets, I don’t want a million TV channels, and I want it to be easy to unplug and to look for something real. I look at new technology and see new passwords to memorize, new directions to uncode, new chargers to clutter the basket under the couch. I also see things that pass away – why get attached to something that will be out in a few years? I’m not opposed to technology in general: for example, I am quite glad that it exists when I am at the doctor, and despite doing most of my writing by hand, I still use the Internet to share my ideas with a world that may or may not care. I’m just opposed to the more-is-better attitude that is quickly becoming sacrosanct. My phone does nothing but call and text, my TV does nothing but show network channels. I know I can live without them, and from time to time I do.
Now we can “read books” on an electronic device – convenient for travelling, I suppose, but at what cost? There are two books with which I have spent more time than with any other: the Bible and The Brothers Karamazov. Both of those are as precious to me as objects as they are as repositories of the written word. The sections that fall open tell the story of what has intrigued and moved me, and the many years of underlining and scribbling in the margins track how I have changed in relation to these unchangeable texts. Almost every dinner with my parents and brother ends with some good-natured factual dispute or confusion that requires the use of a reference book. Someone fetches the dictionary, atlas, encyclopedia, or Bible and we resolve whatever has come up. The act of dashing up the stairs or digging through a stack of books to retrieve the information gives it more value, and as the book goes back on the shelf we know that it will be there the next time we need it.
We can read these books on a screen. We can take online tours of great museums, and listen to “choirs” of singers who have recording themselves individually in their bedrooms. We can look at the Grand Canyon on Google Earth. None of this can come close to the real thing.
We label these experiences “virtual” – virtual tours, virtual performances, etc. When I started thinking about that word I couldn’t pin down the definition, but imagined it was in the ballpark of “not real, imaginary, a substitute for that which is real”. The true definition (which, incidentally, I looked up in an old-fashioned hardcover dictionary) horrified me: being in essence or effect, though not formally recognized or admitted. In other words, pretty much the real thing, even if no one will say that out loud.
Let’s not delude ourselves that any of this is real. Turning that last corner at the Accademia and seeing Michelangelo’s David is real. Feeling the breeze on your face is real. Hearing a live chorus (or better yet, experiencing the camaraderie and intimacy of singing in one, of having your artistry affected by the person standing next to you) is real. Looking in someone’s eyes, holding someone’s hand – those things are realer than any Facebook status or Direct Message. Our ‘virtual’ activities are fine substitutes when circumstances prevent our experiencing reality, but too often we use them to escape the power of the real.
In the end, I’m willing to sacrifice convenience for simplicity, staying unplugged for stretches of time, using old paper maps and phone books on my search for the real – in books, art, nature and people.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
How the morning feels
For as long as I have lived in Boston, leisurely Saturday mornings have had a unique effect on me. For some reason, when I walk down a neighborhood street in the cool of morning everything is right with the world and I am where I am meant to be. Maybe it’s that I am walking anywhere - where I grew up nothing was close enough to walk to, and any jaunt on foot implied a nature walk. Not that I didn’t love Saturday mornings growing up too – some of the most consistent memories of my childhood involve my mother making pancakes in the sunny kitchen while we all padded in and out, in our slippers or bare feet.
This morning I woke up with nothing to do. This is not a common occurrence. This academic year in particular has been extremely busy, as my singing and conducting have become less a hobby and more a second job. I won’t complain; being paid to do music is what I always wanted. Still, there’s a loss there, and the loss of leisure takes a toll. So today I slept in (to an hour which is still terribly early to most people) and then wandered out to get breakfast.
As soon as I hit the streets I got that feeling again. I live in a city! I sometimes think excitedly to myself. Not only do I live here, I have made it my home, and am friendly with the can lady next door, the guy with the construction truck, the folks who work at the funeral home around the corner. And on these quiet brisk mornings I am on the same pace as everyone else. I am not leaving the house in an audition dress and prom hair like I usually do on weekend mornings. I am in flip-flops and a ponytail, just like everyone else, easing into the day.
