michelangelo's seizure

I had referred to this poem in an earlier post. Here it is, in its entirety, on the National Endowment for the Arts website. I assume that, at very least, allows me to post the link to an e-altar where it lies in entirety! This sort of contact can only lead more people to purchase the volume anyway.

My favorite phrase (currently, of course): "...with the witchcraft hushed inside his veins..."

Favorite imagery (for now): "...with two dead bugs crushed into the paint..."

Note that this utterly brilliant poet briefly discusses his next project. In preparation he is..."researching O'Neill's biography, and his work, to try to find moments of psychological empathy that will let me into the poems"...

Psychological empathy. Fuel of the gods.

sometime in the late spring of 1994...

...Melusina & I were in the French Quarter, New Orleans, coming to the end of a day's adventure as a part of her greater visit from Oregon. I called home (Baton Rouge) to check in... and heard the news: Fr. C had received a call from St. John's, Stockton, to be their rector.

It all comes back to me...the phone around the corner...the fading day...the smell of the sidewalk...and, most clearly, the abject terror.

Between the time of the whispering of a call, and the concreteness of it, I had come to regret the possibility of it and had laid aside all of the prior glowing enthusiasm of a new life in Stockton, hoping it might not happen. Yet, I knew we would accept.

Six months before, we had heard from the Bishop's office, who had kept a file on Fr. C, post-seminary and had their memory jogged with his recent article in The Living Church. When I came out to Stockton for a Christmas visit, Fr. C asked me to stop in at St. John's and 'count the stained glass windows': for such a brilliant scholar, he truly thinks with his heart (Incidentally, as I left after the service, someone followed me and invited me to coffee hour. Nice.). Some time later, there was church to priest-to-be contact and an on-site visit by Fr. C. In our camp there was much excitement...chatter of living near my family (Lord have mercy, when he went to seminary I was upset at him for going to Nashotah when he could have gone to CDSP in Berkeley in my family's backyard....!) and the excitement of a new ministry.

In my remembering, there was a long period of waiting for the phone to ring. It could have been a week. It could have been three. It just felt long. And it was certainly long enough for me to think through The Cost. Immeasurable and deep. For the life we were to leave was rich, full, vibrant -- most especially on the part of our children, two of whom would be entering 9th and 11th grade. Their private episcopal school (free tuition!!!) was a Mr. Roger's neighborhood of fascinating learning and joyous camaraderie, nurturing a richly-textured family that went beyond its mere boundaries into every microscopic aspect of their lives.

And yes: The Cost was accurately counted. It hurt hugely for some time after we moved. I wondered if we had 'heard it (the call) wrong'. The children's lives here were, in practically all ways, the antithesis of the cocoon they had left, most noticeably at school. S2 removed the bandana from her backpack after being asked 'what gang are you in?'. J learned to say, 'excuse me' when a person slammed into him in the corridors and acted like it was his fault. Respect was lacking in the classroom...no 'yes ma'am, no sir'...

Yet for all this...(thank you, Gerard Manley Hopkins)...yet for ALL this...we would, each of us, rise up and call ourselves blessed beyond belief for our time here, none trading it for any other. The Holy Spirit was busy from the beginning, like a grace-filled spider weaving a complex and gossamer web as a platform for sheer grace, which surprised us and exceeded our dreams. Our lives at St. John's -- rich beyond all measure. And the mission church we left in Baton Rouge? Flourishing, also.

So, the message is clear: Expect God's grace to abound. It does, even when I think otherwise. It has, even when I think I've gotten in the way of it. It has, and will, here. It has, and will, there.

a meme: six weird things about me

Fr. C. would like to contribute to this.
He's sure he can think of more than six.
I constantly assure him - I am quite normal.

I think I first saw this meme on Anglicamp.

1. I talk to myself...but only when someone else is in the vicinity. I've decided that's an expression of joy in 'not being alone inside myself'. Either that, or it's just plain weird.

