Beethoven, The Beatles, and Trusting Your Creative Gut ~

A few months ago, the community at St. Luke's, the little Episcopal parish I call home, spent a weekend immersed in Celtic spirituality. Stefan Waligur, our guide, walked us through this experience through story and song, silence and prayer. And all the while, creation was on his mind. Throughout the weekend, he asked us to sit with these questions:

“Do I believe that I am a co-creator because my very being reflects the Creator’s image?
“What is it that’s being created in me at this time in my life?”
“What might I be called to create, to bring into being, at this time in my life?”
“What is my experience of deep satisfaction in my own creative work?”

Stefan’s questions, and recent communal wondering at St. Luke's about the life-giving thread that weaves creativity and spirituality together, brought to mind a box that is tucked under my bed.

I don’t think of myself as a packrat. I perhaps have a few too many bird figurines laying about, but for the most part, I’ve been able to let go of things that have become clutter. Under my bed I do have a small wicker chest that contains a few treasures from my childhood that I’ve just not been able to part with: my signature book from high school, filled with faded scribbles from the choir geeks and journalism nerds that were my friends back then. Ribbons and certificates from a few seasons on the track team (my build made me a thrower, not a runner). The purple stuffed hippo named Hurky that I got for my 6th birthday. And, a small, cheap, tarnished trophy I won for taking 3rd place in the grade school talent show when I was 10 years old.

I was not the kind of kid to sign up for talent shows. I was dorky and shy and mostly wanted the company of my family, my stuffed hippo and one or two close friends. But when the sign-up sheet for this talent show was posted in the hallway at my grade-school, a rogue wave of courage washed over me, I grabbed the pencil hanging from the string on the clipboard and scrawled: “NAME: Kathy D. – TALENT: piano.”

My grandma Mary began teaching me to play the piano when I was six years old. It was a family outing, every Saturday morning, we’d drive to grandma’s house where my 2 sisters and I would each spend 30 minutes at her spinet. Grandma was a tough nut piano teacher. She was firm and strict and not afraid at all to take her sharpened red pencil and circle all the notes and fingerings I had fumbled. Her expectations were high, and I had to work hard to earn the giant check-mark she’d place in the upper right hand corner of any piece, once she felt I played it well.

She started me off with the standard piano teaching fare of the day: Thompson, Schaum, the dreaded Fingerpower. To keep me motivated beyond the theory worksheets and the arpeggio exercises, she’d also provide a special song to work on, a song we would spend months practicing in preparation for the yearly recital. When I was 10 years old, the recital piece she had me practicing was Beethoven’s, ‘Fur Elise’.  Lah-dum-dah-dah-dee-dum-dah-dee-dah, dum-dah-dee-dah, dum-dah-dee-dah (repeat). I fell in love with the melody, the phrasing, the story the song seemed to be telling measure by measure, and while my 10 year old self couldn’t grasp all that it meant, I did understand that something special happened inside me when I played it.

So I had my Talent Show plan. Coming fresh off my recital, with Beethoven as perfected as my chubby fingers could manage, I would play ‘Fur Elise’ for my classmates, their parents and the teachers.

That was my plan. Until a few days before the show, when I got a look at the list of performers and talents. And between the dancers and the gymnasts and the magicians and comics, I choked. I decided that playing my beloved ‘Fur Elise’ when compared with what the others were doing, just wasn't good enough. Even though I loved the song and could play it pretty well, it probably wouldn't be what people wanted. It wouldn’t be popular enough or dazzling enough. I scrambled around for something “popular”, something crowd-pleasing to play. At the bottom of a pile of sheet music in my piano bench, I found a Beatles song that had been getting lots of top-40 air-play and at the last minute I decided to play that instead. But here’s the thing: the piano part on a Beatles song is just one chord after another. The vocals and the guitars, at least on this particular song, had all the nuance and melody. The piano part was just “chomp-chomp-chomp”. Because I was too scared to play what I loved, too afraid that it wouldn’t measure up to what others were doing, I chose to chomp instead. I wished that night, from the first chord to the last, that I had trusted my gut.  Third place was gracious, to say the least.

All these years later, when I am looking through under-the-bed boxes for something I’ve stored away, I open that wicker basket, I see that tarnished little trophy and feel a twinge. A twinge because I did not trust my creative gut. A twinge because I did not do what I loved. A twinge because I let what other people might think of my music, my art, matter more to me than my simple love of playing.

I believe I am most God’s creation when I am daring to be creative, that we are most God’s creation when we are daring to be creative, that is, living into who we were made to be, who we are becoming: co-creators with our Creator.

In the last several years, I’ve been taught to knit, I’ve taken a mosaic class. I spent six weeks and a whole lot of money learning to work with stained glass. A friend and I spent two months of Tuesday evenings at PCC working with a pottery wheel. And here’s a truth I am willing to tell: I’m sort of lousy at all of these things. You know, it’s probably too soon to quit my day job. My knit scarves are full of holes. My mosaic and glass projects are uneven and chunky. And after crushing yet another ‘vase-in-the making’ on the pottery wheel, the kind-hearted instructor looked at me and said, “well, Kathy, at least you’re enthusiastic.”