On my way home, egg sandwich and coffee in hand, I was passing near the post office and my stomach tightened up. My brain started racing: aren’t there applications I should be sending off? Do I need to be shipping a demo today? What’s next? What’s next? I remembered the competition application on my kitchen table, and that it’s not due until late May, and relaxed a little bit.
There’s a pithy adage that singers throw around when someone is spending too much time working: they don’t write songs about being in a practice room. In other words, if you want to make art, live a little. Similarly, they don’t write songs about being overworked, or about obsessive self-promotion. The artistic spark needs oxygen to flame.
That application sits next to me on the kitchen table now. I don’t have to sing until 3:30 today, so I’m not going to fret about the state of my voice until lunchtime at least. I’ll probably run today, but I might wait until the morning warms up a little. It’s a lazy Saturday, and there’s no hurry.
This morning I woke up with nothing to do. This is not a common occurrence. This academic year in particular has been extremely busy, as my singing and conducting have become less a hobby and more a second job. I won’t complain; being paid to do music is what I always wanted. Still, there’s a loss there, and the loss of leisure takes a toll. So today I slept in (to an hour which is still terribly early to most people) and then wandered out to get breakfast.
As soon as I hit the streets I got that feeling again. I live in a city! I sometimes think excitedly to myself. Not only do I live here, I have made it my home, and am friendly with the can lady next door, the guy with the construction truck, the folks who work at the funeral home around the corner. And on these quiet brisk mornings I am on the same pace as everyone else. I am not leaving the house in an audition dress and prom hair like I usually do on weekend mornings. I am in flip-flops and a ponytail, just like everyone else, easing into the day.
On my way home, egg sandwich and coffee in hand, I was passing near the post office and my stomach tightened up. My brain started racing: aren’t there applications I should be sending off? Do I need to be shipping a demo today? What’s next? What’s next? I remembered the competition application on my kitchen table, and that it’s not due until late May, and relaxed a little bit.
There’s a pithy adage that singers throw around when someone is spending too much time working: they don’t write songs about being in a practice room. In other words, if you want to make art, live a little. Similarly, they don’t write songs about being overworked, or about obsessive self-promotion. The artistic spark needs oxygen to flame.
That application sits next to me on the kitchen table now. I don’t have to sing until 3:30 today, so I’m not going to fret about the state of my voice until lunchtime at least. I’ll probably run today, but I might wait until the morning warms up a little. It’s a lazy Saturday, and there’s no hurry.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Set down this: Making peace with the Magi
If you’re looking for a way to get me riled up, hide one of my favorite books. Two nights ago I couldn’t find my edition of T. S. Eliot. It was Epiphany and I wanted to read “Journey of the Magi”. I had done a ferocious cleaning before I left for the holidays and was terrified I had thrown the book away. I was preparing to dump everything in my apartment onto the floor when I found Selected Poems on a shelf.
Like a good girl I read Journey of the Magi, which to be honest has never been among my favorites. The opening sections on their journey and arrival in Judea are richly descriptive, beginning with the hook that has always reeled me in: A cold coming we had of it. The end of the poem is where the language takes my breath away – the repetition of words and phrases, the stark expression of the Magi’s harsh and bitter agony. As enamored as I am of the language in that section, I always end my reading dissatisfied, wondering “what the hell do they have to be so distressed about?”
In the same pile as my poetry and journals I keep a small photo album that was a Christmas gift years ago. My brother made me the album in grade-school art class, writing my name on the front in puffy paint. Before I returned to Boston that year I filled the album with photos of my family over the years. My toddler self looks up at my father in one of the photos as he makes a face back at me. There are group photos of cousins, my mom yelling at my uncles, my dad hiding behind a cereal box while my brother displays the half chewed contents of his breakfast in an open mouth.
