Someday soon I'm going to write about my time as a practicing pagan (essentially) and how I found my way back to church. Really. I promise. But today I want to share with you a moment of pure grace that we received in worship this morning. Names are changed because I didn't ask for permission to share them.
Katherine is in her 80s and living with dementia. She has good days and bad days and is still living at home with her husband, Lloyd, who cares for her despite his own cancer treatments. They are at church faithfully. Katherine told me she sings in the choir, but we've been having "pick up" choirs over the summer and I didn't remember her singing in the choir last spring.
At any rate, in addition to the music the pick up choir has been providing during the service, there has been a soloist each week during the offertory. Last week Katherine told me that this week she was going to sing Rogers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. She didn't practice before the service, though other choir members told me that this was something that made everyone cry.
At the proper time she got up from her pew and slowly climbed the two steps to the chancel. She stood erect, but with a sense of relaxation. And she began to sing.
Her voice is ruined with 80+ years of living. But it is ruined in the way a great cloister or ancient temple may be ruined, with enough loveliness remaining that you can imagine how magnificent it once was. She has a rich soprano without a hint of breathiness or of that vibrato so many sopranos develop in our elder years. Dementia has not stolen those words, tied to music to anchor them in memory. She sang confidently, and with great artistry.
Having walked the path of dementia with my father over the past few years I was also struck by the power of that particular song in these particular circumstances. One of the miseries of dementia is the way it isolates patients, stealing the memories of relationships and often stealing the ability to relate to others, hiding words and confusing emotions. And this lovely woman was singing a battle hymn against that isolation and confusion,
"When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of the storm is a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone,
You'll never walk alone."
She couldn't hit the highest note, but she found the octave unerringly, then returned to the final phrase. There was a moment of silence, like the smallest inhaled gasp of grace, then applause.
If she can believe it, maybe the rest of us can, too.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Monday, August 28, 2017
Reconnecting
It has been a long year.
Shortly into the new year my dad died from complications of a fall. I was completely unprepared for the way that would change my life.
It wasn't just the sadness of grief (though losing grandparents had not prepared me for the grief of losing a parent). It was all the changes that this created in the family of origin as we re-organized to take care of our Mom and still maintain our lives (only one of us lives remotely near her). It was all the travel back and forth, to the hospital, then staying for the funeral, then back to help Mom deal with his stuff. It was recognizing that our relationship was fixed forever It was discovering things about Dad that I had known but never named until I had to consider and define him for other people.
Let me say upfront that I am an oldest child and the daughter of a man who was an only child, and that I have always known that we had a close relationship. Yes, I was Daddy's Girl. But as long as our relationship was open ended, it was still in flux. Once it was closed, finished, I was compelled to examine it and make some judgements about it. I don't think I failed my dad, but I do wish I had played more with him. It was only in retrospect that I realized how playful he was himself.
We always lived 300 to 800 miles apart ever since I graduated high school, so he was never a constant presence in my adult life, and yet I am painfully aware of missing him -- Father's Day was very hard. His birthday this week looms over me like a thundercloud waiting to burst open. My one relief about Christmas is that for the first time in 20 years or so we were all together last Christmas, Dad's favorite holiday. I am inexpressibly grateful that we all made the effort to be together, and that we could share that with him on what became his last Christmas.
Since I was 40, I have understood, in the core of my being, that I am a finite being and that I will die. But somehow I never really comprehended that the people I love will die. And in the last year I have lost a number of dear people; this has not only made me appreciate the people I love, it has deepened my gratitude for the days I have with them. I think more and more often of the verse from Psalms - (I'm paraphrasing here) "God give us the grace to number our days." -- not to let them fly by unheeded, uncounted, undistinguished, but to count them, to savor them, and the people who fill them.
Shortly into the new year my dad died from complications of a fall. I was completely unprepared for the way that would change my life.
