Height and Depth and Length and Letters and Love

Today I remember Mr. Wright, Ray A. Wright, my high school English teacher and friend for many years, who died on this day in 2002.

I've shared some of his poetry here before. Tonight I got out the stack of letters from him, most written when I was in college and he was at Ole Miss working on a doctorate. I hadn't looked at them in years but knew where they were and just decided to read a couple.

What a beautiful thing, that he took the time to sit and write these words to me. And took the time to read the words I wrote to him. These letters, because of their very words and because of the connection they represented, helped me through some hard times, and I imagine they will in years ahead, too.

I remember thinking how neat--that's probably the word I would have used then, even though I remember chiding myself for using that word too much!--how neat it was that his address had a 26 in it. 26 was my favorite number, the one I got on my club jersey, connecting back to high school stories, happy memories. So it was a happy coincidence that I enjoyed each time a letter came.

(And he would have gently chided me for writing that awkward sentence up there with the dashes. And then might have said, "Well, you've proven you know the rules, so you're allowed to break them. But that really is rather awkward!")

I wish I had copies of what I had written to him, what he was responding to. I wonder what music had recently brought me to tears. It happened a lot. Still does. But it would be sweet to know what he was referring to.

When I was blessed with the opportunity to sing the Prayers of Kierkegaard many years later, I know that brought tears to my eyes, for sure.

I am so thankful for the length of time this friendship stretched throughout my life, from ninth grade for a little over twenty years. And I would say it definitely made up in depth what it lacked in length. And with the memories and the letters accompanying me through the rest of my life, and with the faith we share and the goodness of the Father in heaven who "didst save us," the height and depth and length of this relationship become part of the eternal goodness of God.

During the time of his final battle with cancer, pain, and a coma, my chorus was preparing to perform Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna. I sang it with Mr. Wright in mind, and it always comes to mind this time of year, just as he always comes to mind when I hear or sing that music.

His life's light shined into my little life. May light perpetual shine upon him.

I Love You Truly

Today would be my grandparents' 84th anniversary! They married on October 8, 1935. All I really know about the wedding is that this song was sung. This is a copy of the music that came to me either from my mother, or from Grandmother's house, after her death. I wonder if it is the actual sheet music that someone used for their wedding ceremony?

They were married for 54 years, actually. Granddaddy was twelve years older than Grandmother, and he died almost exactly 30 years ago, strange as that seems. It will be 30 years on November 6.

If you know this song, you know it's kind of hopelessly romantic. At least it seems so to me, implying that sorrows and fears can fade away simply by being in the presence of the one you love. Maybe it's the music that makes it seem hopelessly romantic, or maybe it's being calloused to love songs by all the ones written in more recent decades, that definitely have a superficial approach to love and give too much importance to emotions and even physiological feelings.

But when I think that this song was written at the literal turn of the century, before the sixties and the triumph of feelings and individualism; and when I read on Wikipedia that Carrie Jacobs-Bond painted china and rented out rooms to make ends meet, and wrote songs to supplement her husband's income; I think maybe she had a deeper kind of love in mind than much of what winds up in love songs these days.

And when I think of my grandparents' marriage, I know that they loved each other truly. Their love didn't do away with sorrows and fear. They married during the Great Depression. Granddaddy's brother and mother died four years later, and his father died two years after that. Granddaddy struggled with bipolar disorder in a time when there wasn't much you could do for that. They had their share of sorrows and I feel sure there was fear mixed in. But their love--not just for each other, but love for God and family as well as for each other--gave them what it took to face the fear and to survive the sorrow.

And I am so thankful that they did. Their marriage led to my mom's coming into the world, as seen below, and eventually to my being here. And all my siblings and their families, and my cousins and their families....we are all here because two people loved each other truly.

It's amazing what love can do, what people can overcome. And the good that can come into the world because of that faithful, persevering love. I'm thankful for my grandparents. I love them truly.

Morning in Medimurje

[This is a continuation from the last post, which I wrote much closer in time to the other one, but life events kept me from posting it....but in case you need a refresher, or are a new read and have no clue, I was writing about our trip to Croatia in late spring.]

From Munich we flew to Zagreb, where a good friend met us at the airport and drove us the circa hour and a half to....home. Because oddly enough, we travel from home to home when we make this trip.

In fact, on our last trip, I took this little sign and left it there just to add a touch of homey to the house there. And you can't see it, but next to the muesli (which I took with me this time) and on the other side of the little boxes of tea there, I had left a box of cereal when we were there in November, and it was still within the expiration date and ready to eat.