I looked over those photos on Epiphany because they had surfaced in the scramble to find the poems. I wished I had those whiny wise men in front of me so I could shake them, point to a 20+ year-old photo of myself and my grandmother and say “Look, this is the Incarnation! Look how good it is!” Still pretty irked at the wise men, I took a day to think about it. Since I first read Journey of the Magi I have been haunted by that last stanza. I am moved by the beauty of the text but could never get behind the dark conclusion to the adventure of the Magi. What about their journey could make them feel so...Prufrockian?
And then, appropriately, an epiphany.
We returned to our places, those kingdoms, but no longer at ease here. The Magi followed their guts, their instincts, that star, having an adventure, exploring a mystery. And then they went home, having played their part in salvation history.
"Every great getaway has a moment when you want to pack it up and stay. That's how I ended up with a timeshare in Port Arthur, Texas." (Jack Donaghy) Our lives take certain tracks from which significant deviations are not always possible. These tracks are valorous, beneficial. We live in webs of relationships, alliances and dependencies, and when we glimpse another good life that is not ours, we can’t rip ourselves from the fabric into which we are knit. The lives we return to are tainted once we’ve tasted something else. Like the Magi we may be a little less at ease, and perhaps a little less attached to the lives to which we are bound.
Like a good girl I read Journey of the Magi, which to be honest has never been among my favorites. The opening sections on their journey and arrival in Judea are richly descriptive, beginning with the hook that has always reeled me in: A cold coming we had of it. The end of the poem is where the language takes my breath away – the repetition of words and phrases, the stark expression of the Magi’s harsh and bitter agony. As enamored as I am of the language in that section, I always end my reading dissatisfied, wondering “what the hell do they have to be so distressed about?”
In the same pile as my poetry and journals I keep a small photo album that was a Christmas gift years ago. My brother made me the album in grade-school art class, writing my name on the front in puffy paint. Before I returned to Boston that year I filled the album with photos of my family over the years. My toddler self looks up at my father in one of the photos as he makes a face back at me. There are group photos of cousins, my mom yelling at my uncles, my dad hiding behind a cereal box while my brother displays the half chewed contents of his breakfast in an open mouth.
I looked over those photos on Epiphany because they had surfaced in the scramble to find the poems. I wished I had those whiny wise men in front of me so I could shake them, point to a 20+ year-old photo of myself and my grandmother and say “Look, this is the Incarnation! Look how good it is!” Still pretty irked at the wise men, I took a day to think about it. Since I first read Journey of the Magi I have been haunted by that last stanza. I am moved by the beauty of the text but could never get behind the dark conclusion to the adventure of the Magi. What about their journey could make them feel so...Prufrockian?
And then, appropriately, an epiphany.
We returned to our places, those kingdoms, but no longer at ease here. The Magi followed their guts, their instincts, that star, having an adventure, exploring a mystery. And then they went home, having played their part in salvation history.
"Every great getaway has a moment when you want to pack it up and stay. That's how I ended up with a timeshare in Port Arthur, Texas." (Jack Donaghy) Our lives take certain tracks from which significant deviations are not always possible. These tracks are valorous, beneficial. We live in webs of relationships, alliances and dependencies, and when we glimpse another good life that is not ours, we can’t rip ourselves from the fabric into which we are knit. The lives we return to are tainted once we’ve tasted something else. Like the Magi we may be a little less at ease, and perhaps a little less attached to the lives to which we are bound.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Time apart
Last night in class we were encouraged to think about when and where we take time to rest. I had had a hectic afternoon. The reviews of our latest opera had been posted at 3:00 pm, and it was my task to distribute the information via email and online postings. I needed to be in Cambridge at 4:00 pm, my computer kept freezing, and everyone wanted to virtually chat and celebrate our reviews while I scrambled to get the info up. When asked later in class about taking quiet time, one of the situations that appeared when I was imagining my rest was “any time my computer is off”.