And yet, there’s something about having my hands in the clay and the glass and the yarn that is a dose of gladness for me, I find my spirit calm and hopeful. Noodling around on the piano to work out a song, keeping my butt on the chair to get some writing done, digging around in a tiny corner of the yard to see if I can beautify it a bit, this is all so life-giving. Creative. Co-creating. It is messy and flawed and unfinished and I am never quite sure of what I am doing. And I am never happier.

That twinge I feel when I see that little trophy is also a twinge of grace. Because I recognize that somewhere between 10 years old and now, God has let me grow into following my heart and my gut, even when I recognize that what I create may not be the best, or gosh, it may be even a tiny bit lousy, in another person’s eyes, in my eyes. But the grace is that the ‘reviews’ are not the point. The creating is.

Somewhere between “don’t quit my day job” and “my personal gallery opening”, there is an expansive space. And that space is where I can scatter a table at home with paint and glass and paper and glue and beads. It’s a space where I can scribble out the notes to a new melody running through my head. It’s a space where I can buy another ball of yarn to see if the next scarf might have a few less holes. It’s a space where I trust my creative gut, where I put John and Paul and George and Ringo back in the piano bench, and play a little Beethoven.

The Shadow, The Shelter

I had the opportunity to give the sermon at St. Luke's this morning, the little episcopal parish that has become home to me.  Here's what I shared...

From our Psalm this morning: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High abides in the shadow of  the Almighty… I will say of the Lord, You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God, in whom I put my trust.… He will cover you with his feathers and you shall find refuge under his wings.”

I have 57 birds at home.  They aren’t alive. I mean, they’re not dead. They’re made of, oh, clay and cloth and copper and wood and glass. They’re painted bright colors and subdued colors, they’ve been fired in a kiln or woven and held together with thread and wire and glue. They greet me as I head up the creaky stairs into my little place on SE 98th Ave, and you’ll find them in nearly every room of my house. I’d like to think it’s not the first thing you’d notice if you come to visit me, but with 57 of them so far, I might be mistaken about that. Birds on the piano, on little shelves and sills, on my bedside table, dangling in doorways, on every bookcase, on the little cedar chest in my spare room that I’ve made into a little altar space where I keep some things that invite me into stillness, where I steal away for some intentional quiet. They’re everywhere. Except in the bathroom. That’s just  tacky.

Did you ever start a little collection? You know,  just a little something, a memento, a trinket. And pretty soon word gets out and friends and family give you that same little something for every occasion! Well, that’s sorta my story. Except, in my story,  I am both the receiver AND the giver. I’ve always got my eye out for a sweet, fat, funny little bird to bring home. Saturday Market, little hipster boutiques in NE Portland, gift shoppes at museums, funky Art Festivals, tiny tucked-away places in other towns.  Kmart.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High abides in the shadow of the Almighty…”

I didn’t mean to become the fake bird lady of SE 98th Ave. It’s been happening for a long time, it’s happening still.

About 10 years ago, I bought my little yellow house with the purple door.  A sweet little place in a slightly frumpy neighborhood. The house I could afford. It’s near the base of Kelly Butte in SE Portland. Now, if you aren’t familiar with Kelly Butte, I’m not surprised. She’s the Cinderella of the ‘local’ buttes: Cinderella before she met the fairy god-mother. Cinderella before she was whisked away in an enchanted pumpkin coach. Cinderella before she danced in a beautiful gown with Prince Charming at the ball. Kelly Butte is the scruffy, disheveled and ignored Cinderella, doing all the scrubbing and sweeping and getting no appreciation at all. She’s no Mt. Tabor, Powell Butte or Mt. Scott.

But when I moved into my little place near the base of Kelly Butte, I loved that every morning I woke up in her shelter and shadow, I loved the way that God showed off in the autumn with the kaleidoscope of changing leaves, and I loved meeting the neighbors who  make Kelly Butte their refuge. Birds. Everywhere. Birds. Swallows, hawks, jays, hummingbirds, swifts and wrens and finches. Crazy, strong, sweet, funny, fragile, scrappy birds. A morning walk with my dog Maggie is like listening in on choir practice: the warm-ups, the cantor and response, the grand cantata.

“I will say of the Lord, You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God, in whom I put my trust...”

When I was 9 years old, my dad, who I love, embroiled my mom, my two older sisters and my little brother in the worst kind of clichéd ‘TV-movie of week’ melodrama. He left us for a waitress in a diner.

Beyond the shock of that abandonment, and the fact that I can count on a couple of fingers the times he came to visit after he left us, he died of cancer within 3 years at the age of  38. We’re all shaped by the losses we suffer, the arrows that are flung, the terrors that stalk. What my ‘9-year old heart when he left us’ and my  ‘12-year old heart when he died’ decided, was that I was not securely held.  That what I thought was safe, wasn’t safe at all.  That I was leave-able.

So maybe now you are thinking, um, yea, can we go back to that funny part about the birds?

