A Firmanent in the Midst of the Waters

And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,

and let it separate the waters from the waters.”

And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

And it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven.

And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

People who know my story won't be surprised if I say the passage above has fascinated me since I was four or five years old. When you grow up going to church, in a church that believes in teaching while young minds are fresh and can absorb easily, you start thinking about these kinds of things early on.

And when your daddy gives you a Revised Standard Version of the whole Bible when you are six years old, and you have already become a lover of words and reading, you start reading Genesis, because it is, well, the beginning. And the words that appeal to you stick in your mind. And words like "separate the waters from the waters" appealed to me, as did "firmament." It was just fun to say and to think, with the two m's and then the n near the end. To say it was almost to sing it.

And that word "firmament" just always fascinated me. Partly because for many years I never heard it anywhere except in this passage. And I remember conversations at school and church when we would talk about what it could mean to separate the waters from the waters, and how much of that was reflective of scientific thinking and how much was more poetic. (These were later classes, not in first or second grade, I'm sure.)

I suppose the next time I encountered the word "firmament" was in high school chorus, when we literally sang that so-singable word, as in, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork," in a setting composed by a professor at our local college, Dr. Bill ("Doc") Hollaway. I remember it well.

This past Sunday I drove back to my hometown for the funeral of Marilyn Allen, who was one of my earliest Bible class teachers. We moved to Searcy when I was four; I had to have been four or five when she taught us, because we were in an upstairs classroom where the youngest children went. I remember flannelgraph stories. I remember her husband coming to our class dressed as Abraham or Paul, sharing his story and answering our questions. I remember having memory verses and putting stickers on charts when we recited them aloud. I remember Elsie Huffard coming to visit us all the way from "the holy lands" and telling us what it was like to live where Jesus had lived.

While I know that some people have unpleasant memories and even strong negative feelings about their experiences of growing up in a church, my memories of church are among my most cherished memories. I had wonderful, dedicated teachers like Mrs. Allen who loved us and loved God and taught us from the grounding of both those loves.

One by one, I am saying goodbye to my teachers--school teachers, teachers from church, piano teachers. Mrs. Allen was not only a teacher but also the mother of my friend and classmate. And she was in the same nursing home that my mom is in. Saying goodbye to her was more than honoring a childhood Bible teacher. It brings many thoughts and feelings to the surface.

I took these photos the day she died. As I was looking at the reflection of clouds on the surface of the water, I thought how the waters above and the waters below were coming together to create such beauty. And as painful, terribly painful, as death and separation are, the longer I live the more I sense that it is a temporary separation and that something very real still connects us after death to those we were truly connected to in life. Just as in the Genesis account, the waters above and the waters below were apparently considered to be one before the firmament was created to separate them, the oneness we have in Christ is there before death and continues after death. Some refer to the mystical body of Christ. While that isn't a phrase or concept I learned in my church growing up, the more I've heard it and thought about it, the more I think it should have been.

For now, we wait. For the new heaven and the end of the separation. One thing my church gave me was a love of music. We didn't sing this, but because of growing up where I did, I grew up to sing it later in another church setting:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Spring Fever

Five months. I think it has been roughly five months since I posted. And I believe that is a record. Not the sort I ever intended to set, but so be it.

Maybe I'll write more later about what's been going on in those five months, or maybe not.

But today . . . Today the long winter was clearly over. Signs of spring are all around. And I had to bring some flowers in, and take some pictures, and I have to share them. And while we never know what lies ahead and therefore I am willing to be wrong, I just have the feeling that I am going to be here more often, writing more, sharing photos more. Change is in the air.

Spring is in the air. And in my house.

Life is in the air. New life.

Just look.

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want --- oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"

~ Mark Twain

Two Years

Wow, it has been long enough since I posted anything here that for a moment I couldn't remember how to start a new post.

Work, school, travel, and other life events have kept me from coming here for several months. But today I have to break the silence to remember my beloved piano teacher who was so much more than a piano teacher. I've written about her before, here and here.

