Silence is scarce.
As I start to write this, wanting to write on our congregational experience during Lent of sitting in increasing amounts (a minute increasing by a half minute each week) of silence, my daughter is in the room next to me watching a re-run episode of "The Lucy Show." Somehow it seems like a fitting dose of reality. How hard it is to find quiet time, time to sit in silence. This Sunday, it seemed to me as if people were sinking into the silence. There didn't seem to be the shuffling and rustling that we've had in previous weeks. Note to self: don't announce the amount of time that we'll have and then people don't wonder when it's supposed to be up. But there was a power, an enfolding or upholding of the gathered community as the silence deepened. I think we were making space for God.
Even early in the morning, in my supposed quiet time, it's hard to find silence or space for silence. The kettle whistles, the furnace clanks, refrigerator whirs, the computer hums and cars swish by. Even now, although it is quieter since my daughter went upstairs, my chair squeaks and I hear the clock ticking as my fingers are tapping. Why is it easier to find God in the silence than in the busy-ness and noise? I'm not denying that it is—I'm just wondering why we're not wired to find God in rush of everyday?
I read somewhere recently that Sabbath is the most radical contribution of Judaism to the world, or maybe it was the most radical contribution of any religion to the world in 4000 years. Not that Sabbath is always silence, but it is holy time, and it seems to me that we were achieving holy time on Sunday in our silence. Somehow in my mind I equate the spaciousness of Sabbath with the quality of silence we had.
My calendar popup reminders intrude as I try to sit in silence again. And I suspect that if I close my eyes to sit in silence now, I may be asleep—restless night from aching shoveling muscles last night.
If we lost scents and ritual in the reformation, it was a much bigger loss to have lost Sabbath keeping, whenever it was that we did. Blue laws, that remnant of Puritanism, really didn't ensure Sabbath, although the laws helped to control the options. How hard would it be to buck the tide and keep a day of Sabbath in a Christian tradition? How hard is it to find 3-4 minutes of intentional silence? Yet, what an absolute blessing it is when we do.
I tried yet again to sit in silence, and my mind has too much chatter just now. So, there it is. Yesterday I felt enfolded by others around, like being wrapped in a communal blanket of silence. My mind was not nearly so noisy.
I'll miss the silence during service when Lent is over. I'm not sure that I've made enough space for God, but it's been a special part of the season, not a giving up, but a getting.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday, March 12, 2007
The scent of God?
I've been mulling about the sermon I'll be preaching on March 25. I have been thinking that I'll be improvising the sermon—that is, not writing it down, or at least not standing at the pulpit reading it, but one of the things that has drawn me about the gospel text, which is the woman anointing Jesus, is the fragrance.
Last night I found a place on-line (after looking unsuccessfully in several places locally) that sells essential oils and I ordered some spikenard, as well as frankincense and myrrh, among others. I'll hope it's here by March 25. I went rummaging through my drawers and crafts bags for fragrances this weekend. My daughter's Christmas gifts several years ago were potpourri boxes and sachets, and we had fragrance oils for those, and I had gotten some fragrances to add to massage oils, so I have quite a few essential oils around for one reason or another. I'm thinking that this might be a fragrant service. I have a lot of smells captured in bottles. The children will enjoy that...
Smell is the sense that is most primal and I'm wondering why we don't make more use of it in worship. Other than the smell of the coffee brewing—which actually isn't very strong, we don't do smells in Protestant churches. Is this another thing, like ritual, that we lost/threw away during the reformation?
Nard or spikenard was used in preparing a body for burial. I figure that's a coded way of saying that it's a potent enough scent to cover up the scent of a decaying, no—let's be blunt—a rotting body. If so, what primal associations would nard have? Yet, it's referred to as well in Song of Solomon: "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." It's originally from India, and we know from the gospel that it was costly then. Was it a scent the poor would have known? Currently it's not as expensive as myrrh, and it's recommended for rashes, wounds, and tension, and is known as a very spiritual fragrance, apparently just from its historic association with the anointing of Jesus. Is that cause or effect now? If I didn't know it was nard, would I be affected spiritually?
