What Do You Have that You Did Not Receive?

I don't remember exactly when I fell in love with cellos. But it was a long time ago.

It was the sound. The lower register, the smoothness, the beautiful way they somehow seemed to sound more like a human voice than any other instrument,

as far as I could tell, anyway.

And the more I went to the symphony and saw them,

the more I began to notice how beautiful they were to look at,

as all the string instruments were.

But something about their size made them the "just right" place

for that beauty--not too big, not too small, but just right.

They are human sized, as well as human sounding.

And so, many years ago, my beloved and I decided that someday we would get a cello.

I would learn to play it first, with hopes that he would too one day.

(But first he would learn piano, and we would play duets together.)

Someday. Someday.

After this degree, when I'm not working so much, after this crisis, after that surgery.

After the other surgery, after the move, after we get settled.

Someday.

Well, today was that someday.

He did it for my birthday, a few days ago.

We went up there together, met with the man with the cellos,

had a little introduction, heard the lovely sounds, chose the darker colored one with the greater resonance, signed the papers, and walked out with a cello.

A cello which is purely a gift from a man who loves me.

There are a lot of things we don't have in common. We're pretty seriously different.

But we both love beautiful music, and he decided to make a dream come true.

The longer I live, the more often I think of the speech given when I graduated,

the counseling degree graduation, a seminary counseling degree,

so the speech wasn't "you are amazing and can do anything,"

but instead was "What do you have that you did not receive?"

It was about gratitude, about a realistic perspective that everything is a gift--

life itself, with everything it includes.

(As the billboards in Memphis remind us, No One Gets a Diploma Alone.)

Well, I sure didn't get this cello alone.

It's a birthday gift from my husband.

It's also, in a very real way, a birth-day gift from my mother.

My mother, who was born on this very day many years ago

and who gave birth to me

and who is not now here to see or hear this cello.

But she is surely the reason I love music.

She is the reason we grew up experiencing singing as a normal part of life.

The reason I knew the notes on the piano before ever taking a piano lesson.

The reason I "had an ear" for music.

Without all that, who knows if I would have played piano or loved the symphony?

Would I have spent money on my first record, Pachelbel and Fasch pieces?

Would I have sung in choruses that let me be on stage with the symphony,

adding to my love of those cellos that I saw up close and personal?

I never knew before today that a cello has a heart.

Maybe that's why it sounds so human.

I guess that the other string instruments also have this feature, so that's likely not accurate.

But it's still a lovely thing, to see this little heart shape carved into the wood of the bridge.

I've loved cellos for a long time.

And now it kind of feels like this cello is loving me.

It's going to be a challenge, learning to play it. Humbling, without doubt.

But I think it will help to look down the strings and see that little heart

and to think "this is about love," and remember the ones whose love

brought this all about,

and be grateful for what I've received.

And a really wonderful thing about a cello is that it can never, ever sound quite the way

that a violin can sound in the hands of a beginner!

I tried that over thirty years ago! Eeek!

But even if not every note this cello makes will sound wonderful,

I think in its own way it will be beautiful.

Messiah, Mama, Music, Memories

I was "home," at my dad's house, for a short visit earlier this week and took this picture. I was struck once again by how this Messiah album goes back into my earliest memories. How I used to think it said "MESS ee ah," which to my young mind sounded like "messy," and I knew it couldn't mean that, but I didn't know what it meant. At some point of course I learned the meaning of the word, and I learned to say "me SI ah," and my freshman year of college began singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" and "Worthy Is the Lamb." Eventually the one called the Messiah took on an importance in my life I could never have known when I was 5 or 6 and trying to make sense of this album cover I saw in our house day after day.

I suppose this album was in this record shelf before I came into the life of the household. And I suppose my mother was the one who brought it into that household, because she loved music and sang in the college chorus and would have been the one to buy or be given this music.

Today marks two years since her dying. Many thoughts and feelings have coursed through my mind and heart in recent days because of this date, but tonight it seems best simply to share from Messiah, music that once meant so much to her. I look forward to singing it together Someday. And of course it comes from the Bible, which mean even more to her:

Behold, I tell you a mystery;
we shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed,
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

The trumpet shall sound,
and the dead shall be raised, be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall put on immortality.

O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?
the sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

If God be for us, who can be against us?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God who justifieth,who is he that condemneth?
It is Christ that died, yes, rather that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God,
who makes intercession for us.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,
and hath redeemed us to God by His blood
to receive power and riches, and wisdom and strength, and glory and honor and blessing.

Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne,
and unto the Lamb forever.

Amen.

Primavera

Primavera always makes me think "first green." In Italian, "verde" is green, and a little etymological hunting seems to confirm that at least some word hunters believe the Latin words for "spring" (ver) and "green" (viride) may go back to some shared root. it would certainly make sense.

This post isn't about the first green, but the blossoms that precede the green leaves. But primavera dictionarily means "spring," and that's what this is about. The coming to life after a period of dormancy. The colors after the more "meno-chrome" winter, if I may create a new word not for  the monochrome state of having only one color, but the winter-in-the-South state of having less color.

The grass was still actually monochrome at the time I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago, except for those few little green weeds.