Enter Selma. How can I say this with love? Selma was a piece of work. She was a 40-ish something single lady with a perfectly manicured yard and a cat named John. She was a Sunday School teacher at a little church not far from here that swooped my family up into its arms and embraced us as this thing that was not supposed to be happening to a nice church-going family was, indeed, happening. She sang in the choir and had a ferocious vibrato. She wore bright red lipstick and woolen jackets with gaudy broaches and a different bad wig every Sunday. She had a red one, a blonde one, and two shades of brown. I was in Selma’s class when things around us were crumbling after dad left us, when we were feeling our way out of that wreckage.  Selma, besides tending carefully to her lawn, her cat and her wigs, was a drill sergeant about one thing when it came to her students: Bible Verse Memorization.  KING JAMES Bible Verse Memorization. So a long time ago, when my little girl heart and spirit were breaking under the strain of scrambling around for security and a safe-hold, Selma had us memorizing Psalm 91.

I can still quote much of it today. And so, when I would walk up the street to school, or lay in my bed with my menagerie of stuffed animals, or when I would noodle around on the piano, or sit on the couch by my mom and rest my head against her shoulder, I had these words to keep me good company: “You who dwell in the shelter of the Most High abide in the shadow of the Almighty… I will say of the Lord, You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God, in whom I put my trust.… He will cover you with his feathers and you shall find refuge under his wings. You shall not be afraid of any terror by night,  nor of the arrow that flies by day. Because you are bound to me in love, I will deliver you. I will protect you because you know my name. You shall call upon me and I will answer you, I will be with you in trouble. With long life will I satisfy you and show you my salvation.”

The arrows, they fly and we are pierced by them. The terrors, they stalk and find us vulnerable.  We leave one another in a thousand ways.What did you decide when you were nine? What did you decide when you were twelve? What did you decide when you  were left? What did you decide half a lifetime ago? What did you decide this morning?

This community gathered here today, and all the communities we’re part of outside these walls, and the communities that ripple out from there to the ends of the earth: we are strong and fragile, we are sweet and scrappy. We all wear this skin, this breakable, vulnerable, leave-able skin. We all have hearts longing to be known, and if we lean into one another only, the truth is, none of us are safe, none of us are securely held, and all of us are leave-able, I mean, look around.

I have 57 birds at home.  They remind me that God is no stranger to my losses,  that God knows how and where I break, where I am pierced, where I am afraid. They remind me that God was present a long time ago in a little church not far from here, where a crazy Sunday School teacher in a bad wig made me memorize Psalm 91, Psalm 91, where I found this truth to live into – this truth that is taking me a lifetime to live into, and maybe like you, that ‘living into’ sometimes feels like believing, sometimes like wrestling. Sometimes it feels like despairing, and sometimes it feels like stillness. That truth is this:  there is a place to find safety, there is a place to be held, there is a place where we won’t be left. And that place is the sheltering refuge of God’s love and mercy.

I was raised in the Baptist church, and there is a hymn from Psalm 91 that was in our hymnal, we sang it often. My dad, like Selma, was a singer, and I am pretty sure that in different times and different churches, both my dad and Selma sang this song over and again. The lyrics are these:

Under his wings I am safely abiding, 
Though the night deepens and tempests are wild
Still I can trust him, I know he will keep me
He has redeemed me and I am his child
Under his wings, under his wings,
Who from his love can sever?
Under his wings, my soul shall abide
Safely abide forever

“He will cover us with his feathers and we shall find refuge under his wings.”

What is being covered, what is being offered refuge? The soul, the spirit, the heart that longs to be known, inside this breakable, vulnerable, leave-able skin.

I lean into the mystery and wonder of God, and let myself imagine that under God’s wings, there is an imprint that is shaped like you, that is shaped like me, that is shaped like all the world, where we are being held. In this refuge, in this shelter, in this stronghold, we are being shown our salvation.

It’s been happening for a long time. It’s happening still.    Amen.

Choir Geeks ~

Ah, look at those cheeks! So young, so fresh, soft as a baby's bottom. I look pretty good too.

The past few Wednesday evenings, my little brother Steve (tall guy above), my niece Sarah and I, got our 'choir geek' on.

It has been an awfully long time since we donned our polyester gold choir robes with the maroon sashes from Columbia High School in Troutdale (home of the Chargers).

I spent some of the best hours of my life in the choir room at Columbia. It opened the year I became a sophomore, and was built to handle the growing population of teenagers in the Reynolds District. It was exciting to go to a brand new school, everything was so shiny, so open to possibility. Those were the days when students were offered a generous menu of options for the basics as well as the classes that would enhance their lives: art and music, earth sciences, gymnastics and poetry.

Those were also the days when the standards for earning a diploma were a little, um, relaxed. See, in a new school of 300-some students, there were just 2 of us who played piano. Marilee Axling, the extraordinary young choirmaster, recruited Mike and myself to be her accompanists. A choir or vocal ensemble of some sort was offered six out of seven class periods per day (unimaginable now), so Mike and I were allowed to part-time attend some classes, self-study some classes, and even skip some classes, to be available for the choirs. In hindsight, I am not sure this was the best idea. I could have used a little more time in gym class, science is not my strong suit and I am a grown woman who had to ask a kid the other day how to figure the diameter of a circle. And yet, I got to play and sing for hours and hours every week.