So am trying to think of how to use fragrances in a sermon, especially since we have a hospitality theme going on… Bring my bread machine—baking bread is a current fragrance of hospitality. But apparently nard had an association with welcoming guests as well…
Where is God in all this? What is the scent of God? The scent of redemption? The scents of love and welcome and acceptance and hospitality? How can/do we think of those? If we make worship more sensual, with more subconscious or primal connections, what might happen? There are ways to have anointing as movement as a part of the service, because it wasn't just that the fragrance was there, but that it was lavishly used, and anointing was a limited act—by priests for kings, for example. So what radical notion is it for a woman to anoint an itinerant teacher/prophet/social reformer? But it was also love and recognition, captured in the scent and in the act. How might that be translated into worship/a sermon and for this particular congregation? And we are told in Matthew and Mark that wherever the good news is told, her story will always be a part of it in remembrance of her … should we re-enact it? There is an interesting echo "in remembrance of her" with communion …
Maybe when I actually get the nard and smell it, I'll decide that there's a different way to go for this…. In the meantime, thinking of the unusual sparks creative possibility.
What is the scent of God? I asked my girlfriend as I was writing this: My answer: the smell after a rainstorm on a freshly plowed field. Her answer: the way the house smells when you are cooking, preparing for company. What's your answer?
Last night I found a place on-line (after looking unsuccessfully in several places locally) that sells essential oils and I ordered some spikenard, as well as frankincense and myrrh, among others. I'll hope it's here by March 25. I went rummaging through my drawers and crafts bags for fragrances this weekend. My daughter's Christmas gifts several years ago were potpourri boxes and sachets, and we had fragrance oils for those, and I had gotten some fragrances to add to massage oils, so I have quite a few essential oils around for one reason or another. I'm thinking that this might be a fragrant service. I have a lot of smells captured in bottles. The children will enjoy that...
Smell is the sense that is most primal and I'm wondering why we don't make more use of it in worship. Other than the smell of the coffee brewing—which actually isn't very strong, we don't do smells in Protestant churches. Is this another thing, like ritual, that we lost/threw away during the reformation?
Nard or spikenard was used in preparing a body for burial. I figure that's a coded way of saying that it's a potent enough scent to cover up the scent of a decaying, no—let's be blunt—a rotting body. If so, what primal associations would nard have? Yet, it's referred to as well in Song of Solomon: "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." It's originally from India, and we know from the gospel that it was costly then. Was it a scent the poor would have known? Currently it's not as expensive as myrrh, and it's recommended for rashes, wounds, and tension, and is known as a very spiritual fragrance, apparently just from its historic association with the anointing of Jesus. Is that cause or effect now? If I didn't know it was nard, would I be affected spiritually?
So am trying to think of how to use fragrances in a sermon, especially since we have a hospitality theme going on… Bring my bread machine—baking bread is a current fragrance of hospitality. But apparently nard had an association with welcoming guests as well…
Where is God in all this? What is the scent of God? The scent of redemption? The scents of love and welcome and acceptance and hospitality? How can/do we think of those? If we make worship more sensual, with more subconscious or primal connections, what might happen? There are ways to have anointing as movement as a part of the service, because it wasn't just that the fragrance was there, but that it was lavishly used, and anointing was a limited act—by priests for kings, for example. So what radical notion is it for a woman to anoint an itinerant teacher/prophet/social reformer? But it was also love and recognition, captured in the scent and in the act. How might that be translated into worship/a sermon and for this particular congregation? And we are told in Matthew and Mark that wherever the good news is told, her story will always be a part of it in remembrance of her … should we re-enact it? There is an interesting echo "in remembrance of her" with communion …
Maybe when I actually get the nard and smell it, I'll decide that there's a different way to go for this…. In the meantime, thinking of the unusual sparks creative possibility.
What is the scent of God? I asked my girlfriend as I was writing this: My answer: the smell after a rainstorm on a freshly plowed field. Her answer: the way the house smells when you are cooking, preparing for company. What's your answer?
Thursday, March 8, 2007
What is Creativity?
Creativity is us.
We are creative, creating beings, almost by definition: the Creator created us in the image of the Creator.