2. I'm hopelessly affected by how things look and feel. I'm surprised I touch a computer at all, and often print out a doc at work so that I can easily read/edit it in that form first. And, I don't care how GREAT a book is -- if the cover design doesn't appeal to me and the paper doesn't feel velvety in my hands any the typeset isn't enticingly 'invisible' to my discomfort meter...I'll find it hard to read it. The latest book that IS great: Suite Francais, which I picked up in an airport bookstore before flying to visit Warsaw Indiana and thought surely nothing good can come from an airport bookstore and was delightfully proved wrong even before I saw the full page ad in the New York Times Sunday book section I picked up off a seat in a concourse before boarding to come home. Whew.

3. I perseverate. Mostly on things 'ultimate'. When I find my favorite track on a CD, I listen to nothing else but that. I have ONE thing I wear that feels 'ultimately me' (I'm sure everyone knows what that is.). If I were to find something else a smidgen better, I might not wear the current fave at all...it having slipped to second place, which is the same as oblivion.

4. I look at people's mouths while talking with (i.e., listening to...) them. It's always been that way with me, so I haven't wondered about it much...except to sometimes ponder if it's what other people do. But add that to...not being able to enjoy a choral concert without the text in front of me...not being able to make out lyrics on CD's without the liner notes... Lately, I've come to a possibly accurate understanding of this, which is that - despite not having a hearing loss - there may be something in my brain wiring that needs a connection with the visual to process the data. Scary. But not so much, at my 'advanced' age.

5. Occasionally, well, rather rarely, writing comes frighteningly easy. When I go back and read it, I'm amazed at serendipity and am not sure where images and latent artistic connections came from and it seems beyond me -- like it has a life of its own. Then, in the case of...say...a blog entry...I live in the internal shadow of that and can't put a single sentence together coherently for a while and feel blocked and depressed and...oh, Fr. C. now declares, You need therapy. *teasing* (I tried to create this as a new 'html tag", but it wouldn't let me. Asterisks, it is.)

6. I eat parsley. Lots of it, if I remember to do so. People find that weird. But actually it isn't. It is a great female hormone balancer. That, and a few other things which I won't blog about now.

6.5. I can't stop editing my blogs.

'a life worth grieving': mystical sake -- viewing a bad day through a warm lens...

'Good Grief'

Terror. Depression. I awoke to these 'possibilities' this morning.

The director of financial aid stopped in my office for kaffee klatch. I sensed the opportunity for cathartic counseling and plunked down a dime ('Peanuts' inflation). When it didn't go that/my way, I added a jumbo paper clip as psycho-currency. Desperate, I added the Office of Enrollment debit card - including a Pacific lanyard. In the end, his 'George Carlin wisdom' failed me -- or rather, the grief and fear were too strong. I removed the currencies one at a time.

On my glum list: we had an appraiser in to evaluate the house yesterday. He is Eeyore. Can't expect much good from him. Further complication -- the friends wanting to buy our home, sans realtor, are the eternal hope of my wonderful neighbor across the street, who is desperate to sell his home and wants them to buy it. If they buy ours and not his...for a less than desirable sum...he is hurt twice: his buyers become ours...and his home is devalued by a lower than market sale. Ouch.

Then I ask -- Can I really sustain all aspects of life in Warsaw -- hey, I'll drive to Ft. Wayne when I need to. Nope, F.A. man answered - not in the winter. The roads will be impassable (it's been decades since he lived in Indiana...).

My boss interviews a possible me-replacement: I don't like 'Molly'. She's not good enough for him. In fact, when she arrives, I ask her to wait in the lobby, rather than in my office, in an uncharacteristic display of distancing.

An email arrived from a piano parent - 'We will miss you forever'. Another says she will organize a piano student/parent petition and send it off to Indiana. Will I ever have a stable of students again?

I go home and weep at the beauty of our back yard, newly groomed by a young pacific gardener...a yard that bears the marks of efforts that I only appreciate now...though they are incomplete. I try to live in the 'now' -- and pot new ivys for a front porch hanging garden...even if I can't take them with me.

