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.

This is for Yesterday

From the living room of a dear friend where we sat yesterday in the glow of the lovely tree, our conversation roaming far and wide as it nearly always does if we have more than five minutes together.

Said conversation led to more watching and waiting, as I offered to pick up said friend's daughter returning from college. Heavy rain, misplaced keys, an accident on the highway all led to a rather suspenseful evening, but all was well in the end when said daughter came home to said tree and I imagine slept very well.

And I know I certainly did--though a Christmas party and then a movie at home meant I forgot to write anything....so this is for yesterday.

It's Over

A month and a day since the last post, and here I am again on this rambling drawn out thing we call a "blog." (I don't like that word now any more than I did when I first used it here.)

The thesis did get printed, and I did graduate. I hope to say more about that later, as it was quite a series of small adventures.

But for now, I'm enjoying looking at the detail of a tulip fully open.

The detail is simply amazing. These could be Georgia Okeefe's work--except that her work came from the real flowers, not the other way around. (I don't know if she ever painted tulips, but these just remind me of what I've seen of her paintings.)

This one is a bit past its prime, but even the browning of the petals is lovely, in its way.

Flower petals in general amaze me. Such thin, fragile tissue, easily destroyed by something as simple as a careless step or even a rough bump--and yet so full of complexity, those tiny membranes whisking water all the way through the thing, and combining with the other petals to create all kinds of shapes and colors and sizes, making the world beautiful in a way nothing else can.

These particular flowers are special because I bought them on a somewhat impetuous stop at the Fresh Market grocery store. I stopped in just because I had the time to do it, not really needing anything, but for the fun of it, because I do love that store--everything but the prices. And I bought the flowers and brought them home, something I haven't done very often the past few years, because a brain can only think of so much at a time, and my brain and my schedule just didn't have much room for thinking of, or accomplishing, flower-buying.

And then these flowers took on extra specialness because the other evening we had dear friends over for dinner, another thing we haven't done much of in the past few years.

And those dear friends brought the sweet purple campanula that shared the table with the tulips until this morning, when I had to finally say goodbye to the tulips before they dropped petals all over the table!

And so in a very real way, these flowers make a fitting image to say "it's over," and to rejoice in the moving forward into another chapter of life--one that I hope will have many more flowers and many more friends over for dinner.

And perhaps even more blog posts? Time will tell.

All Creatures of Our God and King

It snowed here last night. Because I'm recovering from foot surgery, I won't be going out in it, and there really isn't enough to make me want to take pictures through the windows. But it brought me to my blog, nonetheless.

While I don't intend for my blog to be primarily a record of deaths, it seems that in this period of limited time and energy for writing, deaths and anniversaries of deaths are what have brought me here to write more than anything.

Of course that is because the lives of those who have died are so beautiful and are so much a part of my life that it doesn't seem right not to remember and celebrate them.

I haven't written about it yet here, but our sweet dog Paolo died on December 4. We never knew his exact age, but based on what we knew, we think he was nearly 17 years old. He had been with us since October, 2000.

I hope to write more later about him, his life and his death. Especially after thinking so much about St. Francis in order to write the previous post, he who is known for his love of all God's creatures, it would not seem right not to write about the little doggie who has been my companion and friend since before I had even considered having a blog.

For now I share simply that he is buried under the tree in the photo, at the home of some dear friends, where the concrete planters are standing guard over him until spring.

And that Wednesday I received this photo along with the following message:  "Thinking of you. Beautiful blanket of snow over Paolo's resting place. Kids keeping him company today as they sled in this teeny snow."

Everything about this says "Alleluia!" The sweetness of this dog, the loving kindness of these friends, the peaceful beauty of this hillside and its trees, the quiet beauty of snow, the joy of children sledding.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures.

La Nebbia

I remember foggy mornings in Arkansas. Not a whole lot, but it seems like sometimes when we went to school early, there would be fog in the valleys of the very hill-and-valley terrain between home and school. I always thought it was beautiful and mysterious.

And I really remember fog in northern Italy. Where they had to put special reflective paint and markers all along the roads for miles, because the fog was responsible for multiple deaths when drivers simply could not see well enough to realize another car was coming right at them. And then more cars could not see the accident ahead, and it would just start a pile-up.  So the markers were indications of how slow one ought to drive. (If you can see three markers, you can go x kilometers per hour, but if you can see only two, better slow to x km, and so on.)

