2012.01.15 Advantages of Aging: Liberation and Grace

I don’t think this is what Martin Luther King Jr. had in mind. He had grander ideas thank heavens.

However, I’ve discovered an advantage to aging besides retirement and wearing purple, which I do anyway. Such a regal color for a Leo!

Don’t mean to offend but....... When you’re old you can fart, belch, swear, and interrupt all you want, ask dumb questions, repeat yourself, forget, forget and forget, even if you don’t, and otherwise act like a damn fool. You can even say the F word then feign dementia.

You’re free of inhibitions, if you so choose. All this will happen anyway so why not take advantage of it ahead of time?

People will just nod and attribute your crudery to your age. They will indulge you and smile wisely, and even envy you your refusal to be embarrassed. And in a few years they too will enjoy this marvelous freedom without shame.

Once when my mother was in her 80s she lost control of her bowels. It was a new experience for her—and me. We had returned from a visit to the ER after having her checked out from a fall. It was 3 a.m. I went ahead to open the door for her and heard her calling “I’m going.” “Where?”I said never imagining the truth.

That’s how invasive this trauma was for us both. We got through the clean up and getting to bed together with as much tenderness as we each could muster and, mercifully, no words at all, either of shame or scorn.

The grace in this is that you won’t be judged any more than a child would at the other end of the lifespan trajectory. So please don’t judge yourself either.

Shit happens and so does grace.

That night I almost wanted to read her a story, tuck her in, and say prayer—but settled for a kiss and “Sleep well Mom. See you tomorrow.”

2012.01.11 Breathe! Draw! Write! Sing! Breathe!

I bought great books for some of our grandkids for Christmas. I loved them myself.

They are The Invention of Hugo Cabret (already a movie!)  and  Wonderstruck . Great title, no?   Both are written and drawn by Brian Selznick, very innovative. Beautiful "holy" stories of children in search.  

Books have always been “saviors” for me, providing me an alternative world in which to flourish, stimulating my own creative literary imagination, and accompanying me on my own search for life, love and mystery.

(I even read the whole Bible when I was 14, a useless resource to help me grow boobs and find a boyfriend, but astonishingly helpful in showing me a God who actually talked to and cared about people who carped and whined and carried on dramatically as I did.)

What I especially like about Selznick’s books is that the stories are told, in part, with dynamic pictures, not static illustrations. The art is dynamic and moves the story along. Pictures, not cartoons, are interspersed with words. It's how these books got to be as fat as the Bible!— half of the story is in pictures.  

Very fabulous.

I also love that there is no sorcerer, extraterrestrial, magic, witches, robots or, god forbid, vampires!  Just plain real-life children figuring out life's difficulties, finding someone to care, and growing up. 

These creations are so real they take your breath away. Something like being “wonderstruck.”

It has been said, “The breath makes immortal music human.”

Likewise, art and text make immortal story human.

There’s something biblical about that, no? We have to stop to breath—and create. And in the beginning the biblical creator deity stops and stoops to breathe life itself into all creation.

2012.01.08 Music is a Human Right, Also a Divine Right

Last night we listened to a Los Angeles Philharmonic (La Phil) concert conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the latest sensation on the classical music scene and a young charming spirit from Venezuela—famous for saying with a shrug and a chuckle, "If it can be done in Venezuela it can be done anywhere."

Dudamel believes and passionately embodies his creed: Music is a human right.

In the beginning Godde said, Let there be light—and music. Birds made up the first orchestras.

Dudamel, inspired by his mentor José Antonio Abreu, educates children of all ages to play classical music in orchestras and in classrooms. Even tiny nursery school children are banging out rhythms in sync with each other. They are an orchestra! Their glee is unrivaled.

The program is called El Sistema. It’s a system, a saturation. Music is central to human development not an elective easily eliminated from school budgets. El Sistema is now being implemented at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

“Put a musical instrument in a child’s hand and s/he will never pick up a gun,” said Dudamel with a grin of surety.

A 12 year old African American boy said, “When I play music I enter heaven.”

This effort is an important way to take the elitist label off classical music and I think realize that all music is classical. The results of this effort are, frankly, happier children. Everyone plans and no one is left out or singled out. Unlike sports, there’s no “bench” in orchestral music. There is no grade either. Fail-safe joy.

It is also a way to instrumentalize the biblical idea that everything on earth is sacred and beloved the same. Music knows no gender, race, religion, etc.

One parent also labeled this program “safe” because it keeps children off the streets.

Dudamel said “We have to have the notes but each time we play it is different, sounds different. We have to interpret re-interpret and re-interpret to keep it alive.”

This creativity is also what keeps the biblical word of scripture alive for every generation, group, and individual. Everyone interprets it, makes it chime in their own souls, and creates, yes, music.

2012.01.04 Epiphany Insights Two Days Ahead

Epiphany, officially Jan 6, began with a point of light in the sky, tiny but bright enough to follow anyway and illuminative enough to shine on the face of, what else, a tiny baby. Whose eyes would not light up?