So...after a day with no perspective...little strength insight/in sight with which to fight the grief over the loss of our lives here, I poured myself a small glass of sake at home before walking down the 'Mile' to CoCoRo's for a meal that might never happen in Warsaw (we can open a japanese restaurant in Warsaw, I declare to C!!) -- to avoid having to order (pay) for a japanese carafe of the same...but I ordered one anyway...and wish I had gotten a large.

Grief. That's the heart of the topic. I can't stop today.

Fr. C. says, it's OK. This stage takes a long time. It's not OK with me. I want to find a way to spiritualize it. To rise above it...or rather travel outside it. There is the calling that, by grace, I can live. I keep declaring that I can live by gratitude, not loss. But...the grief continues.

The weather today -- warm, but not humid. When, I ask the carioca, will it be this way in Indiana? Oh, September 4th. Or maybe May 24th. Suddenly, the breezy perfect evening is a knife. We discuss the music program in Warsaw. It's clear that most (except the search committee...) do not know I am a church musician. C's concern - and mine: that the current and talented pianist/choral director not know of it...not have it in her awareness. Yes, I concur -- I would only take up that roll/role (a la CoCoRo's) in the same way I did here: when the one doing it no longer does -- and no other way.

Then...in sake wisdom over raw fish, I see our first year as the 'Year of the gathering'...by spiritual centrifugal force...a melding of hearts and spirits and minds...in a way that would galvanize and minister to them...and do the same to us. A celebration.

So - in/through my sake-sobbing - I come to the soil of my heart...where I desire to till -- self-sacrificially, joyfully and without overthinking -- the garden ground for a new life.

Prison Hospital Ministry

Last night, I received the dreaded phone message(s) from my mother's assisted living caregivers. First: Please call us. The next: She's been taken to the emergency room after falling. I joined her, four blocks away from my house, in the hospital she gave birth to me in, an hour after the occurrence.

This is nothing new -- her crippling osteoporosis has caused many breaks, and other assorted problems have sent her to the hospital way too often. Yet much to my surprise, I found her in the emergency room hallway, waiting for a room, flanked by two young, talkative paramedics...sitting up, laughing, straining with her one working hearing aid to hear their conversations. Granted, she had become dizzy...fell to the floor, bumping her sensitive spine and then lightly bumping her head. But, other than facility protocol, why was she taken to the hospital? She seemed fine!! It seems she simply wanted to know whether or not she had broken anything in her malformed spine.

Eight hours later...3am...I brought her back home, where she certainly should have stayed in the first place. In between, she had been (possibly) examined (I missed seeing that), had blood drawn, was hooked up to EKG monitor, had a CT scan of her head ordered (why, I asked?? She hurt her back), then...a back xray, followed by an attempted IV start ("Just in case her blood work comes back indicating a need for medications and then we can get it in her right away". Like what?, I asked. "Oh, like antibiotics...etc..."). We declined that one.

Her pre-fall dizziness translated into 'passed out' on her chart. Her blood pressure (post-fall, of course...) had been astronomical (wouldn't anybody's, I wondered...), but was within normal when nobody was poking at her. I struggled to make sense of the ER drama. Results came in. CT scan showed no blood in her brain!!!! Imagine that. Back x-rays showed multiple old breaks, but it was impossible to determine if there were any new ones. Yup. When the ER doc (who aptly fits Felipe's assessment "Have you ever been to a doctor's office where they HAVEN'T tried and tried to find something wrong? Yes, I thought, whenever I presented mysterious not-feelings-well as a young woman...and all tests came back negative and I was dismissed...but I digress) caught sight of her swollen legs, he checked her blood work for a substance that would indicate she doesn't have a blood clot somewhere. After reporting that it confirmed she does not, he came and said a mistake was made on the lab report and they couldn't say for sure she doesn't. Must do a lung CT scan...inject her with dye. They came in to do the IV prep and I interiorly lost it. Called Felipe. I met him in the parking lot for a consultation. He listened, coached me. I went back in and asked the doctor who had taken over her 'case' if she was having trouble breathing (no)...were there any other things that made them suspect a clot in her lung? Just that the lung was a scary important place to pay attention to.