I sang and played a bit more during a year away at a private Christian college, where I also took a choral conducting class. I was so excited to purchase my white-tipped conducting baton, but never learned to wield it well. I figure it's the same reason I cannot drive a stick shift or play the organ. I like to think of myself as a muli-tasker, but I prefer a looser sense of timing on most everything, so my ability to press the clutch, strike the keyboard and the foot pedals at the same time, or bring the sopranos in on cue just never jelled. But I still found ways to sing, mostly in church choirs and ensembles. And then, a handful of years back, that opportunity took a few turns away from me, and while I am so fortunate to be part of a tiny and beloved band of singers and players at my Episcopal parish, being part of a choir now seems like something I did a lifetime ago.

So, when I got an email from the Portland Symphonic Choir, announcing their "Summer Sings" series, a yearly opportunity for vocal pros and regular joes like me to meet up and sing delicious, challenging, and transformative classical vocal arrangements, I gave myself 3 seconds, maybe 4, to respond, "sign me up!"

I invited my brother and my niece to come along. The PSC website invited singers into evenings spent with the works of Bach, Faure and Handel, held in the care of highly skilled conductors who would walk us through the arrangements with grace and good humor. Each conductor was different, extending to us something from deep inside themselves and drawing out of us the music that simply begged to respond to their passionate direction. My impression from the email was that we'd spend some time each Wednesday rehearsing, and then, if there was time, sing a bit. I was wrong. From the first evening, we were given our pitch and dove right in, a sight-singing boot camp. For an out of practice alto like me it was exhausting. For an out of practice alto like me, it was exhilarating.

When we sang the Bach 'Magnificat', the tempo was so fast I looked around for a seat belt to tighten, I am sure I hit only a few notes per measure, and at one point, my niece and I looked wide-eyed at one another, shrugged and laughed. There was a moment in Faure's 'Requiem', when the basses blew the roof off the joint with their rich and deep 'Hosanna in excelsis!", and I wanted to stand and pump my fist like a groupie at a rock concert. Handel's 'Israel in Egypt', an oratorio with lyrics taken primarily from passages in the book of Exodus, allowed us the opportunity to harmonize about the plagues. I just don't get to sing enough about lice and boils.

I am used to singing alone, or with a small group of other voices. The evening we sang Bach's 'Mass in Bb Minor', the conductor asked the tenors to sit behind the altos. A few bars into the piece, and I had to resist the urge to turn around and ask the nice fellas to "please tone it down a bit, I am trying to sing." And in that moment, I remembered, oh yea, this is how it is meant to be. I'm not meant to sing alone, I need to hear their voices, so I can find my part. And, as it is with community, even though I'm a little rusty, they need to hear my voice, so they can find their part.

I loved looking around the auditorium on these evenings to see who it is in Portland that sings. As you can imagine, every kind of person sat in those chairs: sweet older women in funky scarves and sensible shoes, tattooed hipsters, business-types, pot-bellies and gym-rats. Lots of gray hair and bifocals, lots of students fresh off high school graduation. Soccer moms and single dads. Believers and seekers, the lost and the found and the unsure of anything. Community. Choir geeks. I love being with people who love music. These are some of my people, and I have missed them. I am not part of an official choir at this place in my life, but someday, I hope to be again. And this time, as a singer, rather than an accompanist.  I want to stand and sing with my alto section and hear the tenors, the sopranos, the baritones and basses in my ear. A community of choir geeks.

It is recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke, that when Jesus was making his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the crowds were shouting, singing out their words of praise and adoration to God. Some Pharisees, crabby at the unruly melee, asked Jesus if he could possibly, you know, get them to shut up. Jesus looked at them and simply said, that if the people didn't lift up their voices in praise to God, the rocks and stones themselves would cry out.

I am pretty sure, that for the last few Wednesday evenings, near a 200-seat auditorium off Albina in North Portland, the rocks and stones were speechless.

Sweet Clarity ~

I nearly came unhinged in contemplative spirituality last week.

There I was at the Central library, tucked away in Religion, searching for a book on daily meditative practices. I’d listened to an interview with the author and was captivated by the short snippets she read from a few chapters, little hints on inviting a greater experience of stillness and peace into daily life. I hunched myself over in the stacks, ran my finger across the dusty spines, and tried to read the ISBN stickers sideways with my tri-focals in bad lighting. I could not find the book, despite the e-librarian telling me it was available. Knowing that I, on occasion, have put a book back on the shelf where it did not belong, I scanned a few shelves to the right and the left, above and below, just in case. Nothing. Waste of time. Stupid library. Where for the love of all that's holy was that book about inner peace?!

I felt my jaw clench, my heart rate intensify, my lips curl into a pout. And I don’t know, something about the scene just seemed a little, well, off. 

Reminding myself that misbehaving characters are sometimes escorted from library grounds, I pulled it together. I stepped away from my inner-tantrum for a second, formed a little cartoon bubble above my head and scribbled in this caption: “is it possible that you might have a little something else on your mind?” 