Today marks the two-year anniversary of her death. Interestingly, at the time of her death, I was taking a class on the book of Revelation. And now I'm taking a class on the Gospel of John. Both books that talk a lot about life and death, and eternal life. And light and dark, too, especially in John. And day and night, especially in Revelation.

The last couple of years off her life, she was working on the Nocturnes of Francis Poulenc. She said I simply must get them and learn to play them. She would play them for me, commenting on the jazz touches that Poulenc added to his impressionistic sound.

So, sometime in the past year, I ordered the music. Making sure it came from the publisher she had recommended, the Parisian edition, not some take-off arrangement. (Some things are worth splurging on.)

A couple of months ago, I was out of town to visit a friend in Colorado and take some time off. I called a nearby college and asked if they might be able to let me use a practice room while I was in town. They said yes. I expected a small room with an old piano in it. But they gave me a huge room with a Steinway in it. A beautiful, nicely kept Steinway. Not old and out of tune, but actually wonderful.

And another time when I was out of town, at the Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville for a group retreat, I had access to a wonderful piano, though to be honest, I don't remember what kind it was.

Both times, just hoping I might have a chance to play, I had my music with me. The Nocturnes of Poulenc. The music that will always remind me of her and those last visits we had.

So both times I played my heart out. Not wonderful playing, because I don't have time to practice as is required to play this music wonderfully. But it was a wonderful way to connect with her and remember the many hours we spent at her wonderful piano, and all the wonderful pianos I played on for competitions she coached me through (though I never felt wonderful while doing those!)

And I wept at those wonderful pianos. Wonderful cleansing tears that I so needed to cry, because life has been so full these past two years, I have hardly had proper time to do that, to remember her well and to grieve her loss, though I feel it so often in the midst of various activities. Especially when I wish I could pick up the phone and call her.

The dark and light of a piano keyboard will always be a way of connecting with her. The "night" of the nocturnes will always bring a certain kind of "day" as I connect with her love through them.

And unlike the Steinway in Colorado Springs, which I said goodbye to and then looked at through a locked door, doubting that I'd ever see it again, because of the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, I do look forward to seeing her again.

And I am thankful. Thankful for her life. Thankful for eternal life. Sad right now, but thankful.

(This was one of the first pieces I ever played as her student. Nice bookends.)

Infinity in My Lap: Light, Lace, and Laminate

School and life conspired to keep me from posting about music as I'd planned. That post is in progress, but not quite ready.

Meanwhile, I had another brush with infinity. With something as simple as a shirt hanging on a chair.

It wasn't the shirt or the chair, though. It was the light. The light coming through the window that caught my eye and took hold of my heart. I just sometimes cannot believe what a beautiful and mind-boggling thing light is. Coming from Brother Sun so many miles away from us that I cannot really pretend to comprehend the distance . . . and without this light our very existence is impossible.

Of course there are ways of measuring the distance, the light, the heat. But compared to our little lives, the light may as well be infinite. It is certainly beyond us. And it is pure gift.

And such a powerful gift can fall on tiny little human-sized objects and make them beautiful.

So I took some pictures.

The table and chairs belonged to my grandparents; it was the first table they ate at after marrying each other. After some decades, Grandmother had a laminate finish put on the top. At some point it was moved down to the basement room, and I spent many happy hours down there wrapping Christmas gifts for her, the ones she hadn't yet gotten to. I loved wrapping gifts, and I loved how she always said what a good job I did. And I loved the meals she prepared, which my wrapping allowed her to stay focused on!

So the table is part of the moment of infinity, the connection to love that is living now beyond this world, beyond this sun. In even brighter light, I trust.