In the end, though she wavered and wavered, she chose to have the procedure. She waited FOREVER for a CT tech to be called in. After the scan was finally done, we waited way over an hour for results (Yay!!! She doesn't have a blood clot in her lung!!!) which happened to appear when I went out and said, geez it was taking a long time.

I asked for ibuprofen for her -- her first pain reliever in several hours, and an appropriate one for the lesser actual severity (or lack of...)... the fall. I took her home. The drive home was defined by 'youngest child' self-recriminations. Why did I get on the inner tube with her and just let the current take us away?

Extreme gratitude to Felipe, who spent at least three hours with us...following his coaching for my questions with wonderful presence...distracting my mother with wonderful conversation while I dozed off...supporting at all times...questioning when appropriate...even made tea in the doctor's lounge!!! Revealed only at the end that he had 14 hours of surgery the next day.

Did I mention supporting at all times???

part one: the journey of merely beginning to take leave...

Photo courtesy of St. John's archives

I'm finally in a place where I can say it. We're leaving. Moving. Painfully closing a chapter of intense joy & surprising blessing here. Expectant hope hums for the beginning of such there. I won't go into the grief part. But the journey through that black forest does now see leaping light -- a counter intuitive jump into the arms of faith: it's not about me...therefore, something greater is left behind and awaits ahead.

Not sure there's yet adequate words for the moment. For now, perhaps a pictorial excursion will perhaps speak to the breadth of the journey to come.

Looking into the York Crypt. Enough said.

York station. Ready to board. Not quite.

View from Paris hotel room. Passing cars reduced to streaks.
Light years...

The pastoral view out the door of C.S. Lewis's church in Oxford. Centered.

The way down from St. Sulpice choir loft. Hanging up my organ shoes, but always on some musical journey...

Perspective: Cathedral floor through organ loft stained glass.

Myself as mystic traveler...?

a delayed mother's day post...

Today is Mother's Day. And Madeleine McCann was kidnapped over a week ago, producing a devastating, heartrending story that has captivated the world. My whole being, inside and out, has empathetically felt the weight, the burden on the family which the father has described as a 'tidal wave of mass destruction' for them.

I've watched, read, as her mother begs her captors, "Please don't hurt her; please don't scare her." - and my heart breaks in two. I've seen images of the devastated mother, looking like she is one step from lifelong insanity, possibly caught between the temptation of suicide and the guilt of leaving/neglecting the remaining children. I've imagined the worst as speculations on the reason for her abduction surfaced. I've listened as the parents are excoriated for leaving the children alone while they dined nearby, within sight of their front door. They are suffering enough. They only did what others did in that supposedly safe resort -- and not for sake of saving the cost of a nanny, but for the welfare of their three in vitro created children who they wanted to have a regular, peaceful, uninterrupted night's sleep.

There has been unbelievable response from the worldwide community, with millions offered for her return and celebrities begging for her release. The unprecedented focus on Madeleine in the news might cause us to ask why she gets so much attention. There are un-tolled numbers of children who have suffered such dreadful, such evil, and likely unthinkable suffering that never make it into the news. She is from a comfortable, upper class family, with resources, after all.

This reminds me of when Christopher Reeve suffered a life-as-he-knew-it destroying spinal cord injury and some thought his press and treatment were as 'favored' as his life had been. However, celebrities - yes, Madeleine is one right now - captivate our minds and hearts, prompting us to awareness and action that benefit all, down to the penniless, if we remain dedicated to eradicating evil.

But if not, precious Madeleine is still worth all the efforts, all the money and all the empathetic heartbreak that she inspires in us...as much as king or a fallen mourning dove. So, this Mother's Day, I don't feel guilty following this story as if she were my own. She is. She is all of ours.