I visited a friend over the weekend. She’s older, I’m sure she wouldn’t appreciate that adjective, let’s just say she’s had her AARP membership card tucked into her wallet for around, oh, twenty years. I mention her age because this is a woman who has been through some trying experiences, survived her share of ordeals. She can be a tough cookie. We were getting ready to go outside for a bit to enjoy the springtime evening. She was buttoning up the house, when she accidentally caught her finger in the sliding glass door. I didn’t see it happen, I just heard the yelp. She held out her hand, told me she’d smashed her finger and burst into tears. I grabbed an ice-pack from her freezer (trying at the same time to remember from high school first-aid if crushed fingers want ice or heat). I handed her the ice-pack as she sat on her couch, now sobbing inconsolably. Her finger was hurt, to be sure. I offered what sympathy I could. But these tears seemed way out of proportion to the injury. And I wondered if maybe she’d been storing up these tears for a much-needed cry and, thanks to the quick action of the door runners, she finally had her opportunity. I wanted to ask, “is it possible that you might have a little something else on your mind?” 

There are moments when we long for clarity, to know what’s really going on underneath the tantrums, the tears, the guardedness, the aches. We suspect that clarity is in there somewhere, we’re just buried beneath heaps of anxiety and fret and rigidity like a hoarder trapped among the piles of old newspapers, empty pizza boxes, chipped trinkets and unsorted laundry. The path between head and heart is so strewn with every concern we’ve collected and clung to, it’s hard to see clearly.

I wish it was like Oil Can Henry’s. It’s an oil change and a movie at the same time. While I’m getting filters changed and transmission fluid drained, I’m also watching the fellas underneath the car on the Henry-Cam poke around and check for leaks, for weaknesses, for bare spots, for any signs of trouble.

When my heart feels weak and troubled, I’d love to know what’s going on underneath.

When my youngest niece was in the 3rd grade, maybe 4th, I was visiting for the weekend when she got the news that her best friend would be attending a different school. She ran from the room and buried her head in a pillow, and cried the way only a little girl can cry. I left her alone for a few minutes, and then went to sit by her. I asked her if she wanted to tell me about it. She looked up from her pillow and with hot tears streaming down her red cheeks she wailed, “now who am I gonna eat lunch with?”

Ah, sweet clarity. To know what the trouble is, to say what the trouble is.

A few weeks back, my priest asked us to tell the Easter story in six words or less. She’d gotten this idea from a radio broadcast, and asked us to pare the story down to its core, to what was essential about it for us individually. Many people offered their six-word sermons and it was beautiful to hear what each person claimed as their meaningful truth.

The story of the risen Jesus encountering Mary Magdalene in the garden has always been a favorite scene for me. It reads very genteel, but in my head I hear Jesus quietly asking, “Mary, Mary, why are you crying?”, and Mary, a frantic, blubbering mess, all sobs and rage and fear, catches her breath and cries out: “they took my Lord and I don’t know where to find him!” Sweet clarity.

My six word sermon: “Kathy, Kathy, why are you crying?” “Kathy, Kathy, why are you having a melt-down in contemplative spirituality?” “Because, because, well, um, because...”

There’s a TV show from years back that I loved watching, a show about a single mom living with her mother while raising a child of her own. The little girl was precocious, inquisitive, perhaps a little bossy, and never at a loss for words. In one episode, after telling her mom and her grandma exactly what was on her 8 year-old mind, the grandmother turned to her and said “you know Lauren, you don’t need to actually speak every single thought that comes into your head”. The little girl seemed crushed, like someone had just sold her puppy.

But maybe speaking every thought that comes into our heads is just what we need to do once in a while (time and place of course, avoiding the Central Library religion section).
“I'm not gonna make it if I don't get some help"
“I feel really sad all the time” 
“Who am I gonna eat lunch with?” 
“They’ve taken my Lord and I don’t know where to find him” 

To know what the trouble is, to say what the trouble is.

After Mary Magdalene bared her soul to the man she mistook for the gardener, Jesus looked at her and simply said, “Mary.” In that moment, she was led through the clutter of her fear, her confusion, her deep sorrow. We speak our truth to the one who loves us best, we see a little more clearly, and we find ourselves named and known. Sweet clarity.

Ragamuffin ~

One of the first things I learned this morning, between walking my dog and sipping my coffee and deciding if I could get away with this messy hair on a Saturday, is that Brennan Manning died.

I was sitting on the couch when I found out, and I burst into tears.

I never met him. I heard him speak only once, and that was years ago in a small college-town auditorium where some friends and I were stashed away in the cheap seats, so far from the stage that his small frame was barely visible.

But his dog-eared, highlighted and underlined books are tucked into every shelf space in my home.

His words are carved into quiet, internal places I return to when I need to hear the voice that reminds me that I am God's beloved child, that we all bear that identity.

Brennan Manning was one of the first Christ-lovers who helped me to see a life of faith with new eyes, with a new heart; not as an endless, duty-filled list of assignments: to do, to do more, to do better, to do it all with great strength and without fail.