Inifinity in My Lap: Healing Art

So, I spent the greater part of Thursday in a relatively small room filled with big moments. I had more fun that day than I'd had in I don't know how long. As a child, like most children, I loved to draw, color, paint, cut, paste, whatever. But in high school, we had to choose between chorus and art classes, and I always sang. And visual art, beyond photography, just didn't have much of a chance in my schedule. Then in college, I took one drawing class and fell in love with "making art," as the artists say. (For some reason, I never heard that expression until the past few years, and it still sounds a little odd to me. I tend to think of "doing art," for whatever reason....and look what I just found, piqued by curiosity about that phrasing.)

Our teacher was amazing. She has a real gift for what she does and for teaching it to others. Her warm, compassionate enthusiasm was contagious.

Of course she was teaching/lecturing part of the time, but she also gave us projects to do. And it was so neat, how people got so engrossed in what we were doing. The room just felt different when everyone was focused on their own little creation, music was playing quietly, and no one was talking.

These oil pastels were our friends for the day. I felt like I was back in elementary school. I still remember how exciting it was the first time I had a box of 64 crayons!

We partnered with the person sitting next to us and played "scribble chase." One person leads with a scribble/doodle, and the other follows. A great ice breaker.

I led on this one. My only thought was to do more than go round and round, so I did some other things. It kind of wound up looking like a face, didn't it?

My partner, who became my friend in the course of the day, led on this one. It was more relaxing, just going round and round. And I like how our pinks look together.

The next thing we did was the "inside and outside the square" piece that I described in the previous post.

And for the next one we were instructed to just doodle until she said "stop." It wasn't very long at all. My original doodle was just the curve you see below that forms the main part of the bass clef sign.

Then we were to think of three things we could make from the doodle, and not begin doing anything with it until we had three ideas. (Generating ideas, envisioning possibilities....important stuff in therapy.....)

Once we had three ideas, we were to choose one of our ideas and continue making something from our doodle.

Well, I liked two of my ideas so much that I did both of them, and the next thing I knew, I had the beginning notes of the main theme of Beehoven's Ninth and an angel together on the page, with joy in various languages, and beams of light coming from the heart of the angelic figure.

At some point I thought how strange it was, with the things going on in my life lately, that I would be creating art so full of light and joy and music. Was I in denial? I wondered. But I just kept adding beams of light and then the bass clef-y doodles to frame the piece, and I knew I was not in denial. There are hard things going on, some very hard things, but the light and joy overcome the darkness.

So then I added the "o magnum mysterium" to the mix, because it is rather mysterious how light and dark, joy and sorrow, can be so mixed in one mind and heart. And because I know that for me it is the great mystery of the Incarnation, and all that follows from it, that makes it possible.

When Lisa came around to see what we were doing and talk briefly with us about our work, she asked me, "So how far do the rays of light extend beyond the page?" I looked up at her and after a moment's pause said, "Infinitely. Because even though it looks like an angel, this is the heart of God, and the light is infinite."

And that is why I want to do more art in my therapy. Because I didn't even have that in mind when I was drawing these images. Not consciously. I was just going with the doodle and seeing what I could do. I drew hearts because I am not good at drawing faces, and  it seemed like a good way to not have to draw a face but still represent an angelic figure.

But somehow, making things with our hands has a way of going deep into our minds and heart and pulling things out.

And sometimes when doing that, infinity kind of. . . drops into one's lap.

Infinity in My Lap

"Infinity kind of...drops into one's lap."

That's Stratford Caldecott trying to describe to Ken Myers those moments when we are struck with the infinite nature of the cosmos, and how we are a part of it and are touched by it. How children seem to experience those moments more frequently, and how we as adults can learn to be more open to them.

I was listening to the interview this past Wednesday while driving from Memphis to my home town in Arkansas. This time of year the fields are piercingly green as the early evening light does its magic with their chlorophyll.

At certain moments I felt infinity dropping into my lap, perhaps bumping on the steering wheel as it came. It was early evening. The sun was still high enough to not be right in my eyes, but it was dropping, and it shone on the fields and through the trees at an angle that just made them magical. I wanted so much to stop and take pictures! But I knew if I did, I risked letting the sun get to the point that I would not be able to see, because I was driving almost due west the entire trip, and if that evening sun got any lower, I would be blinded.