Creativity is as natural as breathing. We block our creativity in the same way we become toxic or in the same way we sin: not having space or time or beauty or care for ourselves or care for the rest of creation. If I'm not feeling creative, it's because I'm tired and I am not eating well, exercising, making love, being present/mindful, laughing—and finding things to laugh about and people to laugh and play with, or seeing or hearing or making beauty through art or movement or music or nature. Or I'm doing things that are soul sapping: work that does not bring me joy, or I've let my life and space get cluttered with junk.
Sort of like what happened this week. Finally had time to sit and play some music and pray, but before then it was about wanting to drop kick the computer at work into the bay while it was tied to all of the people who were being especially irritating.
Thank God for music and prayer, and the end of the workweek.
We are creative, creating beings, almost by definition: the Creator created us in the image of the Creator.
Creativity is as natural as breathing. We block our creativity in the same way we become toxic or in the same way we sin: not having space or time or beauty or care for ourselves or care for the rest of creation. If I'm not feeling creative, it's because I'm tired and I am not eating well, exercising, making love, being present/mindful, laughing—and finding things to laugh about and people to laugh and play with, or seeing or hearing or making beauty through art or movement or music or nature. Or I'm doing things that are soul sapping: work that does not bring me joy, or I've let my life and space get cluttered with junk.
Sort of like what happened this week. Finally had time to sit and play some music and pray, but before then it was about wanting to drop kick the computer at work into the bay while it was tied to all of the people who were being especially irritating.
Thank God for music and prayer, and the end of the workweek.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Preaching or writing about the body
I have been thinking about the body, how to write and talk about the body. Particularly approaching Good Friday, particularly thinking about the Incarnate One, being able to capture and evoke the sensations of the body seems important.
Woke up this morning, early, my back sore and tight. I'm attributing it to hunching in from the cold and too much computer time. My right foot also suffers with plantar fasciitis, where tendons are very tight after a night in the same position, so getting out of bed is a slow, deliberate process. My initial descent of the stairs to the kitchen can mean really holding onto the rail, because I don't really trust things to flex and bend the way they ought to. Yet, going down the stairs is exactly the stretching motion required to loosen it up, so that once I'm downstairs usually my foot is okay. Am going to think more about how to describe those sensations and try to write them down (again?).
In Imagining A Sermon, Thomas Troeger captures such a picture of Joseph's exhaustion: "Joseph sits a few feet to the side. A walking stick props up his right knee, which props up his right forearm which props up his drooping head. If a wind blows through the stable and topples him over, he will go on sleeping in the same posture on his side." (p. 62).
Here's a body vignette from my week:
The young person picks her way slowly up the hill, bowed under the weight on her back. She is still a girl, perhaps not yet a woman, her loose clothes giving no clear sign of breasts, as she is bent by her pack. She concentrates on where she puts her feet, carefully stepping around the slick places, and clambering over the rough spots on the path. Still she is alert to her surroundings, stepping aside as others push by, and looking up to see if her ride is waiting. She is bent by the weight of a backpack filled with textbooks and homework, a child of privilege, wearing fashionable glasses, with a gleam of orthodontic retainer when she gets closer and smiles.
Yet looking at her bent back as she climbs the icy sidewalk up the steep hill, I think that this is how a peasant girl would look carrying a load of wood or shopping up the hill from the village. Perhaps that would have been what she would have been doing if I had not traveled to China twelve years ago. Even in her bent posture there is suppleness in her movements, the possibility of springing back, of jumping from a snow pile, that would not be evident in an older woman similarly bent with osteoporosis.
As she jumps, her long hair lifts and falls in the breeze, a long, shiny, rich dark brown swirl. Perhaps it is how Mary, who was just slightly older, looked as she walked on the road to Elizabeth's house carrying her belongings for a stay with her cousin in the middle of her shame, confusion and wonder, bent slightly with the weight of more than just belongings, intent, yet alert, open to possibility, moving on to new things.
Still in the young woman, bent, it is possible to imagine the bending that might come with other burdens, with age, with sorrow—but that is yet another story.
Woke up this morning, early, my back sore and tight. I'm attributing it to hunching in from the cold and too much computer time. My right foot also suffers with plantar fasciitis, where tendons are very tight after a night in the same position, so getting out of bed is a slow, deliberate process. My initial descent of the stairs to the kitchen can mean really holding onto the rail, because I don't really trust things to flex and bend the way they ought to. Yet, going down the stairs is exactly the stretching motion required to loosen it up, so that once I'm downstairs usually my foot is okay. Am going to think more about how to describe those sensations and try to write them down (again?).