Right now, I am too far away to hug my own grown children. But I hug them ever so much more deeply in my heart this day, humbled by our years of lives together, which, by McCann standards, are far more precious than we even know.

patricia barber on 'aberrant minds'

My life is crazy. I'm feeling crazy. Patricia says it best*:

there's a piece on the chair...a piece in the hall...
a nice piece of me stuck to the wall...
there's a piece by the clock...clinging awkwardly to time...
there's a piece at the piano clinging stubbornly to rhyme...
there's a fun piece of me in a crack in the floor... an innocent piece who walked out the door...

call me a doctor...or a structural engineer...
draft me a past and a future that consent to adhere...
give me a pill that makes cohesion...
a pharmacological thing...
bring me the tape and the twine...the blueprint design...
to fit the scraps and the threads to the feet and the legs...

in fragments and tatters...scattered all over the road...
each piece has each other...but no piece is a whole...
little maps their pockets...reflections of possibility...

the pieces pick themselves up...

dust themselves off...

and start all over again...

*Available on her 'Verse' CD

Monday Melee

I really shouldn't be this late for my first one! Sorry, Fracas. It's been a wild week.

1. The Misanthropic: Name something (about humanity) you absolutely hate.

Well, hate is a little strong, but...the tendency to always try to 'improve on things'. Tinkering with Mother Nature. Excluding/discouraging varieties of things (bees, for instance) in favor of the strongest and best. Then, when the eggs-all-in-one-basket favored one develops an evolutionary weakness, or its natural predator has a good year, we're in hot water like we are now. Could say the same thing for wheat. We used to have many varieties. Now, we have one. And a lot of us are allergic to it. This world needs variety to be its best, even if some are just chugging along.

2. The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that's phony, fraudulent or bogus.

That's easy: Air fresheners. To begin with, see #1. Hey, there's nothing like fresh air, just the way it comes from the atmospheric box. 90-95% of all fragrances are petroleum based. Evil. Someone put a plug-in freshener in our church nursery. Took me a while to find it. After it was slam dunked into the garbage bin, the nursery still retained the scent -- for at least a month. Why? Because it uses heated petroleum-based fragrance to disperse and persist in the environment. Picture that coating a child's - or anyone's - lungs. Yuk.

3. The Malcontent: Name something you're unhappy with.

Aging. Well, some parts of aging, which shall remain unnamed.

4. The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.

The tendency to improve on things...in a good way. Like what Jimmy Carter does. And naturopathic medicine and organic foods and free hugs.

5. The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.

That's hard. Really. Hmmm...I care.

6. The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.

For children to have idyllic existences at least until adulthood...never to be kidnapped, victimized, frightened, abused and possibly murdered. This one's for Madeleine. I would like to think I would give up my life today if it would bring her back to her parents' arms, unscathed.

yet another reason to take mother nature to a psychiatrist...oh, and add in a GIANT complaint about humans as well...

Dear Bird Folks,

I have heard that Mourning Doves mate for life. Is that true? If it is true, what will happen to the mate of the dove that a hawk caught in my yard last weekend?

Sharyl W.

Yeah sure, Sharyl

Mourning Doves mate for life, but that is no big brag for a species that has a life expectancy of about two weeks. Well, maybe they live more than two weeks, but not much more...just ask that dove that the hawk snagged.

Nearly 80 percent of all new doves don't make it to their first birthday. And half of those few that make, it never see year two. So if you do the math, for every 100 doves only 10 will be around to mate twice. Besides having a huge number of natural predators, doves are the most hunted creature in the country. Each year close to 42 million doves are killed by hunters, mostly in Texas. In Massachusetts, Mourning Doves are protected songbirds, but in Texas they are considered game birds and are shot at, along with other cute creatures like prairie dogs and Democrats.

For this reason, doves spend little time weeping over a lost mate. There is a brief service and then it's business as usual. If a dove is lucky enough to live a long time, it could end up having quite a few mates. Maybe not as many as Lis Taylor, but still it would have a lot. *

The Bird Folks

*Artwork by Catherine Clark

P.S. from You might also want to check out an interesting narrative on a balcony nest (with pics) here.

Another site -- awesome pics. DD

a gray day with a ray of light...