I've got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of people I try to stay in touch with and a lot of people who rely on my to stay on top of certain tasks. Choirs need to know call times, students need homework posted, BOC needs the website kept up to date. If I make a mistake, a need to respond to a dozen emails sent to point it out. Then there's the fun stuff: twitter, facebook, my website, this blog.
I take on responsibilities because I care about people. I want to be around people, to collaborate with them, to serve them. But when I am trying to balance virtual contact with too many people I lose sight of persons, and the love I feel for the unique individuals right in front of me. I am reminded that I want to be hyper-involved by the times that I am not, when I have trimmed the distractions to a reasonable amount, or eliminated them completely.
I grew up in what I like to call “the house that technology forgot”. You can still hear a busy signal if you call there (remember the days of taking the phone off the hook?) and the dial-up internet can only handle one thing at a time (and some things it simply can’t handle). From my childhood, I’m used to that sort of isolation. I have a laptop at work that I only bring home on weekends because I don’t want the distraction of a million tasks every evening. If you want an easy way to get to bed early, hide your computer.
I used to get off on the thrill of non-stop productivity, but that thrill has passed. If mental health is built on the balance of introversion and extroversion, then I need to be unreachable for a while to preserve my sanity. If someone really needs me they can call – but if it’s after 9:00 pm, my ringer will be off.
I've got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot of people I try to stay in touch with and a lot of people who rely on my to stay on top of certain tasks. Choirs need to know call times, students need homework posted, BOC needs the website kept up to date. If I make a mistake, a need to respond to a dozen emails sent to point it out. Then there's the fun stuff: twitter, facebook, my website, this blog.
I take on responsibilities because I care about people. I want to be around people, to collaborate with them, to serve them. But when I am trying to balance virtual contact with too many people I lose sight of persons, and the love I feel for the unique individuals right in front of me. I am reminded that I want to be hyper-involved by the times that I am not, when I have trimmed the distractions to a reasonable amount, or eliminated them completely.
I grew up in what I like to call “the house that technology forgot”. You can still hear a busy signal if you call there (remember the days of taking the phone off the hook?) and the dial-up internet can only handle one thing at a time (and some things it simply can’t handle). From my childhood, I’m used to that sort of isolation. I have a laptop at work that I only bring home on weekends because I don’t want the distraction of a million tasks every evening. If you want an easy way to get to bed early, hide your computer.
I used to get off on the thrill of non-stop productivity, but that thrill has passed. If mental health is built on the balance of introversion and extroversion, then I need to be unreachable for a while to preserve my sanity. If someone really needs me they can call – but if it’s after 9:00 pm, my ringer will be off.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Helplessness of Love
Today I found myself feeling great affection for a group of people, and I thought "the appropriate response to this is humility". I recognize myself as a vessel of a powerful force I neither create nor control. I am not the first nor the greatest to have cared for people. I am subsumed by a Love far greater than myself, which is both thrilling and humbling. That humility is a great gift.
Like most powerful moments of the last few months, this one led me back into my grief. What is grief if not love made futile against absence? I remember years ago sitting with a friend who lost her entire family in a genocide, and loving her so much, and feeling so helpless because no amount of love could ever undo the trauma she had faced. Perhaps it is not my place to un-do it.
I know better now than to wish away those feelings of affection. And yet, on these gloomy fall days, standing in the dark of the chapel, fighting off tears, the love I feel for anyone is seasoned with the knowledge that it has me rendered helpless. I will care for people forever, against futility and darkness, and deal with the gloomy days as they come.
Like most powerful moments of the last few months, this one led me back into my grief. What is grief if not love made futile against absence? I remember years ago sitting with a friend who lost her entire family in a genocide, and loving her so much, and feeling so helpless because no amount of love could ever undo the trauma she had faced. Perhaps it is not my place to un-do it.