So in some ways it just felt like walking into normal.

The house there looks very much like many other houses in Croatia with its light facade and terra cotta roof, its fence along the front of the property. Like many others, it has flowers in front and fruit trees and vegetables further back. It has the ingenious metal blinds ("roleta") that aren't aesthetically lovely as wooden shutters but are amazing for having a dark bedroom at night or letting in just the right amount of light during the day.

Red clover was in bloom, which is also a very normal thing, but not too far from our house, set in the midst of this particular patch of clover, stands a reminder that "normal" varies quite a lot from place to place.

I walk by it just about every morning when we are there, as it's just off the street that leads out into the fields where I like to walk. It's an old chapel, built in the 14th century. You can read a bit more about it here and also here. Before an earthquake hit, a much larger complex stood here, a church and monastery. Now only the chapel remains, and I'm so glad it survived. I would love to go inside one day and see the frescoes. It belongs to the city museum and it always locked, but I think surely you can make an appointment to see it? After almost 30 years of standing an looking at it from the outside, I imagine going inside will feel something like a dream come true for me!

The shorter construction to the right covers an area where excavation has been done in the last 20 years. The local story says that this chapel is connected to the castle in the center of town by a tunnel that served as an escape route in case the castle were ever attacked. No one seems to know if such an escape ever was necessary, and I imagine the time, energy, and money it would take to try to excavate the entire route to prove the tunnel's existence is simply not worth it. But underneath that dwarfish little shelter, you can see what is obviously the end of some kind of tunnel going somewhere. It's really fascinating.

I just found a photograph of the chapel, near the end of this long article, taken in 1921. Someday maybe I'll be capable of reading something like that, but for now it's just amazing to me to see an actual photograph of that chapel taken when my grandmother was a little girl growing up in far-off Tennessee....and to think that when the chapel was built Dante was probably living and writing in not so far away Italy.

I learned on this trip that local legend includes a story about a dragon that is also connected to this tunnel story. Somehow I think the tunnel is more likely to exist than the dragon....

Sometimes I think about these things on my morning walks there. And sometimes I just stare at the red clover and listen to the birds singing.

(About the title: Medimurje is the name of the region. I love the name, as it means "between the rivers," and so makes me think of Mesopotamia and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so much that comes from that.)

O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing

So, here is what you see outside the room I wrote about last time. I will always remember the first time I saw this sign over a decade ago and followed the arrow, intrigued.

It's impossible to describe in words what it's like to walk from the hustle and bustle of the airport, the constant movement and noise, into the quiet place that sign points to. It's such a welcome and unexpected contrast. We get so used to functioning in noise and tuning it out to the extent we can, that to walk into, and then sit in, such deep silence, causes the body and mind and spirit to move into a different realm of perception.

It takes a moment to adjust, and then you begin to notice things around you and within you that you simply would not have noticed, could not have noticed, with the noise.

This was the first time I noticed these hymnbooks on the shelf near the entrance. Maybe they were there before, but I had not seen them. Again intrigued, I picked one up and opened it.

And it's not possible to put in words either the sense of "walking into" that hymnbook. We were far from home, in a country where neither of us has lived, on a continent that has largely forgotten the faith that once infused its history, literature, architecture, ethics, and sense of identity.

So to sit in that place, open this book, and see hymns that I grew up singing in church was just a lovely surprise. This is even the same tune we used with this text when we sang it in church.

And then to see it written out in so many languages, and to know that people have been singing it in different countries (or else why would it have been included?) for many years, expressing the same thoughts and beliefs, even though their languages and cultures and histories and habits were not the same, just filled me with a beautiful sense of connectedness. I didn't feel so far from home.

Especially because we had this sung at our wedding, with its other tune, known as Hyfrydol.

This one started off with the Italian, at least on this page.

And here it begins in English. They included so many languages that they printed the music more than once for readability because they wouldn't all fit on one opening.

We also had this song at our wedding.

And we did not have this one at our wedding, which will surprise no one, probably, but it was one of my favorites growing up.

And eventually our time in the prayer room ended, and the journey continued.

Airport Adventures: May the Lord Go Before You

It may be a new record, going over six months without putting anything on my blog. Certainly not a record I intended to set.

Maybe reading the book Digital Minimalism affected me more than I realized. I did not determine not to write on my blog, but I was enjoying the intentional space between me and the screen as a result of reading that book (which I haven't yet finished, but do recommend.) It wouldn't surprise me if at some level that book was a factor.

