Friendship with Francis

Recently I was invited to write for a series on The Three Prayers, the blog of a friend of mine. She is inviting guest writers to write about saints of the Roman Catholic Church, or about the influence those people have had on the lives of the authors.

My post falls into that second category. It's not so much about the life of Francis as it is about how the life of Francis of Assisi has been a blessing in my own life, and you are welcome to read it over on Janet's blog.

Numbering Our Days

Teach us to number our days,

that we may get a heart of wisdom.

~Psalm 90:12

Today is the birthday of Neva Jane White, the piano teacher I've written about before. It's hard to let it go by without at least a quick sharing of a couple of memories that came to me this morning.

This is a piece I learned in my first year with her.

She was the first teacher, as I recall, that had me write numbers in each measure. It made so much sense, because once I got out of the teaching method books, measure numbers weren't marked in any way. I don't remember if an earlier teacher had marked them herself or if we just referred to "the top line on the secong page, that third measure there....."

I just remember that Mrs. White had me write in the numbers of every new piece I got, and although it took me some time at the begining, it saved a lot of time as we worked on the piece.

Obviously, measure seven here needed a little help with the left-hand fingering.

Thinking about measure numbers today made me think about the verse written above, from the psalms. Some versions actually say "teach us to measure our days," though it seems most say "number." Either way, it connected to the idea of numbering my measures.

And I just love this warning she put on the top of page three (photo below). It comes after two pages of essentially the same rhythms played out in many different harmonic combinations, then a measure of four quintuplets leading up to this completely different section with new rhythm patterns, new harmonies, a new pedaling pattern--essentially, a big change in the piece where new energy comes in and the sound brightens, leading to a climax about halfway down the page.

And here, I had a tendency to rush. Of course! All that newness, so many things to think about, and knowing that even bigger stuff lay just ahead. Adrenalin was probably building in my brain and body, if we could have measured it. I'm sure the measure of quintuplets had a way of distracting me from the original tempo, too.

So, "don't rush." I've found it's excellent advice for just about every new situation in life.

Because whether you rush or not, you are going to get to the end. (I laughed when I saw I had put an exclamation point after that 50--down in the next photo. Maybe this was the first piece she ever had me write measure numbers in?)

Self-control is highly underrated, it seems, in the society I see and hear all around me. One of the many things playing and singing music has done for me, is that is simply taught me self-control. I was a child who always loved to play piano, so I don't have the kinds of stories some would about being forced to sit and practice when they wanted to be out playing football. But even though I loved it, it still took self-control to put it before other things I loved when that was needed. And the focus required to stay on task with a new (harder) piece, rather than just playing anything and everything, took self-control. Everything about it took, and takes, self-control.

In a culture that is all about rushing into the next thing, switching focus from one distraction to another, and "following your passions," I'm thankful for a teacher and an activity that taught me to slow down, to do the same thing over and over, to really think things through (how does this measure fit with the one before it? what tempo can I sustain throughout this entire piece? how will I refrain from my tendency to start this piece too quickly? which of these two fingerings works best for me to get from this section to the next? how do I really want this to sound in the end? etc.)

Mrs. White, in all the years I knew her, never seemed to be in a hurry. Even when she was running behind schedule and putting on her makeup while I was there at her house after a lesson, she was calm and gentle and thoughtful of my presence, not letting her mind rush on to the next thing and allowing the future to take over the present.

I want to live that way. There are wonderful measures like the one below, with fortissimos and sforzandos, and they can be wonderfully passionate and exciting. But they lose their meaning without the careful tempos and fingerings that get you to that point. And if the whole piece is played fast and loud, then this kind of ending is meaningless.

The other memory that came to me this morning was when my chorus had begun working on Lauridsen's "Lux Aeterna." I took a recording of it to her house, along with the score. Just before I hit "play" on her CD player, I said, "I really think you're going to love this."

And in that first very long measure, as a single note began by the strings in octaves so far apart, barely, barely hear-able, just going on and on, she said,  very quietly and gently, "I already do."

She knew how to number measures, how to make and hear beautiful music, and she taught me how to number my days. I hope to grow into the heart of wisdom she possessed.

May light eternal shine upon her.

Lent, Day Seven: The Relinquished Life

No one is ever united with Jesus Christ until he is willing to relinquish not sin only,

but his whole way of looking at things.

To be born from above of the Spirit of God means that we must let go before we lay hold,

and in the first stages it is the relinquishing of all pretense.

What our Lord wants us to present to him is not goodness,

not honesty,

not endeavor,

but real, solid sin;

that is all he can take from us.

And what does he give in exchange for our sin?

Real, solid righteousness.

But we must relinquish all pretense of being anything,

all claim of being worthy of God's consideration.

Then the Spirit of God will show us what further there is to relinquish.

There will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase.

Am I willing to relinquish my hold on all I possess,

my hold on my affections,

and on everything,

and to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ?

There is always a sharp, painful disillusionment to go through before we do relinquish.

When one really sees himself as the Lord sees him,

it is not the abominable sins of the flesh that shock him,

but the awful nature of the pride of his own heart against Jesus Christ.

When he sees himself in the light of the Lord,

the shame and the horror and the desperate conviction come home.

If you are up against the question of relinquishing,

go through the crisis,

relinquish all,

and God will make you fit for all He requires of you. . . . 

These words (Galatians 2:20) mean the breaking of my own independence with my own hand

and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord Jesus.

No on can do this for me, I must do it myself.

God may bring me up to the point three hundred and sixty-five times a year,

but he cannot put me through it.