It wasn't just the sadness of grief (though losing grandparents had not prepared me for the grief of losing a parent). It was all the changes that this created in the family of origin as we re-organized to take care of our Mom and still maintain our lives (only one of us lives remotely near her). It was all the travel back and forth, to the hospital, then staying for the funeral, then back to help Mom deal with his stuff. It was recognizing that our relationship was fixed forever It was discovering things about Dad that I had known but never named until I had to consider and define him for other people.
Let me say upfront that I am an oldest child and the daughter of a man who was an only child, and that I have always known that we had a close relationship. Yes, I was Daddy's Girl. But as long as our relationship was open ended, it was still in flux. Once it was closed, finished, I was compelled to examine it and make some judgements about it. I don't think I failed my dad, but I do wish I had played more with him. It was only in retrospect that I realized how playful he was himself.
We always lived 300 to 800 miles apart ever since I graduated high school, so he was never a constant presence in my adult life, and yet I am painfully aware of missing him -- Father's Day was very hard. His birthday this week looms over me like a thundercloud waiting to burst open. My one relief about Christmas is that for the first time in 20 years or so we were all together last Christmas, Dad's favorite holiday. I am inexpressibly grateful that we all made the effort to be together, and that we could share that with him on what became his last Christmas.
Since I was 40, I have understood, in the core of my being, that I am a finite being and that I will die. But somehow I never really comprehended that the people I love will die. And in the last year I have lost a number of dear people; this has not only made me appreciate the people I love, it has deepened my gratitude for the days I have with them. I think more and more often of the verse from Psalms - (I'm paraphrasing here) "God give us the grace to number our days." -- not to let them fly by unheeded, uncounted, undistinguished, but to count them, to savor them, and the people who fill them.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
What True Love Gives
Because I have a busy schedule tomorrow, I've spent the day putting away Christmas. I have left a set of magi on the mantle, bringing their gifts to the Baby Jesus, but that's it. And I've been listening to the last of the Christmas music, especially my favorite, Tennessee Ernie Ford's Star Carol album, which is the sound track of my childhood Christmases.
I love Ford's rich deep baritone, and the fact that when he sang it was about the song, the music and the lyrics, not about his own virtuosity and inventiveness. Okay, it's a little showy when he hits that E below the bottom of the base clef, but it makes me swoon, and it's an octave drop, so I forgive him. He doesn't try to make traditional carols sound like he's performing the 10 p.m. show at the piano bar. That's really what I ask.
That's the album on which I first heard Some Children See Him, a carol that shaped my theology of the Incarnation. And I found that I was very sensitive this year to the theology of the carols. I heard very distinctly the truth that Infinite Power and Infinite Love come together in Absolute Vulnerability. I heard the reminder that Salvation comes first to those who are most often excluded -- the poor, the marginalized, the religious outsiders. It is scandalous. It makes no sense. Yet there you have it. God comes to earth as a squalling infant, born to a couple whose respectability is suspect, in a stable. It might have been warm and dry, but it certainly wasn't hygienic or ideal. And if you who are rich, you who are wise, you who are entitled want a piece of this Promise, you will have to leave your comfort zone and go meet him there.
It's in all the carols. Bring a torch. Come, all you faithful. He has brought down the haughty.
If you want to talk about a war on Christmas, it's not about whether or not you say Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings to people who may or may not share your religious beliefs. It's about commercials that show people using other people's children as shills to get Santa to bring them a new luxury car. Or Santa himself driving a car that costs more than many people's homes (the Bishop of Smyrna would NOT be pleased! And why does he need the 8 others in front of him -- can't the one car do it all?). The war on Christmas is manifested in those who believe that everyone must celebrate what THEY celebrate. I heard several people this year say (always quite dramatically), "Thank HEAVENS we can say 'Merry Christmas' again!"
Really?
