Magical Musical Morning

This morning we drove downtown to the Peabody Hotel for a lovely treat. Being at the Peabody is in itself a lovely treat. Originally built in 1869, it was demolished and a new structure built a block away between 1923 and 1925. It closed twice in the 70's with financial difficulties and reopened in 1981, when I was in the ninth grade.

That is so strange to me, to think of this place empty and uncertain of its future, and to think of downtown Memphis as a forlorn, financially failing area. I remember when I was younger driving by downtown (we lived in Arkansas, and my grandparents lived an hour northeast of Memphis, so we went through Memphis a lot) and knowing that it was considered ugly and pretty barren. But we never went there, so I have no visual memory of that time.

And now downtown is so alive and full of wonderful places, and the Peabody is a huge part of it all.

And they have a huge Christmas tree every year! (That bit of railing you can see on the left side is the second floor of the building, so that gives you an idea of what I mean by huge.)

Music was the reason for our visit. Or better said, family who were involved in the music. The Harding Academy A Cappella Chorus were there to sing Christmas pieces and other music, and they did a wonderful job. One of the basses is my nephew, and his dad drove the group down on a school bus, so it was a morning of family, music, Christmas lights--and ducks!

If you don't know about the Peabody ducks, then you really must come to Memphis and see them for yourself. We got there in plenty of time to see them do their thing. And we got to hear them join in the singing a time or two, making for quite a contrast to the lovely sounds coming from these young people's voices.

This little fellow came from behind the couch where I was siting to get closer to the group. He stood there transfixed for a good long while. I wondered if he had ever heard such singing before. Since singing has always been a part of my life because of church, I can't imagine what it might be like for a child (or an adult, for that matter) to hear beautiful harmonic voices singing like this for the first time. It probably would seem like something of a miracle.

And it is, really. That we are made in such a way so that our voices can make such beautiful sounds, expressing thoughts and feelings and just doing amazing things. We take so much for granted, but this morning, and this little child, opened my metaphorical eyes, and my literal ears, once again to not only the beauty but also the sheer wonder of music.

Watching and Waiting

Photo from Memphis Flyer


It's late, but I'm committed, so here goes.

Advent is so much about watching and waiting, things we aren't very good at when we've not had to do much of it. And of course the Advent readings bring very serious themes to our minds and hearts related to watching and waiting.

For tonight, however, I'll take it in a different direction. This evening we went to the airport to watch and wait for the arrival of our niece/granddaughter/daughter--my brother's daughter, who spent this semester in Greece and Italy. Nine of us all together stood near the doorway where the passengers appear, by the top of the escalator that goes down to the luggage retrieval area.

The Memphis airport brings so many things to mind. When we were young, we went there to greet my uncle, and later my uncle and aunt, who lived in Michigan, England, and Belgium at various times. I imagine we went there, though I can't remember clearly, to greet my grandparents when they returned from their "Holy Lands" tour with my uncle. (I put it in quotes because I just remember so well hearing my grandmother's voice as she referred to that trip, always with that term.)

I remember the first time I ever flew into and out of that same airport, going to and coming from Italy.

Tonight my husband remembered a time when we arrived there from Croatia, and recalled that my aunt brought Kentucky Fried Chicken for the group of family that had gathered, and that we ate there in the gate area.

All these trips were back in the lovely days before so much of the airport was off limits to anyone but travelers, and we could actually wait for loved ones and see them right as they walked off the plane. I miss those days!

Many memories, much to wonder at and the thankful for. I never dreamed that airports would become so much a normal part of life. I still remember so well the first time being up in the clouds, the first sunset, the first sunrise, the wonderful KLM flight attendants on my first flight over. On my flight back from Italy after my semester over there, I had so much hope that someday I would be able to go back, but I really had no idea whether or not it would happen.

Tonight we were waiting for my niece. Her older brother stood nearest the "do not pass this line" spot, all set to take a picture of her when she appeared. Grandparents were visiting farther back. I stood there chatting with the younger nephew and with friends whose daughter was part of the same group. Time passed, we waited, and it did seem that enough time had passed that we began to wonder.....And then we heard a loud cry our of nowhere and turned and saw that the expected one  right there in the hallway hugging her mom! As if she had just materialized out of nowhere!