It means breaking the husk of my individual independence of God,

and the emancipating of my personality into oneness with himself,

not for my own sake,

but for absolute loyalty to Jesus.

There is no possibility of dispute when once I am there.

Very few of us know anything about loyalty to Christ--"For my sake."

It is that which makes the iron saint.

~ excerpted from Oswald Chambers,

in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

~photo from Spring Hill College Jesuit Cemetery, Mobile, Alabama

Letters of Love (though not exactly Love Letters)

 

Eleven years ago today the writer of these letters, and I assume the licker of these stamps, left this life for the next phase of his life's experience of Love.

I don't know what he would think or say if he knew I would be writing about him on my blog, but I think he might say that as long as I chose my words carefully, included no dangling participles, and allowed my emotion to cool before writing so that my words were recollected in tranquility, then I would have his blessing.

 

 

 

 

He was my high school English teacher, but most of the letters I have from him were written while I was in college and he was in the student role, working on a doctorate after many years of teaching high school, getting ready to move on to teaching college. (I thought it was neat that my favorite number, 26, was part of his address at Ole Miss. He would likely tease me for using the word "neat.")

 

 

 

My asking about something from a Frost poem about how difficult life could be winds up with his response, "All in all, I would say, there is a pretty good balance of agony and ecstasy. It takes both to make us wonderful people, you know." He was right.

 

 

 

 

He did "moan" in his letters about both his workload and the worldviews of some of his professors and how he felt their impoverished ideas did little justice to the literature he was studying. At some point in a later letter, however, he gave me permission to stop feeling sorry for him, that he was adjusting and would make it.

 

 

He writes in response to my comment that music can be so moving (referring to Barber's "Adagio for Strings"), that music often brings him to tears. Able to sing with one of the choirs at Ole Miss, he participated in a concert in Avery Fisher Hall that he wrote about more than once. Here he writes out some of the text of the "Prayers of Kierkegaard" set to music by Samuel Barber. Many years later, after his death, my own chorus sang the piece, so it will always remind me of him. I appreciated it much more as an adult than I could as a college freshman reading his letter.

 

In response to my suggestion of a Trivial Pursuit party, which he okayed if it were a small enough group, he writes, "I like my friendships deep, not wide." I have a perfect dozen of his letters, all at least two handwritten pages, often more, some typed and therefore even longer. At the time I was receiving these letters, I treasured them because they were from him, and they brought hope and wisdom into my life, but I didn't find it unusual that he spent time writing to me.

 

These days, working on a doctorate myself, I look at these letters with a sense of awe, knowing the sacrifice of time he took to sit and read letters from a former student and respond to them. It's clear he enjoyed writing about things, but it's also clearer to me now how much he meant the "Love" in "Love, Ray A. Wright." And I appreciate being someone he included in his not wide, but deep, circle of friends. One of the many blessings-beyond-measure in my little life.

 

(And we did have that Trivial Pursuit party, about fifteen years after the letter--just him, his wife, and me. I think we kept it small enough.)

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering Francis

October 4 was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi. I wasn't able to do anything in particular in remembrance of it, beyond remembering it.

 

But I am thankful for his life, for what we know of it, and for how his influence has spread way beyond Assisi, way beyond the centuries he lived in (12th and early 13th), and way beyond the Roman Catholic Church he was a part of.

 

 

 

 

Five years ago I took these pictures in Assisi. This is the church of San Damiano, where Francis heard the call to "restore my church," which he did first by working to physically repair this church which was crumbling in disrepair. (It was later added on to; this is much more than the original church, of which you can see the outline.) Only later did he realize the call and the need were to work to restore the larger church itself, which was falling into spiritual disrepair through various struggles in those times.

  

Assisi is full of men in brown robes and white belts, dressing as Francis did and seeking to live their lives as he did, as is possible and appropriate in the century we live in. Obviously part of this man's vocation is to share the story of Francis and the various places people visit to learn about him.

 

 

 



 

No one stakes their lives on it, but they say this tree was there during Francis' lifetime and played a role in one of the popular stories of his life. Olive trees are known to live an average of 500-900 years, so there is no reason not to think that this could be the tree.

 

 

 

I came upon this in Villach, Austria, from the same trip five years ago.

 

And on the same trip I saw him on this building in Zagreb, Croatia. His influence really did spread amazingly far, especially in a time with no television, radio, or Internet. His teaching and example of radical poverty and returning to very basic church teachings had a profound effect in his lifetime and continues today.

 

 

This is   one of my favorite photos from Assisi, the woods up on Mt. Subasio, where Francis and his friends used to go to pray. The trees are so gracefully wild, or wildly graceful, and I can just imagine  how he loved to be up there away from the city.

From Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi--

". . . .we prefer saints to be either perfect in every way or so ordinary that they conform to our own stature and do not challenge our spiritual indolence. But saints are in fact heroically in love, and like lovers, they sometimes become eccentric, and even overstep themselves; holiness does not preclude humanity, after all. Above everything, however, saints keep God firmly in sight. They remain faithful, and that is why they are saints--not because they are invariably models of polite or even imitable conduct."

" How much more credible and moving are the truer accounts of those who endured daily struggles, to remain true to their beliefs--those who constantly had to battle temptations to discouragement and despair; those who suffered physically, emotionally and psychologically; those who felt betrayed and abandoned . . . .holiness is certainly (like conversion) a lifelong process, and genuine saints probably never think about it. Their energies are directed toward God, not toward a consideration of their own merits or excellence. Most of all, their lives proclaim to the world the existence of a reality that transcends it."