We always had a flowering quince in the yard when I was growing up, so I wanted to have one in our yard here. When I called the nursery, the owner didn't have the brighter, solid peachey red I was hoping for, but he suggested this one instead.

I took a chance, based on his description over the phone.

And am so glad I did! It's really beautiful, and even though it's still a young thing,

this year it had more blossoms than the two years before.

I'm beginning to feel as if my own mind, body, and heart are coming to life again after a long winter.

I started this degree in 2012, the same year my mom began having serious health problems and hospitalizations that went on throughout the next four years. So it's been a very, very unusual five years since then. I often felt I couldn't give enough to school because of the family situation. And I often felt I couldn't give enough to my family because of school.

And yet, somehow the energy kept coming, and we made it through to my mom's beautiful and victorious ending. And I recently defended my thesis project, and am very close to bringing that to an ending. Not nearly the same kind of beauty and victory, but an ending I'll be thankful for.

Since the defense (on February 27), I have struggled with an exhaustion of mind, body, and spirit. I did stay up pretty late a few nights the week before the defense, but i don't think it's just that immediate sleep deprivation. I think it's five years of tiredness finally feeling free to make itself felt. Throughout the past month, I have just not felt capable of doing anything beyond what I absolutely had to do--and occasionally have cancelled commitments because I was just too tired even for those routine activities.

It has been, I must say, a wonderful thing to experience spring this year. I always love spring, but this year especially it is like a promise. A promise that new life will return, because it always does. It doesn't depend on the flowers or the birds or the trees to make it happen. The Creator and Sustainer makes it happen, year after year after year.

And so even though I must of course do what I can to get my sleep, eat well, rest, drink water, make time for the refreshment of friends and family--it doesn't depend on me to somehow make my energy return. I can trust that it will.

And little by little, just in the past week or so, it has been happening.

A couple of mornings I've waked up and felt alive, refreshed, eager to get up and get going. Sometimes it lasts two hours, sometimes four or five. Sometimes I've taken a short nap and felt energetic again in the afternoon.

I've been remembering recipes I haven't made in 4-5 years. I've begun playing the piano more than I have in a long time. Little by little it's as if my brain is finding more space available, and even my body is remembering routines it had to temporarily forget about for a while.

And here I am, writing on my blog!

The flowering quince is all in green now, at the time I'm writing this. Only four or five blossoms remain on the plant; the rest is all filled out in green leaves. Primavera.

But it was those blossoms that gave me so much hope and joy. They are fragile but beautiful, and this year they helped me believe that as fragile and tired as I've felt, the day would come when the sap would flow more fully, the green leaves would come out, and the plant would be ready for another season of growth.

I trust that I will be ready again before too long, too.

For behold, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. 

The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come....

Song of Songs 2:11-12

Abide with Me

We sang this hymn quite often in the church where I grew up. We also sang it in a small women's ensemble during my college years. I've always thought it was beautiful, and it has been coming to mind the past few days since my mother's death on Monday, June 27.

We did not sing it at her funeral, but the reason it keeps coming to my mind is because of its references to the sky and the sense of connection between the human creature contemplating death to the creation that is fallen in change and decay, but also responsive in a sympathetic way to the event of life moving through death to life again.

The photos below were taken on the day of her death and then this morning (Friday).

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day,
Earth's joys grow dim, its sorrows pass away.
Change and decay in all around I see.
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour.
What but thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who like thyself my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, O abide with me.

I fear no foe with thee at hand to bless--
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

About 5:45 Monday morning. I had not slept much all night and was very hungry. I left my younger brother in the hospital room and went to get something to eat and try to sleep a little before coming back. On the way I saw the sun starting to rise and stopped to take a picture. My mom died at 6:15, shortly after sunrise.

This is from inside the hospital, while I was making phone calls after her death.

We had lunch later at my sister's house, and as my dad, older brother, and I were driving back to my dad's house, we exited the tree-ey neighborhood to this unexpectedly beautiful sight. That is the hospital at the end of the rainbow.

I was driving the car, and my brother was taking pictures. We kept trying to slow down, or stop, or back up, to get good shots of it. And then it turned out he was able to capture the whole rainbow from my dad's own driveway.

Sunset on the evening of her death, from Daddy's back porch.

This morning.

"Heaven's morning breaks...." I could hardly believe I got to see this in the ten minutes or so I was out there today. The rest of the day has just been blue, blue sky with almost no clouds, but this morning it was a cloudscape perfect for the morning sun breaking through to shine on her grave.

Mama always loved nature. When she was older she had to stay in more because of skin cancer concerns and general health issues, but in earlier years she went to Camp Wyldewood thirteen years as both camper and counselor. She spent a summer at Yellowstone Park. She planted all kinds of flowers, digging them up from the side of the road or transplanting shoots given her by friends or her mother. She used to take us fishing (though my sister and I used it as reading time.) She loved to go for rides in the country. We had dogs and cats and chickens and rabbits and goats and I don't know what all when we were growing up.

So it just seems fitting that nature would give us these beautiful moments in the days around her death. Through cloud and sunshine, she is abiding with the the One who changeth not in the mystery of this time, and in the weightlessness of finally resting in peace.