Of course Venice in the fog was like a dream. Beautiful, mysterious, other-worldly. (And could get your clothes wet, too.)

Back in an earlier job setting, I worked with a group of people who struggled with various life situations. We would start each meeting with a check in. Rate your general mood with a number, and rate your general "brain fog" with a number. Brain fog became a frequent topic of our conversation. Because when you're depressed, not sleeping well, feeling confused and close to hopeless about your future, thinking clearly does not come easily.

Thus, brain fog.

I find that this year of my life has brought a lot of brain fog. Which is funny, because I am working on a doctorate now, so of course I have to think clearly enough to do that work. But the stress of that along with other significant stressors have made for a year with almost no consistent routine (and brains thrive on routine), along with the sorts of chemicals that stress pumps into the brain that further foggify it.

(The computer is telling me that "foggify" is not a word. It doesn't know that Gerard Manley Hopkins is my blog's patron saint, obviously, and I shall use words as I choose.)

Anyway, I went for a walk a while back (one of the routines I lost this month with some severely cold weather coinciding with a moderately severe nerve condition that makes being cold something to avoid at all costs for now.), and it was a gorgeously foggy morning.

Beautiful, mysterious, and like brain fog, made it very hard to see clearly.

And the "sacred bench," as I've come to think of it, just struck me as so beautiful.

Perhaps because it is on land surrounded by water, it showed up more clearly than most of the rest of the park. There was less fog where it was.

And even though I was there alone, the bench was a symbol to me of what had helped get me through the brain fog of this past year, and that of many other times in my life. It's the people who will sit down with you and just be there to talk and listen and share and care. That loving care helps clear the fog, brings light into the mind, makes it possible to remember the fog is temporary. The mind will return to its normal functioning.

Richard Stivers has written a fascinating book called Shades of Loneliness, in which he ponders the likelihood that our disconnected society (largely related to technologization) is at the root of much of mental illness. I think he is largely right in what he has written. If more people had sacred benches on which to sit, or people to walk with in the park, I feel sure we'd have less need for the kind of work I do.

I'm thankful for the people who walk and sit with me and help clear the fog from my brain from time to time--sometimes it takes more than once a day.

"Nebbia" is Italian for fog. Where our "nebulous" comes from. And just as fog can be yucky, like brain fog, it can also be beautiful. So I picked a nebulous title for it.

For another foggy post with more photos and a poem with much sadder sentiments, see "Im Nebel."

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.)

 

 

 

 

 

Don't Rush

 I find God never guides us into an intolerable scramble of panting feverishness.
                                                                                              --Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion.


I don't believe my piano teacher ever read Thomas Kelly, but she certainly believed these words. "Don't rush" wasn't just instruction for how to play piano well. She did not rush her life. She always had time for music, for prayer, for people--piano students, college students, her children and later grandchildren.

Recently another dear friend and mentor to my husband died. Someone shared this in the tributes, a quote from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, about what it means to be a holy person:


Their very voices and faces are different from ours: stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need you less…..They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from… I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at its very lowest, it must be great fun.

"They will usually seem to have a lot of time." Of course. If we believe we will live for eternity, why on earth do we get in a rush?

Whether playing piano or listening to people or planning and executing the day, I think "Don't rush" is excellent wisdom for both holiness and happiness.

Eat this Breakfast

When I grow up, I want to be like my friend Carolyn, at whose table I sat on the morning of Valentine's Day.

Carolyn doesn't just make the bed and set out towels for her house guest. She sets out books on the nightstand that connect with whatever event has brought me to town, or books that she knows relate to something I've been interested in lately. Sometimes she sets out a cross or other decorative object that I have given to her in years past.

She leaves a belated birthday card on the bed for me to find when I come "home" late after a long day at the workshop I'm attending.

And she sets a breakfast table with china, a Valentine napkin, and even a dignified cardinal to socialize with the little hoppy bird Valentine's card that I had left out for her the night before.

In these ways and in many others that go deeper, Carolyn makes love tangible. And I love her for that.

As my previous post, Eat this Book, talked about assimilating scripture into our very being, I want to assimilate Carolyn's hospitality into my being. Not just receive and enjoy it but find ways to imitate it, to share it. To take the time to think about another person and what would add joy, or interest, or beauty to their day--and then to actually make that happen.

What a beautiful way to start a day.