Instead, he invited me to see myself as he saw himself, as a ragamuffin: a bit bedraggled, a bit scruffy, a bit of a mess. Not the kind of person marked by perfection and sought out by power and influence and beauty; but rather, a person marked by a growing awareness of their belovedness, an awareness that comes from letting God come a little closer, and then closer still, over time, and finding in that gritty intimacy, all that a life of faith can bring: famine and feast, brokenness and wholeness, waiting and wonder, disappointment and hope, death and life, every bit of it held by a God who has come so near that I get to call him "Abba" ... daddy. 

I'm so grateful I was introduced to Brennan Manning, to his faith, to his heart, to his journey. I'm so glad to have his books in my home, his words tucked away in those quiet, internal places.

"My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ, and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it." - from The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning

God bless Brennan Manning, God bless us in our missing his presence. God bless us in living into our belovedness.

Mourning Into Dancing ~

You have turned my mourning into dancing

You have turned my mourning

You have turned my mourning into dancing

You have turned my mourning

You are clothing me with gladness

You are clothing me with joy

My sack-cloth and my ashes fall away

(from Psalm 30)

There are so many things that draw me to the liturgical church. The prayers, the creeds, the seasons and the colors, the vestments and the candles, the rituals. The repetition, the sacred tending to ancient practices. The Lectionary. It is brilliant to me, that in the course of a few years, years A, B and C, a person in one of many liturgical churches will read the same scriptures and pray the same prayers as those being read and prayed by seekers, believers, skeptics and wonderers all around the world.

Every few months, to help sketch out a few musical ideas for my parish, I get a sneak peek at the upcoming scripture readings, the Lectionary. The information is available on a thousand websites, but I am old school and like the feel of paper sifting through my fingers, so I wander now and then into the parish office and reach into the oak drawer where Hazel stashes the bulletin inserts. I get to look ahead at the next several weeks of readings,  I get to experience a sense of the the arc, the trajectory we're on with the story God is still telling. I love knowing what's coming up. It's better than getting my OPB member magazine in the mail.

A few months ago, as I was leafing through my newly absconded readings from Hazel's stash,  I saw that a reading from Psalm 30 was fast approaching: "You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy."

The timing seemed sweet, as this bit of scripture had been winding itself through my heart and mind for awhile.

A practice of mine is to try to craft simple songs for worship and meditation that are drawn from scripture. This is something I've enjoyed for years, much of the enjoyment coming from the thought that, with putting scripture to music, there's a decent chance that the words won't be dumb.

This particular passage, the one where mourning is transformed and we're given something new to wear to the dance we're invited to, this passage was the one I'd most recently spent time with at my piano, noodling around until my fingers found their way to a singable melody.

Something about where God has me right now, something in the tone and tenor of God's voice in my ear, is all about turning: fear into courage, resignation into openness, mourning into dancing.

The thing is, I'm not much of a dancer. I can't imagine it's my clunky frame or awkward social anxiety or general lack of coordination below the knees. Nah. Couldn't be me. I blame my grandfather.

He was a Conservative Baptist preacher for over fifty years. I loved the twinkle in his eye, the way he called me "sugar", his broad shoulders and the funky eyeglasses he wore. But this sweet man knew how to wield a leash, and he rarely loosened his grip on the one he had on my childhood, even from miles and miles away. Dancing, movies, cards, all were 'tools of the devil' according to grandpa, so, while we got away with a few hands of Old Maid now and then, movies and dances were simply not allowed, and dances were particularly characterized with vivid warnings as the playground of all sorts of naughtiness, so, on the off-chance that grandpa would somehow find out, dances were strictly off-limits.

I'm sure he meant well.  I know I mean well, when I'm being bossy and controlling. Oh, I mean well.

I do recall sneaking into one school dance for just a few minutes during the sixth grade. The evening included a mix of parent/teacher meet-ups, a display of student macaroni-art in the hallways, while in the gym, the 4th, 5th and 6th graders were sock-hopping to some 70s top-twenty hits played on cassette tapes over a crackly audio system. I ditched my mother and the macaroni art-gallery and wandered into the gym with a friend, you know, just to see what the cool kids were doing, and to see who my crushes, Tim and Tony, were dancing with. I leaned against the wall, took in the lights and the music and the naughtiness all around me, dropped my jaw like a baby bird reaching for her first fat worm, and waited for the ground to crack open, swallow me up and hurl me straight into the belly of hell. Yea, a tight grip on that leash my grandpa held. I'm sure I looked over my shoulder to make sure he hadn't walked into the gym at that very moment. I fled and never set foot on a dance floor again.

Until now. I've been asked to receive and respond to God's kind invitation. I've been asked to allow for my mourning to become my dancing. What might this transformation look like to a girl who doesn't know how to allow for one to become the other? How does a girl find her way from the wall to the dance floor? What does a girl do, when she doesn't know how to dance?

She takes off her sack-cloth called shame, and her ashes called sorrow. She allows them to fall away. She straps on her sparkly shoes called gladness, she buttons up her fancy dress called joy, she unties the leash that’s kept her tethered in fear and she stumbles onto the dance floor, where she’s met with a strong hand and a kind voice to help her find her footing. She leans into the music, lets herself be held, lets herself be led, and lets herself begin to dance. Step, step, turn. Step, step, turn. Mourning into dancing. Ashes into gladness. Sack-cloth into joy.