Epiphany offers many fleeting points of light. Watch for them in all the “wrong” places.

I overheard a talented writer say something like, getting published was ALL grace. I told him he should take some of the credit for it himself.

There's no such thing as disembodied grace.  

And the alarmingly paradoxical Christian insistence on the co-mingling of flesh and spirit, divinity and humanity forces us to face this odd truth: it is divine to be crucified and it is human to be resurrected.

Our either/or habit of mind is confounded and convicted.

2012.01.01 Holy Naming

It’s New Year’s Day. It’s also the Christian feast of the Holy Name.

Some Christians think there is only one holy name, and that it’s the name of Jesus. They’re wrong.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I love Jesus, both the holy man of Nazareth with the ribald humor and the buoying laugh and also the one the Church elevates to messiah, one sent by Godde to liberate and bring the good news that what?.......we’re saved.

But then you look around and guess what?... we’re not saved or it doesn’t look that way with all the mess of our lives and all the messiness and corruption in the world.

Salvation isn’t rescue it’s hope. And hope that is seen isn’t hope.

Scripture makes a big deal of God’s naming us each one and all, a way to acknowledge each one’s special place in the Heart of Love.

So who named you? My dad named me LYnda because he wanted to call me Lyn which he did. He only called me Lynda when he was seriously pissed off, like when he hollered me back inside as I was scampering across our lawn while sneaking out to meet my boyfriend who waited in the darkened getaway car down the street.

The sound of my whole name caught my attention. I was saved from teenage sex, which frankly was far more threatening than my father’s wrath.

Just his calling me by my whole name was enough to make me remember he cared about me, for better or worse.

Or . . . he’d call me by my full name when he “got me.”

(Our little granddaughter Phoebe, three, recently commented about her Uncle Robbie who’d given her a large empty cardboard box to play with, “That Uncle Robbie, he really gets me!”)

Dad “got me” when I told him I wanted to be a priest and then went quickly into a long awkward and inadequate explanation of something I couldn’t explain. He said “It’s OK Lynda. I understand.”

How do you name yourself? How do you name God?

God names us, and in so doing "gets" us, than tries like hell to save us from harm, failing almost every time but still trying.

Now that’s holy naming. Listen and hope.

2011.12.28 Truth and Fact

A huge ceiling to floor oil painting of a rose, painted by Mary Daly RSM, hangs in the chapel of Mercy Center in Madison, CT. It serves as a reredos.

I have often gazed at its multi-petaled beauty and thought it an icon of the sacred heart, roomy enough to enfold the cosmos into its soft velvety bosom.

On one retreat I decided to dissect a real rose I had picked from the garden. I operated on it with caution, care and respect, as an good autopsy-ist would. I wanted to know how many petals there actually were in my cosmic image of divine love.

There were a disappointing 53 petals in my big fat red rose. I laughed to think how easy it is to align truth and fact as if they were the same phenomenon.

Of course I didn’t expect the number of rose petals to be infinite but I’d hoped for more than 53. The fact was this rose had 53 petals. The truth for me was its appearance of petaled profusion suggested something much more than its parts.

Fact is material knowledge. Truth partakes of a transcendent dimension, pointing beyond its literal manifestation. Facts, however, are the necessary vehicles of truth.

When I used to read Goodnight Moon to my young children we all knew the facts: bunnies don’t talk, have bedtime stories read to them, or sleep in beds.

Beyond facts lay truth: a good story well told makes everyone feel hopeful, can fill us with love and respect for all things, from a large glowing moon to a simple soothing bedtime ritual. Truth can replace fear with peace. Truth comes through facts.

ONE baby is born in a measly manger and kings think he’s a messiah in the making. All mothers think that of every babe, but the Magi? Story is fact + truth.

TRUTH AND FACT NEED TO STAY TOGETHER THOUGH FOR THEY ARE AS LOVE-MAKING AS TWO IN A BED...OR ON AN ARK. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER INTO LIFE.

Fact gives truth a leg to stand on. Truth puts a bloom on the cheek of fact lest its concrete gray complexion fails to inspire.

2011.12.25 Every Baby is God

Sharon's Christmas Prayer
by John Shea
 
She was five,sure of the facts, 
 
and recited them 
 with slow solemnity, 
 
convinced every word 
was revelation. 
                            

She said they were so poor
they only had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat
and they went a long way from home 
 
without getting lost.

The lady rode 
 a donkey,
the man walked,
and the baby 
was inside the lady. 
 

They had to stay in a stable 
 
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee) 
  
but the Three Rich Men found them 
  
because a star lited the roof. 
  
Shepherds came and you could 
  
pet the sheep but not feed them. 
Then the baby was borned. 
 

And do you know who he was? 


Her quarter eyes inflated 
to silver dollars
 
The baby was God.    
 
And she jumped in the air, 
 
whirled round, dove into the sofa, 
  
and buried her head under the cushion 
  
which is the only proper response 
  
to the Good News of the Incarnation.