But I think it had as much or more to do with a couple of different health issues that meant extra appointments over several months. And a couple of major house repair/renewal projects that interrupted life significantly. And singing in a couple of different choruses over the spring, which meant two rehearsals each week for a good bit of the time. Oh, and two out of town conferences that took me far away from home. (Don't they say good things come in pairs?)

Whatever the reason, here I am again. Determined to share some pictures and do a bit of writing about our recent travel to Croatia.

The picture above is from a booklet I found in the Munich airport, in the "Raum fur Stille und Gebet," or "Space for Prayer and Silence," a lovely small secluded area  which "invites people from all over the world to pray in silence, to calm down, and to draw new strength," as the website says. And it must have some amazing insulation, because when you get in there, it is completely quiet. You'd never imagine you were in a bustling, noisy airport if you didn't already know that.

I've written about it before here, and since that first visit have been there a few times. This is the first time I had seen the little prayer booklet, with this lovely prayer written in ten languages. It was a wonderful way to be welcomed onto the European continent and to begin our visit there.

I know I've seen a chapel in at least one other airport, somewhere in the States, but I can't recall where it was. I wonder if any of my readers have ever found a chapel in an airport? And how many have wished they could?

And I just found the most amazing thing. An entire history of this place, with photos from the architect's designs to the woods where they found the tree, and how they moved it into the airport. Fascinating. Now I just need to learn to read German beyond my single college semester level! (If you decide to check out that link, just know that there are a couple of blank pages after the initial title page. then it's full of pictures.)

God's Grandeur

I was sitting out on the deck just now in the freezing cold, working to find a position comfortable enough for my neck that I could remain in it for a while. The neck part because I've been cautioned by surgeon and physical therapist that I simply should not look up too much. (Not sure whether I'll ever try to visit the Sistine Chapel....)

But the whole reason for being out there is because the moon is in the act of being eclipsed even as I sit here and write. I couldn't take the cold too much longer, so I came in for a break before returning in a bit.

This morning in our Sunday Bible class, the theme was how the Creation is a witness to faith in God, looking at Hebrews 11 : By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.

In the context of discussion, a class member mentioned that the eclipse would happen tonight, and I'm so glad he did, because though I had seen something about it earlier, I had forgotten.

Sitting out there just now, besides noticing the moon, and noticing that it was very cold (the thermometer says 26 degrees), I couldn't help noticing how clear the air was and how brightly the stars shone, something I haven't seen in a long time. It was beautiful. I wanted so much to be able to stay there, but I couldn't.

…..Well, I left and I'm back. And while I was out there, I had the idea of bringing my grandmother's rocking chair out to the deck. It couldn't hurt the chair, and it would let me lean back enough to see the moon and to have support for my neck. So I came back in and got the chair and watched the rest of the veiling of the moon more comfortably.

And the whole little experience brought to mind evenings at Grandmother's house when we would have finished washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, maybe preparing something for the next day's deliciousness, maybe watching the news or something worthwhile on TV. And at some point Grandmother would say, "Let's go sit outside for a while."

And we would do that. Take a couple of folding chairs (or more than a couple if there were more people) out the back door to simply sit outside on the driveway, with the backyard before us and the whole sky above us. It was always warmer weather, so we might hear a symphony of cicadas or see lightning bugs blinking in the yard around us. With or without those, there was always the wonderful smell of being outside and the vast sky above and whatever stars we could see.

I don't have specific memories of conversations during those times. It wouldn't surprise me if we may have sung once or twice. "Can you count the stars of evening that are shining in the sky?" I really don't recall what we talked about, or even that talking was much a part of it. I was not generally a big talker if someone else didn't start it off, and what I do remember is sitting there quietly at the end of a day, feeling such a sense of togetherness as we absorbed the beauty of the night.

Oh, and I do remember something specific. Grandmother bought a moonflower vine and planted it right out there by the back door so that she could look at it in the evenings. And smell its wonderful scent. I do remember talking about that and going over to admire it.

The moon, the stars, the rocking chair, the sun and earth all part of a beautiful moment tied to other beautiful moments. What a gift to have minds and hearts capable of perceiving, remembering, connecting, feeling, loving. Tonight is a full moon, and a full heart.

And I think of St. Francis, from class earlier today.

All Praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars;
     in the heavens you have made them,
     bright, and precious, and fair.