So I kept driving, marvelling at the beauty. When I came near the White River and saw the red clover growing thickly all along the sides of the road, it was all I could do to just keep driving.

I was going this way partly to visit family, and also because of a professional seminar on "The Secrets to Using Art as a Healing Process," by Lisa Mitchell.  As soon as I saw the brochure about it, I knew I wanted to go.

So you probably won't be surprised at one of my pieces of art done on the following day. The instructions were simply to draw a square. Then to fill it with color, line, and texture. And then to take something from inside the square and move it outside the square. Here's what showed up on my pice of paper. . . .

The words came to me from the recesses of my mind, from a song my chorus sang in high school. If I can get it to work, you can listen to it here:

Hopkins Still Hovers

I've just come across in my inbox a long, lovely article about Gerard Manley Hopkins, his life, his faith, and his poetry. I haven't even had to time to do more than skim it, but I'm putting the link here in case you want to read it and so that I can come back and read it with no chance of losing the link.

"....Hopkins’s genius is to make a poetic virtue out of the contradiction between dogma and experience. The designs of providence, running athwart appearances (and our wishes), require the orthodox to look again at the world, to see it in new and original ways. When dogma and experience are read into and against each other, they license—they do not foreclose—an idiosyncratic and creative vision."

(I did not take the photo. It came from here, where there are several others, and they are wonderful.)

Easter: Now the green blade riseth

Now the green blade riseth

from the buried gain,


wheat that in dark earth


many days has lain;


love lives again,
 that with the dead has been:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid him,


Love whom hate had slain,


thinking that never


he would wake again,


laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Forth he came in quiet,


like the risen grain,


he that for three days


in the grave had lain,


quick from the dead
 the risen Christ is seen:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry,


grieving, or in pain,


Christ's touch can call us


back to life again,


fields of our hearts 
that dead and bare have been:


Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

(You can listen to this song here in a lovely medieval-ish rendition.)

“It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.”

― Francine Rivers, The Last Sin Eater

(I don't think I have any pictures of wheat growing, but this is a field I see regularly that is bare and muddy and ugly during the winter and then suddenly bursts into bloom!)

Holy Saturday: Bridegroom and Wedding

I wasn't planning to write anything today, and I won't say much, except that I was so struck by this article by Elizabeth Scalia that I've decided to share it. Struck by the piece itself and by the connection to Donne's poem that I shared a few posts ago.

Scalia begins with words from Pope Benedict,

Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced in the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God's love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other.

On the Cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us.


. . . and I will let you read the rest for yourself. It is worth reading.


This image of Christ as Lover and Bridegroom struck me today also as I went into an Orthodox Church nave to meet a friend. I always love being there. The space itself, with its other-wordly icons and candles and silence, is beautiful, and the people I know there are beautiful.

But today it was even more beautiful, with rose petals and other flowers carpeting the floor, and flower garlands on the doorways and other places. Just as it was when I went there for a wedding a few years ago.

My friends are there now, as I write, nearly midnight. The church is about to be completely dark, except for one candle. And then light will spread and grow, and joyous music will begin, and Alleluia's will be cried out after long weeks of none. And the people will later feast as if for a wedding, celebrating a marriage unlike any other.

The Cross began in Love and leads to Love.

Good Friday: The Cross

I thought I would just see how many cross pictures I have since getting this computer in October . . .

The cross from Father Stevens, made from Jerusalem olive tree wood.

Visitation Monastery gateway, Mobile, Alabama.

On the spine of one of my Bibles.

Spring Hill College, Mobile.

Chapel at Spring Hill College.

Spring Hill College.

My window at home.

First little one I saw this year.

Dogwood blossom, with its own cross legend.

We sang this last night.

Beautiful.

Love can make beauty possible from the most terrible things.

Like the cross.