Saturday.

Nothing profound.
No special garden task.
Feeling puny.

I did go in to work and water the plants, as Friday allowed no spare time for that. Hidden clumps of meyer lemons on campus yielded to my ladder-balancing, scissor-snipping act.

Swarm of bees on our stable-turned-garage at home worried me. They aren't supposed to 'drop like flies', are they? Checked the bank of lavender: no sign of the swarms of myriad baby bees that should be there with 'mom'. Microcosm of planetary distress?

Bixby finished off the day by presenting me with an intact, but dead mourning dove. I wrapped it, cried...and mourned it.

Yet, through this unsettling day, a mantra emerged, persisted and carried:

Be still, and know that I am God.

viewing life through a piece of lace

Between our entry way and the living room hangs a lace curtain (you can see a wisp of it in daylight here). I took this picture a few evenings ago...not necessarily wanting a picture of our living room, but rather the impression of a living room. Actually...maybe I didn't even think about the subject/inspiration that much! Something called to me in the moment, and the scene actually offered something that surpassed it.

I'm fairly certain the living room wasn't in a beatific state that evening. Dusty. Slightly (or probably much more...) disheveled. In need of vacuuming at every least. But, here, it looks rather magical with the imprint of lace adorning every item...couches, lamp, a hint of a painting over a mantle, even the empty air space as well.

What if I could mystically view the entire world through a piece of lace? Nothing practical or fashionable as one of those 1940's hats with a band of netting hanging over my eyes! Certainly something richer and deeper than painting a Pollyanna 'whatever' view of life.

Possibly contained in the above view is a metaphor I've been searching for...something to 'lay on top of' life...rather like a 'skin' that slips onto a blogsite or a cursor: Lace as a lens of gratitude for all of life.

Here, allow me to make a quick distinction between gratitude and being thankful. The latter would include worthy activities such as...conjuring up a list of blessings we should be thankful for...or murmuring 'thank goodness' when something goes well. Perhaps I see thankfulness as often expressed in 'doing', even if it's just turning our minds toward a worthy awareness.

Is gratitude more of an attitude? A posture? Awareness incarnate? The grace contained therein is the sign of the outward stance. Grace. Something to live into, be inside of. I love how G.K.Chesterton puts it:

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, and swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in ink.

What he doesn't say is that part of being grateful is expecting it to go well. It's more basic, simple than that. And, therefore -- constantly appropriate, in good or ill.

I'm considering 'humming' a simple, lacy 'grace' as a constant accompaniment to my day. As basic as breathing.

nora

As if the original 'Nora' video wasn't completely disarmingly precious enough. Now, a friend has sent me the sequel. Oh, Nora. Can you come over and play?

the zen of weeding

Started off this past Saturday morning feeling energized -- had some spare time for yardwork! Believe me, I have myriad projects screaming for attention, but gave mine to a section of 'parking strip' which was overrun by thick weeds.

I like to weed. I like to get my hands dirty. There's something so basic..so in tune...so at one with the earth...so honest in doing it. I'm sure it's much more practical to zap them. To me, that 'poisons' the process and removes an important element of satisfaction and, more importantly, the strong connection with nature that rewards the work.


I dug and dug and pulled and pulled and watched the weed pile grow and grow. That encouraged me onward. Strangely, I began to dread the thought of cleaning it up: what a sense of accomplishment was held therein! Yet, as more and more dirt was uncovered, the reward factor shifted to that side. Plants hidden since fall now basked in sunlight.

Unfortunately, the weeds, plants and soil were peppered with spiky balls -- from liquid ambers, I think. I'm certain these nasty, devilish things were the singular inspiration for that horrid medieval invention, the mace. Smaller versions - but lethal, no less, to foot, hand. And, to further prove a grim point: the decomposing ones bear a ghoulish resemblance to...uh...a human skull. Isn't there a better way to create a seed?

It took a long soak in the tub and a good bit of scrubbing to get (most of) the dirt off me. Well worth it!

Bliss: project done: weeds gone, stepping stones added!