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.

The new shelves

DISCLAIMER: This was written under the influence of a Tori Amos CD
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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