I’m not looking over my shoulder anymore, afraid that grandpa will show up and see what naughtiness I’m up to.  He died several years ago, well into his 90s, after giving his life away in ministry. And knowing what he knows now, freed himself from his own tethers, I can only imagine that he's been dancing all the while.

Out of the Dark, Into the Light ~

This little purple-striped beauty broke through the ground in my garden a few days ago, just in time for Easter weekend.

She did what the season of Lent asked of her: she tucked herself away in the dark for awhile, she let herself be nourished by the stillness around her, she allowed for some isolation and waiting. And then, as if she could hear the church-bells start to chime out their glad anthem, she sprung out of her slumber in time as if to say "aren't I pretty?!"

Personal attentiveness to the season of Lent is a newer idea to me. I'd heard of such a thing when I was younger, but since these Lenten tales usually involved the surrender of something chocolaty, I just couldn't see myself going that far.

Awhile back, when I found myself dipping my toes into liturgical waters, waters with spiritual practices I found intriguing, I discovered I was more open to Lent and how it might look in my own life.

I didn't know where to begin. I asked around, I listened to homilies, I read a few tiny guidebooks, I listened to friends. The sweetest guidance I received came from a friend who told me that Lent could be whatever I wanted it to be, that it didn't have to be dictated by anyone else. She also offered that I didn't need to limit my thoughts to "giving something up". She offered that I could enlarge my Lenten practice, my experience, and hopefully my spirit, by "taking something on".  That's more like it.

This season, I did do a bit of letting go, but I let myself take something on as well. My tiny yard has quite a few bare spots asking for some attention, and I'd rather crowd out weeds than pull them, so I decided that I would plant one bulb every day during the season. If I did the math, that's 40 bulbs in 40 days.

The bulbs were planted at night, on my last run out to the yard with Maggie, right before tucking in. I liked the idea of planting in the dark, it felt holy and symbolic, like a true act of faith. What I didn't consider is that a girl with bad eyes who cannot see in the dark and who has the slightest kink in her short-term memory, would likely forget where she planted last night's bulb.

Now, with Lent behind us, this little purple-striped beauty will have others popping up out of the ground to join her in the garden. I imagine she's looking around for them just like I am. Since their planting was staggered, their debuts will be also. Here's where I might mention how great it will be that, with Lent lasting 40 days, I get to be dazzled by the sight of 40 separate plants showing off in my yard each morning, once a few more weeks go by. Here's where I might confess that Mags and I didn't make it out to the yard for planting every night. A few of my other Lenten practices were not marked by perfection either. Just check my Starbucks receipts and my recumbent bike odometer and you'll know what I mean. Ah well, the practice of Lent, the grace of Lent. Imperfection. I imagine that is the idea.

And yet, with Easter and its celebrations just a day away, there is more color in my yard, more color than there was when my priest gently applied ashes to my forehead and reminded me that I come from the dust. There is more hope, hope that comes from seeing what some waiting might give birth to. And there is more light, because even in the dark, it simply will not be overcome. It will, in good time, break through.

Thresholds ~

I've been carrying a card around with me for the past few months, a card from my dearest friend. The front is brightly spattered with primary colors, and a chalk-lettered cheer from a kiddo named Eli. It reads: "God, give me guts".  On the back, my friend wrote about waiting, change, and threshold crossing.

'Threshold' has not been a big part of my vocabulary. I mean, I've heard about brides being carried over the threshold (is that still a thing?) My oldest connection to the word comes from a memory that my middle sister vehemently denies to this day, but when we were little kids, maybe 7, 9, I asked her where babies come from, and she said "it starts at the wedding ceremony when the preacher says "you may now kiss the bride", and by the time the bride gets home and her husband carries her over the threshold, she's pregnant". I figured out all on my own that something musta happened between points A and B, but I just left it there.

There have been some threshold crossings for me lately. I do believe I am being carried over these, carried by words of kindness and courage and protection offered by people who know me best. And by God, who has been nudging me to go ahead and take some long waited for, long anxious-about steps. Bob Bennett, in his song, "Mountain Cathedrals", sings: "I'm eager and afraid at the same time to move from where I've been." Me too Bob, me too.

Thresholds can be so frightening, there's just no telling what eyes will see or a heart will feel on the other side. And yet, thresholds can hold all kinds of hope. Hope that the new thing that God may be doing in a life will be be just the cool drink of water we were so thirsty for (Isaiah 43:19)

The friend who sent me this card, also sent me some quotes from Irish poet John O'Donohue. I had the sweet privilege of hearing John speak a handful of years ago before his untimely death. He was at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, and between the beauty of that sanctuary and the beauty of his words and brogue, I experienced a deep stillness. Since then, seeking out his books is a constant line item on my 'to-do' list. His name is scribbled on that post-it-note-in-my-head of authors to search the aisles for when I visit Powell's Books. He's also on my go-to list when I am shopping Amazon.com and need just a few more bucks-worth of stuff to get free shipping. (I am one of those suckers who doesn't get the arithmetic of this arrangement enough to understand that the more I spend the less "free" the shipping is, but if I get John O'Donohue out of the deal, I'm in).