It turned out, if I understood right, that they had come out at another terminal and had walked down from there to the luggage area and then up the escalator to where we were. Creating quite a stir!

It reminds me of the verse, which I just found in The Message paraphrase-- "Be vigilant....You have no idea when the Son of Man is going to show up." It's not as poetic as the "Watch therefore" of older version, but that "you have no idea" sure fits for our experience this evening! Not only could we not predict the exact time, but we didn't even know which direction she would be coming from!

And it fits my own experience with airports and flying across the ocean. No idea what lay ahead. No idea that at this point in my life, I wouldn't be able to remember how many trips I've made. Life is full of surprises.

It amazes me how much we talk as if we can plan things out. Of course we have to plan, and we must make decisions, but so much is not in our control. Advent is good to remind us of that. There's a lot we have no idea about, but we can watch and wait for the One who does know and does show up, often when least expected. And if we are watching and waiting for Him, then just as tonight, even though it may be a startling experience, it will also be sweet.

Carols of Praise

Good tidings of great joy!

My post a couple of months ago about blogging more regularly seems now like a fuzzy dream. It was not so smart to set that goal, perhaps, shortly before making a three-week trip overseas, coming home to a family wedding, Thanksgiving guests, and then having all the catching up to do with that.

But today is the second Sunday of Advent and a good time to renew that goal, and I've been encouraged by a group of others who are blogging daily in December, so maybe I'll catch some of that energy and keep this going.

That angel up there looks a little like I feel. Not extremely energetic, but doing his part. I'm not sure where the artwork came from, but it's on the front cover of the program for the Lessons and Carols service I sang in tonight. Lessons and Carols is my favorite event of the Advent/Christmas season.

I remember the first time I ever heard these words. It was Christmas Eve in 1994 or '95. I turned on the public radio station and was amazed to hear prayers being prayed and the scripture being read. We had only fairly recently come to live in the States, and public radio was fairly new to me, but not so new that hearing scripture being read didn't seem like a sort of miracle. When I realized it was a cathedral full of people and heard them praying the Lord's Prayer, it struck a place deep inside me.

I kept listening and was delighted to be introduced to the Lessons and Carols service and to the fact that it aired every year. It was such a beautiful surprise, and I recall having tears of wonder and joy in my eyes more than once as I sat on the floor wrapping gifts and listening.

A few years later I was equally surprised to learn that this service was actually performed in our very city, and it wasn't long after that, that I joined the choir so that I could be a part of it.

Perhaps I'll write more later about why this service means so much to me, why it so often brings tears to my eyes. It has to do with lonely exile, gloomy clouds of night, and sad divisions--and the hope of Emmanuel in the midst of all that.

This (above) is the place in the service where I nearly always realize I'm not going to make it much further without a tissue. It is absolutely glorious singing this descant arrangement to "O Come, All Ye Faithful," with the choirs, the congregation, the organ and brass ensemble. If sound could somehow show in the air, I think the whole space would be sparkling with gold and deep blue at that point. It's a powerful beauty that pierces some deep place in the soul, the way only music wedded to words with deep meaning can do.

Of course the air doesn't actually turn gold and blue. So I'll end with another bit of the front cover

A Prayer for the Weary

Lift up our souls, O Lord,

to the pure, serene light of thy presence;

that there we may breathe freely,

there repose in thy love,

there may be at rest from ourselves,

and from thence return,

arrayed in thy peace,

to do and bear what shall please thee;

for thy holy name's sake.

Amen.

(A prayer by Dr. E.B. Pusey, Anglican theologian, 1800-1882.

I'm not sure where I originally found this, but I love it.

To "be at rest from ourselves," such a generally unspoken need.)

Bridge

This bridge, in the park where I often walk, has become so much a part of my internalized normal, and part of what I love about this park, that until I just now looked at this picture that I took this morning, it never struck me that it could look unwelcoming or pointless to the uninitiated. Because at the end of the bridge is a closed gate. And it is in fact a locked gate.

So it's a bridge you cross simply to then have to stop. And that sign you can see makes it clear that you are not to try to get over or around the bridge.