Christmas is about God entering our lives as a flesh and blood, real life human being. And Epiphany, which begins tomorrow, is about how God revealed God's self, God's nature, God's will in that particular human being. And if we adore the powerless baby, the power of the adult, the man Jesus of Nazareth is seen in the way he lived out the truth of his birth: by challenging our human tendency to disregard those who can do nothing for us, our desire to strike back when we are hurt (or even to hurt before we are hurt, as in "the best defense is a good offence"). We learn that God made us in God's own image. When we look at Jesus, we see what it means to live into that image fully.
It has everything, everything to do with seeing that divine image in each person we encounter.
I am struggling fiercely these days to remember that. I see politicians grasping for power. I see systems that were created to help those in need (imperfectly, perhaps, but with good intention none-the-less) being torn down and dismantled without any alternatives being proposed. I see people who have narrowed their sense of neighborly obligation down to family, clan, and tribe, and who are content to let the rest of the world go to wrack and to ruin without any sense of obligation or regret. And these, too, are people in whom dwells the Spirit of God. So I will refrain from name calling and I will try not to judge them. But I am not content to let what is so obviously wrong stand without protest or without opposition. I'm not sure how to do it. But I will be a voice for justice and right relationships.
God's True Love gives us the example of what full humanity looks like and how God expects us to treat each other. Our true love for God should be nothing less than a daily attempt to share the love we've received.
I love Ford's rich deep baritone, and the fact that when he sang it was about the song, the music and the lyrics, not about his own virtuosity and inventiveness. Okay, it's a little showy when he hits that E below the bottom of the base clef, but it makes me swoon, and it's an octave drop, so I forgive him. He doesn't try to make traditional carols sound like he's performing the 10 p.m. show at the piano bar. That's really what I ask.
That's the album on which I first heard Some Children See Him, a carol that shaped my theology of the Incarnation. And I found that I was very sensitive this year to the theology of the carols. I heard very distinctly the truth that Infinite Power and Infinite Love come together in Absolute Vulnerability. I heard the reminder that Salvation comes first to those who are most often excluded -- the poor, the marginalized, the religious outsiders. It is scandalous. It makes no sense. Yet there you have it. God comes to earth as a squalling infant, born to a couple whose respectability is suspect, in a stable. It might have been warm and dry, but it certainly wasn't hygienic or ideal. And if you who are rich, you who are wise, you who are entitled want a piece of this Promise, you will have to leave your comfort zone and go meet him there.
It's in all the carols. Bring a torch. Come, all you faithful. He has brought down the haughty.
If you want to talk about a war on Christmas, it's not about whether or not you say Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings to people who may or may not share your religious beliefs. It's about commercials that show people using other people's children as shills to get Santa to bring them a new luxury car. Or Santa himself driving a car that costs more than many people's homes (the Bishop of Smyrna would NOT be pleased! And why does he need the 8 others in front of him -- can't the one car do it all?). The war on Christmas is manifested in those who believe that everyone must celebrate what THEY celebrate. I heard several people this year say (always quite dramatically), "Thank HEAVENS we can say 'Merry Christmas' again!"
Really?
Christmas is about God entering our lives as a flesh and blood, real life human being. And Epiphany, which begins tomorrow, is about how God revealed God's self, God's nature, God's will in that particular human being. And if we adore the powerless baby, the power of the adult, the man Jesus of Nazareth is seen in the way he lived out the truth of his birth: by challenging our human tendency to disregard those who can do nothing for us, our desire to strike back when we are hurt (or even to hurt before we are hurt, as in "the best defense is a good offence"). We learn that God made us in God's own image. When we look at Jesus, we see what it means to live into that image fully.
It has everything, everything to do with seeing that divine image in each person we encounter.
I am struggling fiercely these days to remember that. I see politicians grasping for power. I see systems that were created to help those in need (imperfectly, perhaps, but with good intention none-the-less) being torn down and dismantled without any alternatives being proposed. I see people who have narrowed their sense of neighborly obligation down to family, clan, and tribe, and who are content to let the rest of the world go to wrack and to ruin without any sense of obligation or regret. And these, too, are people in whom dwells the Spirit of God. So I will refrain from name calling and I will try not to judge them. But I am not content to let what is so obviously wrong stand without protest or without opposition. I'm not sure how to do it. But I will be a voice for justice and right relationships.