I know better now than to wish away those feelings of affection. And yet, on these gloomy fall days, standing in the dark of the chapel, fighting off tears, the love I feel for anyone is seasoned with the knowledge that it has me rendered helpless. I will care for people forever, against futility and darkness, and deal with the gloomy days as they come.
Friday, October 2, 2009
What We Capture
In the room that we've always called the Great Room (due to it's unclear function in my parents' house rather than it's natural superiority to other rooms) there are some unobtrusive cabinets hiding a large collection of photo albums. Although no one in the family is a particularly gifted photographer, there has always been someone at every event with a camera (usually the disposable kind from the drug store), documenting graduations, picnics, parties, haircuts, soccer games...you name it.
Although many of the photos are of people, there are plenty that are of things. Some are profound - the Grand Canyon, sunset over evergreens, a rose window, an impeccable 1957 Chevy Bel Air. The ones that thrill me the most are mundane, and I am thrilled for this reason: each photo means that someone at some point, found beauty in simplicity.
Tomatoes from the garden, in varying stages of ripening, lined up on the windowsill. Crocuses popping up in the rock garden. A duck swimming in the pool cover. An owl in the window of the barn. A good-looking clock.
There are more than a few photos of car dashboards (I know I took many when I was finally sending the hoopty to the graveyard). Occasionally you will find a pair of pictures of a car odomotor, one showing it at all nines, and then another of it just after it turns over to some new, large, round number.
Two days ago the odomotor on the Jeep turned over to 120000, and I didn't notice until it was at 120011. I almost started to cry for my own preoccupation, for not being able to see that something simply neat was happening right in front of my eyes. There is a place for focus in a life, but there is a point at which focus turns into distraction, and we can't see what's right in front of our noses.
We have choices about what to capture, in our photos and in our hearts. I find it far too easy to capture the frustrations of a day, week, or month. If I'm not careful it can all turn into the frustrations of a life. I want my heart to hold snapshots of what is right in front of me, in all it's thrilling simplicity.
Although many of the photos are of people, there are plenty that are of things. Some are profound - the Grand Canyon, sunset over evergreens, a rose window, an impeccable 1957 Chevy Bel Air. The ones that thrill me the most are mundane, and I am thrilled for this reason: each photo means that someone at some point, found beauty in simplicity.
Tomatoes from the garden, in varying stages of ripening, lined up on the windowsill. Crocuses popping up in the rock garden. A duck swimming in the pool cover. An owl in the window of the barn. A good-looking clock.
There are more than a few photos of car dashboards (I know I took many when I was finally sending the hoopty to the graveyard). Occasionally you will find a pair of pictures of a car odomotor, one showing it at all nines, and then another of it just after it turns over to some new, large, round number.
Two days ago the odomotor on the Jeep turned over to 120000, and I didn't notice until it was at 120011. I almost started to cry for my own preoccupation, for not being able to see that something simply neat was happening right in front of my eyes. There is a place for focus in a life, but there is a point at which focus turns into distraction, and we can't see what's right in front of our noses.
We have choices about what to capture, in our photos and in our hearts. I find it far too easy to capture the frustrations of a day, week, or month. If I'm not careful it can all turn into the frustrations of a life. I want my heart to hold snapshots of what is right in front of me, in all it's thrilling simplicity.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Living with a new normal
On September 11th there seems to be some pressure to offer a weighty and profound reflections on what happened to our country 8 years ago. I’m afraid I don’t have much profundity to offer. I don’t know what this means for American history and American culture, for victims and survivors. However, today as I read and listened to the memories of friends and colleagues regarding where they were, how they found out, and what they did immediately afterward, I couldn’t help but think about those (blessedly few) moments in my life when everything changed suddenly and unexpectedly, and I was left living with a new normal.
It always annoys me when people tell me they won’t go to certain parts of the city (invariably those populated by minorities) because “people get killed there”, or imply that I shouldn’t live where I do because it’s not safe. People get killed everywhere, and we are never safe. Life has a mind of its own, and things come at us no matter what we have done to move toward the life we had planned. Marvelously, we adapt to our new normal, surviving what we think we could never endure.