But I love the bridge because I think it's pretty. It's solid. I use it to do stretches. I look over the edge to watch ducks, fish, turtles, and when I'm lucky, a heron. I love to stand or lie down and just look at the sky.

And I love that closed gate that says "KEEP OUT."

Because it also says "WILDLIFE REFUGE."

I love that right here in the middle of a big city is a place set aside for wildlife. Wild life.

"We need the tonic of wildness" says the all-natural rose-scented facial tonic I bought at Whole Foods mainly just because I loved that quote. It's from Walden, by Thoreau, who went on to write, "At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

When I was in college, an English major taking an American Lit class, I remember writing either in a paper or in my journal, that I thought I had been a Transcendentalist all my life without knowing it.

Well, I know more now and would not say that. But perhaps it's fair to say that I'm a Transcendental-ish Christian.

At any rate, I chose the bridge picture to represent yet one more transition, one more moving from one place to another, in that I really do hope to start writing more again. It feels as if my brain, and thus my mind, have recovered enough from the thesis writing and then the neck surgery I had this spring, to be able to write again. I even kind of feel the itch.

And for now this blog will be a sort of wildlife refuge for my writing, still meandering here and there. It's a mystery to me, a bit of a wild thing, still, where it may go.

But any readers are welcome to walk the bridge-- and you may also open the gate.

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.

Epiphany Crowns and Haloes

"Adoration of the Magi," tapestry by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris

It's fascinating how various parts of daily life can manifest themselves in ways that intersect and surprise.

With Epiphany on the horizon, my mind had been returning to my blurry memory of the image above, which I used a couple of years ago in a presentation as part of my DMin degree, comparing this image to the image woven in words by the prophet Amos in chapter 6, where wealth and complacency accompany pride and are condemned.

I put a lot of work into that and was sad because I thought I had lost it forever, since I did it on the laptop that was stolen this summer;I had looked for it a couple of times in other places without success. But this evening one more search led me to find it in my emails.

I was reminded that the final sentence of what I wrote alluded to the choice between wearing crowns or being given haloes, because one thing that struck me in the tapestry is that all three kings have removed their crowns, and the one approaching Jesus has laid his on the ground, no doubt with an eye to Revelation 4:10 scene where the 24 elders cast their crowns before Jesus.

Whether kings or not (go here for a helpful article on the identity of these men), the wise men must have been wealthy to have traveled so far, and to spend their lives studying the stars. But they used their wealth to find and worship the Light of the world rather than as a means of gaining pleasure and status like the wealthy Amos addressed.

So, feeling happy that I'd discovered a copy of my work, and also being able to look again at the beautiful tapestry after finding the name and artist, I opened the book that we've been reading from throughout Advent and Christmas, to see what the reading for today is.

Here is what I found:

The child we seek

doesn't need our gold.

On love, on love alone

he will build his kingdom.

His piercéd hand will hold no scepter,

his haloed head will wear no crown;

his might will not be built

on your toil.

Swifter than lightning

he will soon walk among us.

He will bring us new life

and receive our death,

and the keys to his city

belong to the poor.

~Gian Carlo Menotti,

from "Amahl and the Night Visitors"

And there it is--"his haloed head will wear no crown." I may have read this poem before, but I had never noticed that line until tonight. It has felt like an evening among old friends, somehow, even though I'm sick with the flu and home alone. A sweet reunion of sorts.

If we all desired the holiness of the halo over the power and prestige of the crown, what a different world it would be. Literal crowns are rare, but the desire for wealth and power certainly isn't. We can at least put down our own crowns and hope and pray for this crown-crazed world. And like the wise men, look for the light and follow it to its Source.

Postscript: I believe the way I originally discovered this tapestry was via the blog of my friend Janet a couple of years ago. Her poem based on it, which I've linked to, is worth reading, also.

Relinquishment and Renewal

These are little gold cardboard stars that I bought for a birthday or something. I don't remember what. But a couple of years ago I thought they would be fun as Christmas decorations, and I hung them in a doorway with pieces of ribbon, so that to enter the dining room you passed under and through a curtain of stars. I thought it was lovely, but someone taller found it less than lovely and even somewhat annoying.