God's True Love gives us the example of what full humanity looks like and how God expects us to treat each other. Our true love for God should be nothing less than a daily attempt to share the love we've received.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Limnal Reflections
I'll be honest. I'm worried.
Of course worry is a family tradition, a gift handed on from mother to daughter through the generations. I've known women who don't worry and I envy them even while I don't believe they actually exist. Surely they MUST worry, secretly, maybe even unconsciously...How can you exist in the world without worrying?
I know that worry doesn't solve anything, doesn't prevent anything. I know all the platitudes about how it only steals joy from today, but to be quite honest, if I weren't worried, I'd be worried. I'd be worried that I wasn't aware of everything that was "really" happening, that I was going to miss something very important and it would ruin not only my life but the lives of everyone I love, the environment, and the cause of righteousness. Yes, I know that I don't have that much power. But one little twig can turn the river, right?
I am worried about the next four years. I did not vote for the president-elect and I disagree with many of his proposals. I dislike the way he talks about people who don't support him, about people like me. But most of all I worry about not being brave enough to speak my mind, about not standing up for the principals that I say I do believe in.
I worry about my daughter, who has a pre-existing medical condition, losing her medical coverage and not being eligible for the treatments she needs, treatments that cost several thousand dollars a month without insurance. I worry about my son who has beautiful brown skin, who lives in an area where most people do not have brown skin and where there is a history of racial violence, and I worry about the upswing in people who feel that they have permission to vocalize and act on their own fear of people who are different. I worry about my husband and I having planned for the next two decades of our lives based on the structures of Social Security and about what we wil do if that structure is dismantled.
It's not a great way to start out the year, marinating in anxiety. And I would be, I will be absolutely delighted if my fears are proved to be unfounded. I wish no one harm.
I've said it time and time again: the core of the Gospel message is "Be not afraid." So I'm trying to open myself to love to drive out fear, worry and anxiety. And I'm trying to figure out what that will require of me in the days and months and years ahead. After all, one little twig can turn the river.
Of course worry is a family tradition, a gift handed on from mother to daughter through the generations. I've known women who don't worry and I envy them even while I don't believe they actually exist. Surely they MUST worry, secretly, maybe even unconsciously...How can you exist in the world without worrying?
I know that worry doesn't solve anything, doesn't prevent anything. I know all the platitudes about how it only steals joy from today, but to be quite honest, if I weren't worried, I'd be worried. I'd be worried that I wasn't aware of everything that was "really" happening, that I was going to miss something very important and it would ruin not only my life but the lives of everyone I love, the environment, and the cause of righteousness. Yes, I know that I don't have that much power. But one little twig can turn the river, right?
I am worried about the next four years. I did not vote for the president-elect and I disagree with many of his proposals. I dislike the way he talks about people who don't support him, about people like me. But most of all I worry about not being brave enough to speak my mind, about not standing up for the principals that I say I do believe in.
I worry about my daughter, who has a pre-existing medical condition, losing her medical coverage and not being eligible for the treatments she needs, treatments that cost several thousand dollars a month without insurance. I worry about my son who has beautiful brown skin, who lives in an area where most people do not have brown skin and where there is a history of racial violence, and I worry about the upswing in people who feel that they have permission to vocalize and act on their own fear of people who are different. I worry about my husband and I having planned for the next two decades of our lives based on the structures of Social Security and about what we wil do if that structure is dismantled.
It's not a great way to start out the year, marinating in anxiety. And I would be, I will be absolutely delighted if my fears are proved to be unfounded. I wish no one harm.
I've said it time and time again: the core of the Gospel message is "Be not afraid." So I'm trying to open myself to love to drive out fear, worry and anxiety. And I'm trying to figure out what that will require of me in the days and months and years ahead. After all, one little twig can turn the river.
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