My mother loves the couplet “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/no more water, fire next time”. We don’t ever know what’s coming. No gasmasks or triple locks or aloof attitudes keep us safe from the surprises of life. Don’t bother praying that you won’t break, because some blows break us no matter how strong we are. The grace is in the recovery, in the healing after the breaking. Maybe the best we can do is fortify our lives in a way that allows for the recovery: Get to know God in a way that helps us find holiness in the dark, surround ourselves with good people, know ourselves well enough to adjust ourselves to our new normal, be brave enough to ask for what we need.
There’s no way to predict the “fire next time”, but we can strengthen ourselves to survive the burning.
It always annoys me when people tell me they won’t go to certain parts of the city (invariably those populated by minorities) because “people get killed there”, or imply that I shouldn’t live where I do because it’s not safe. People get killed everywhere, and we are never safe. Life has a mind of its own, and things come at us no matter what we have done to move toward the life we had planned. Marvelously, we adapt to our new normal, surviving what we think we could never endure.
My mother loves the couplet “God gave Noah the rainbow sign/no more water, fire next time”. We don’t ever know what’s coming. No gasmasks or triple locks or aloof attitudes keep us safe from the surprises of life. Don’t bother praying that you won’t break, because some blows break us no matter how strong we are. The grace is in the recovery, in the healing after the breaking. Maybe the best we can do is fortify our lives in a way that allows for the recovery: Get to know God in a way that helps us find holiness in the dark, surround ourselves with good people, know ourselves well enough to adjust ourselves to our new normal, be brave enough to ask for what we need.
There’s no way to predict the “fire next time”, but we can strengthen ourselves to survive the burning.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
The Lord is Kind and Merciful
It's been a week and a day since my family gathered back home for the funeral. As a liturgy buff, I'm not one of those people who says they "hate funerals" - I actually don't mind funerals, it's people dying that brings me down.
If I had anything to do with it, this funeral was going to be a barnburner, for lack of a better word. One of the things I find so helpful about liturgy is that it lets us say what we want to say using words that have been used before, so we don't foul it all up because we are sad. In a situation so devastating we wanted to make sure everything was right - the music, the readings, the prayer of the faithful, the programs. All of these things can help to sum up our belief in the resurrection, in family, and in mercy. The words we use matter.
So that's my academic, overthought rambling on liturgy. Why was it important, in truth, for me? Because I needed to see that I wasn't the only person who had been blind with grief for the previous week and a half. Because when I sang Psalm 103: The Lord is Kind and Merciful I knew that I had a chance to say what I believed, to stand in front of people I loved and sing "Bless the Lord, O my soul" and really mean it in spite of everything. It is rare that singing matters so much to me.
Yesterday was the memorial of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the only Native American on the path to canonization. I learned during reflection at midday prayer yesterday that Tekakwitha was the moniker given to her due to her partial blindness, and that it means "one who gropes in the dark". I can identify with that; and I think most of us can. I have been groping through the darkness of grief with my family, mulling over the wretched questions that we know we can never answer. But day after day I think we all grope through the dark, grabbing onto what we can to orient us, be it liturgy, family, friends, or simple hope.
If I had anything to do with it, this funeral was going to be a barnburner, for lack of a better word. One of the things I find so helpful about liturgy is that it lets us say what we want to say using words that have been used before, so we don't foul it all up because we are sad. In a situation so devastating we wanted to make sure everything was right - the music, the readings, the prayer of the faithful, the programs. All of these things can help to sum up our belief in the resurrection, in family, and in mercy. The words we use matter.
So that's my academic, overthought rambling on liturgy. Why was it important, in truth, for me? Because I needed to see that I wasn't the only person who had been blind with grief for the previous week and a half. Because when I sang Psalm 103: The Lord is Kind and Merciful I knew that I had a chance to say what I believed, to stand in front of people I loved and sing "Bless the Lord, O my soul" and really mean it in spite of everything. It is rare that singing matters so much to me.