So last year, determined to keep the stars around, I realized there were exactly enough to go on every other pane of the living room window, giving us the look and feel of their golden starry presence without hitting anyone in the nose or messing up hair. So there they went again this year.

I love looking out and up at the blue sky, with giant trees in the background and stars in the foreground. There's just something joyful and of course meaningful about having them in that in-between position, so that stars become part of what you are looking through.

I'm writing this on New Year's Eve, not sure if I'll finish it tonight or tomorrow, but thinking back on 2017 and what has transpired. It kind of blows my mind that I've written only eight blog posts this year, which I see is second only to 2015, with only six posts. I thought that once I finished that degree, I would write more.

Obviously, that's not what happened. As I wrote a couple of posts ago, finding a new rhythm has been hard.

A few weeks ago I ran into writer friend Corey Latta at the bookstore. When he asked how I was doing, for whatever reason I skipped "fine" and said, "Honestly, I'm having a harder time than I thought I would since finishing that thesis and graduating. I thought I would have a lot of energy and be doing new things, but I'm having a hard time getting anything going." To my great relief he responded, "Oh, that is so normal. When did you graduate?" "Over six months ago! Not sure that's normal!" "Yes, that's normal. For so long you had that one thing that took all your time and focus, and it just takes a while to regain your energy and be able to focus on new things. It's normal for everyone post-doc."

I felt as if it had been a divine appointment, that running into him that day!

Anyway, in doing my David Allen-inspired retrospective this evening, I thought a lot about what word best sums up my 2017 experience. "Relinquishment" soon came to mind, and it hasn't yet been replaced by anything else, so for now I'm sticking with it.

It may seem like an odd word. Graduating is what most people would call an accomplishment, not a relinquishment. And of course I have a sense of great joy and satisfaction about finishing and defending that thesis and graduating. But it came only because of learning to relinquish the writing. To stop wanting to do more, or to perfect what was there. To come to a place of saying, "It's enough, and it's good enough, and I will let it go."

And then on our summer trip to Europe our bags were stolen, including my laptop, which meant I lost  4-5 years of photos, among other things. I'll probably write again about that, but for now I'll just say that I've had to surrender that, let it go. There's nothing I can do about it. Of course I didn't voluntarily give those photos up, but I've had to do the inner work of letting go of that.

And here at the end of the year, while of course I can't hold on to the year any more than anyone can, I'm doing the inner work of relinquishing the expectations I'd had for what I'd accomplish in the time since graduating. For months I had a sign up that said, "Write as you can, not as you can't." That advice first came to me in the form of "pray as you can, not as you can't." Now I've put a little sticky note over the first word, so I look up from time to time and see, "Live as you can, not as you can't."

Yesterday I heard an interview between Ken Myers and Michael Hanby. In discussing philosophical issues related to problems of technology, they made their way to a conversation found in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where the children have encountered an Old Man who, they learn, is actually a retired star.

Of course they are astounded, this seems so strange.

"In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."

Ramandu, the star, responds, "Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of."

And a bit later, "Aren't you a star any longer?" asked Lucy.

"I am a star at rest, my daughter," answered Ramandu. "When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth's eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance."

I'm no star, but this reading was so encouraging to me. I've had a full five months of rest since graduating and returning from a trip to Europe. I've had fire-berries brought to me in the form of visits with friends, long walks, more musical performances than I'd been able to take in over the past few years, even singing again with the Memphis Chamber Choir. My energy is being renewed. I trust my focus will return.

And also, when we think about the year we've just lived and all the things we're aware of having done, that is not what a year is, but only what it is made of. I have a feeling that in the bigger picture, it will turn out to have been much more than we can possibly realize.

Here's to 2018. Happy New Year!

The Grandmother Gift

This is the view out the backdoor of my grandparents' house, toward the west, with the many memories that come along with it.

Today is the day our beloved Grandmother was born. It's strange to think she has been gone more than fourteen years, closer to fifteen. Not that I don't miss her. It isn't hard to believe that many years have passed, because she has been missed for all of them.

It's more because she is so much a part of my life, because she is part of me, part of how I see things, how I hear things, how I think about things.