I seek out his voice whenever I can. Just yesterday, the morning felt hard, heavy, anxious. I got to work and popped an old Krista Tippett/On Being interview with John into my ear ("The Inner Landscape of Beauty"). A girl can get just about anything done when she's got an Irish poet calming her down.

In this interview, John was talking about thresholds. There are lampposts I look for to guide me in my spiritual becoming. When I come across the same idea over and again from different voices and encounters, what I see in that is a little light in the dark to help me find my way. Maybe God gets it that I can be the tiniest bit dense and distracted, so God kindly and gently brings me back to what I need to consider. And where I am now, given the light I've been offered,  I am considering thresholds.

In this interview, John writes that the etymology of the word "threshold" comes from "threshing", the word used to describe separating the grain from the husk.

(side note - I love discovering the origin of words. Had I a chance to do it over, I'd go to school to earn a degree in etymology. Given the economy, I still may work in an insurance cubicle, but I'd have that sweet diploma)

He goes on to say that a threshold becomes a place where we move into more fullness. And that the act of crossing a threshold allows for the healing of patterns of repetition that keep us caught.

There are reasons we get stuck, reasons we stay stuck. Reasons, good reasons, we decide to be more afraid than eager to move from where we've been. It serves us in some way. If nothing changes, nothing changes, and that can be like a heavy down quilt on a bone chilly night. Comfortable.

The steps I've taken over some thresholds lately have been encouraged by the threshold-crossing I see going on around me. I watch, either up close or from a distance, people I care about deciding that comfortable isn't so comfortable after all. To be brave instead of paralyzed. To choose healing over defiance. To be grain instead of husk.

A card from a friend, a cheer from a little boy, a truth from an Irish poet. Sometimes the simplest things can open a door that has been jammed shut for a lifetime.

 

I am pretty sure at this point in my life that my middle sister was mistaken about where babies come from.  But things do look and feel a little different on this side of the threshold, so I'm watching for more light from those lampposts to see what is trying to get born.

This Miserables Year ~

I’ve made an intentional choice this year to take on some misery, to allow heartbreak and desolation to be my daily companions.

I’m finally reading Les Mis.

I’ve seen the Broadway musical, watched the Hollywood movies, rented the 25^th anniversary PBS special, worn the Cosette t-shirt and sung ‘On My Own’ at the top of my lungs with my puppy dog staring at me curiously and whispering “oh my God” under her breath.

It was time to read the book.

I took a stab at reading it several years ago. A friend of mine is a voracious reader, and we were lamenting the lack of time or opportunity to be in a book group. So, we made up our own. We were meeting up for coffee once a month anyhow, so we decided to invite Monsieur Hugo to join us.

It turns out I like the idea of a book club.

The actual reading and preparation, the pressure to enter into the discussion, not so much. I was able to fake my way through the first few meetings, letting my friend do most of the talking, while I nodded thoughtfully and sipped my latte. But a few meetings into it, she began to press me for my insights on the classic story of law, grace and redemption. I knew I was busted when the best I could muster sounded something like this: “um, well, I really liked that part when that guy went to that place and saw that thing.”  We kept meeting for coffee after that, but Les Mis went back on the bookshelf.

I saw the newest film version this past Christmas. Hugh Jackman had me at “my name is Jean Valjean!” My sister brought her newly purchased e-reader to town for the holidays, and though I’d pledged to never support such a device, certain that I would not be one to contribute to the demise of the indie bookstore, there I was on New Year’s Day, in line at the B&N big-box, setting down the cash for my own.

Les Mis was my first e-book purchase. Successfully downloading an e-anything is cause for cake and balloons at my house, as I am not the savviest techie girl. So when I saw these beautiful words, ”download complete”, I ran my fingers over the smooth screen bearing the tiny Hugo image, fiddled with the back-light, figured out how to tap-tap just right to turn a page,  and dove into 1815 France.

I am reading Hugo on the bus. I have a short commute, but filling my head with his delicious and extravagant words before I settle into my gray-walled cubicle is a fantastic way to start my work day. With the jostling of the bus and the challenge of reading with tri-focals, I picked a font and a type-size that brings my e-reader version of Les Mis in at 4268 pages. That’s a lot of misery.

I ride the bus to work 18 days each month, so at 20-ish “pages” per day, I’ll be done by the end of the year.

I have never been a big fan of signing up for anything that may take a year to finish. I’m a little bit prone to distraction, a little likely to move on to something else, more of a starter than a finisher.

But that’s another thing I want to be intentional about this year, I want to finish something I start. It always helps to get from one side of a hope to the other with the buddy system.  You know, a walking partner, some sort of accountability check-in, a person to tell your best-kept secrets to. What’s daunting becomes do-able. 4268 pages becomes 20.

With Jean Valjean, Fantine and Marius, the naughty Thernardiers’ and the beloved Bishop riding the bus with me every day, this feels different, like it is going to get done.  I am going to finish Victor Hugo’s “Les Mis” by the end of the year.

I’ve never been so happy to be so miserable.