Yesterday was the memorial of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the only Native American on the path to canonization. I learned during reflection at midday prayer yesterday that Tekakwitha was the moniker given to her due to her partial blindness, and that it means "one who gropes in the dark". I can identify with that; and I think most of us can. I have been groping through the darkness of grief with my family, mulling over the wretched questions that we know we can never answer. But day after day I think we all grope through the dark, grabbing onto what we can to orient us, be it liturgy, family, friends, or simple hope.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Life is not ended, just changed
“All the wickedness in this world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea.” —William Langland
Earlier this week there was a terrible tragedy that resulted in the loss of two family members. We're shattered and praying, and I'm trying to fill parts of my days with other things in order not be overwhelmed by what we could never possibly understand.
In lieu of dwelling on all that I can't understand, I have been spending some time with what I do understand. I understand that our tragedy is even more stark because it casts it's shadow over the blinding brilliance of our many blessings of love. I understand that year after year as we have gathered for Christmas Eve, for summer picnics, for weddings, birthdays, and visits, bonds of love have strengthened between us. These bonds weave into a web that lifts us all when we fall and supports us when we can't stand. With a piece of our web missing I feel broken, but I take comfort in knowing that our remnant can carry the lost together in a web of prayer and love.
I understand that even after a month of gloomy weather, I wake every morning with a new chance to see the sun. I understand that when we gather for another cousin's wedding later in the week, we reaffirm that love rises, that futures are possible even in great darkness, and that it is worthy to persevere with new life always as our goal.
I understand that life changes, that it's silly to think that things last forever, and that clutching at blessings, standing very still and hoping that nothing will be altered, will ultimately fail. Perhaps the best practice is simply to develop habits of surviving that allow us all to live with dignity and virtue even through changes and grief, continuing in the paths of our ancestors and of those we love.
On another plane from what I understand (and don't) lie the things I believe. I believe in a God of inexhaustible mercy, who loves like a mother and whose love does not disappoint. I believe that suffering is never God's will and that the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is hogwash. I believe that grace, infinite holiness alive in the world, is always available to us, that God's inscrutable goodness cannot be conquered by death and that hope may be our highest calling.
Earlier this week there was a terrible tragedy that resulted in the loss of two family members. We're shattered and praying, and I'm trying to fill parts of my days with other things in order not be overwhelmed by what we could never possibly understand.
In lieu of dwelling on all that I can't understand, I have been spending some time with what I do understand. I understand that our tragedy is even more stark because it casts it's shadow over the blinding brilliance of our many blessings of love. I understand that year after year as we have gathered for Christmas Eve, for summer picnics, for weddings, birthdays, and visits, bonds of love have strengthened between us. These bonds weave into a web that lifts us all when we fall and supports us when we can't stand. With a piece of our web missing I feel broken, but I take comfort in knowing that our remnant can carry the lost together in a web of prayer and love.
I understand that even after a month of gloomy weather, I wake every morning with a new chance to see the sun. I understand that when we gather for another cousin's wedding later in the week, we reaffirm that love rises, that futures are possible even in great darkness, and that it is worthy to persevere with new life always as our goal.
I understand that life changes, that it's silly to think that things last forever, and that clutching at blessings, standing very still and hoping that nothing will be altered, will ultimately fail. Perhaps the best practice is simply to develop habits of surviving that allow us all to live with dignity and virtue even through changes and grief, continuing in the paths of our ancestors and of those we love.
On another plane from what I understand (and don't) lie the things I believe. I believe in a God of inexhaustible mercy, who loves like a mother and whose love does not disappoint. I believe that suffering is never God's will and that the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is hogwash. I believe that grace, infinite holiness alive in the world, is always available to us, that God's inscrutable goodness cannot be conquered by death and that hope may be our highest calling.
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