I use her pots and pans. I pray at the little desk she gave me while she was living, and I write notes and letters at the desk that became mine after her death. We still  use towels that were hers. I see her little milk pitcher every time I walk through our dining room.

The intangibles are just as real. Her expressions come to my mind in various situations. (Who else says, "bless Pat"?) Her advice, whether about the kitchen or the bigger things in life, still gives me guidance. When I play piano, I remember that she always encouraged my playing and helped pay for lessons at some points. I can still hear her voice asking, "Where are your manners?" when we were little children and forgot to say "please" or "ma'am" or "sir," and it makes me want to continue the kindness and respect of simply manners, even when some are falling out of use.

When I wake earlier than I would like, I remember her talking about how she slept less and would get up and read in the early hours.

I remember her strength, her kindness, her beauty, her laughter, her love.

I pray to be like her in all the ways I ought to be.

It is her birthday, and for all who knew her, she is the gift.

Underwood

These trees live in Overton Park, the park I used to walk in on Friday mornings, back when I had more of a regular schedule. The deeper I got into writing my thesis, the less I was able to go there for those longer Friday morning walks. Whether it was true or just my anxiety saying so, it seemed I simply didn't have the time, so I took shorter walks at the closer-by Chickasaw Gardens park.

Now my Friday mornings have been taken by piano lessons, so I'm still not in a routine of walking at Overton. But I'm hoping to do it on another day.

It's hard to believe how much trouble I'm having getting into a new rhythm. After graduating, there was a trip to Texas in May, then a trip to Europe in June-July, then house guests in late July. All of these things were absolutely delightful--and they all meant no regular routine.

. . . . And the fact that I started writing this on October 11, and now it is the 25th, is evidence that I still haven't managed to get some things into a regular routine. But I'm back.

And I did make it back to Overton Park, one foggy day back near the end of August, when this picture was taken.

It felt a bit like a family reunion, in a way. Because I used to walk here nearly every single week, and usually walked the same trails, the trees, the curves of the path, the vines growing on the trees, the occasional flowers were all familiar and beloved in that way they become over time. I don't know if they had missed me, but I had missed them.

Surely I've written before that I spent a lot of time outside when I was growing up. When my family lived in town, my friend and I traipsed around in the small plot of swampy woods behind our house and the larger stretch of woods (with a creek!) across the street from her house.

When my family moved out of town, we were surrounded by woods before us and behind us. After I was too old for the imaginary adventures that involved creating fairytale houses from rocks and branches, turning an old stump into a witch's pot, and pretending to search for the creek that would take us to my friend's house if we just looked long enough, I still spent long stretches of time out there. Sometimes walking, sometimes climbing a tree, sometimes running on the road across from us.

I'm convinced that the woods are part of how I became the person I became. I owe no small measure of my sanity to them. It has been interesting to learn over time how much time spent in nature affects the development of our brains. I remember the first time I became aware that some people feel scared when they go in the woods; I was really surprised! For me, woods have the opposite effect, calming me, clearing my mind, focusing my attention--it doesn't matter if I'm in my home state of Arkansas, or here in Tennessee, or over in Europe. Being surrounded by trees automatically soothes my nerves. I think that's true for most people unless they've fed themselves with scary movies that interfere with the more natural response.

Recently I came across these words, and they are part of why I love the woods: "It is hard to go completely mad if you spend your free time being free and accepting the free bounties of the world round about . . .. Things, in their beautiful and imposing integrity, do not easily bend to lies."

When the world is crazy with lies--whether the lies of others in our lives, or the lies our own minds struggle to overcome inside of us, or the lies of the wider culture, or political lies--trees, vines, flowers, rocks, and dirt--oh, and wonderful green moss--with all the little creatures that thrive in the midst of them--these maintain their integrity. They quietly share their beauty. They offer themselves freely, no strings attached, no tricks to play.

And so it was wonderful to go back to Overton Park at the end of August. I've been able to go one other time since then.

And little by little I'm getting some rhythm back into my life. It's a lot like walking in the woods. I can only do it one step at a time. And I have to trust that even if I haven't been in this exact spot before, I can find my way, and meanwhile, there's lots of beauty all around under the woods.

(I really like that my first last name is Underwood.)