In Imagining A Sermon, Thomas Troeger captures such a picture of Joseph's exhaustion: "Joseph sits a few feet to the side. A walking stick props up his right knee, which props up his right forearm which props up his drooping head. If a wind blows through the stable and topples him over, he will go on sleeping in the same posture on his side." (p. 62).
Here's a body vignette from my week:
The young person picks her way slowly up the hill, bowed under the weight on her back. She is still a girl, perhaps not yet a woman, her loose clothes giving no clear sign of breasts, as she is bent by her pack. She concentrates on where she puts her feet, carefully stepping around the slick places, and clambering over the rough spots on the path. Still she is alert to her surroundings, stepping aside as others push by, and looking up to see if her ride is waiting. She is bent by the weight of a backpack filled with textbooks and homework, a child of privilege, wearing fashionable glasses, with a gleam of orthodontic retainer when she gets closer and smiles.
Yet looking at her bent back as she climbs the icy sidewalk up the steep hill, I think that this is how a peasant girl would look carrying a load of wood or shopping up the hill from the village. Perhaps that would have been what she would have been doing if I had not traveled to China twelve years ago. Even in her bent posture there is suppleness in her movements, the possibility of springing back, of jumping from a snow pile, that would not be evident in an older woman similarly bent with osteoporosis.
As she jumps, her long hair lifts and falls in the breeze, a long, shiny, rich dark brown swirl. Perhaps it is how Mary, who was just slightly older, looked as she walked on the road to Elizabeth's house carrying her belongings for a stay with her cousin in the middle of her shame, confusion and wonder, bent slightly with the weight of more than just belongings, intent, yet alert, open to possibility, moving on to new things.
Still in the young woman, bent, it is possible to imagine the bending that might come with other burdens, with age, with sorrow—but that is yet another story.
Friday, December 9, 2005
Women waiting, women singing
Advent 2005
I read a wonderful piece by Henri Nouwen in my Advent readings (November 28 in Watch for the Light by Orbis Press) about the spiritual practice of waiting. This is a time of year when we have to wait, by intention during the Advent season if we pay attention, or by default as we wait in line or on snowy roads. Often at this time of year our waiting is grumpy and passive: "I had to wait for hours!" Spiritual practice waiting is waiting with a sense of promise; spiritual practice waiting is not passive or hopeless, but active. "The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun." (p. 31) From the familiar Christmas story, Nouwen mentions Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary as ones who typify this spiritual practice. Keep the faith as you have to wait for things, or ponder these things in your hearts, the seed that has been planted.
At this or any time of year there is not a restorative spiritual practice that includes a shopping frenzy, or rude drivers, or bad weather, but there are compensatory spiritual practices: smiling at harried store clerks and thanking them, for example, or deciding to spend ten minutes as a gift to ten people and waving the people who are waiting at intersections into the flow of traffic. And remember it's a practice to do this, not perfection.
Friday I took a mental wellness day--excellent timing as we got an amazing thundersnow and that meant I wasn't driving in that, but safely at home. I did a little deconstructive writing about Hell--but I won't go into more of that. School work continues to be engaging.
I did go out to the Mount Holyoke Christmas Vespers concert in Boston--taking public transportation because I hadn't shoveled out completely. As I walked by, I reminded someone who was shoveling and bemoaning that he didn't get his run in today that shoveling snow is really one of the best exercises to burn calories. Good to remember as I face another hour of it this morning.
The Vespers concert was wonderful. Cathy Melhorn, who was my advisor in college, is retiring, so this was her last Christmas Vespers concert. Despite the snow, the church was full of an audience there to honor her and enjoy the music. There was a solid five minutes of applause at the end of the concert--great concert. I also saw a number of friends from college whom I hadn't seen in several years who had come in from upstate New York and Vermont and Chicago. That's one of the gifts of holiday events--the people you might see there. It was good to catch up, even briefly.
I was reminded that the processional, the second antiphon for Christmas Hodie Christus natus est which is used before the Magnificat, was one of those pieces of music that was absolutely formational in both my musical and spiritual life. At this Vespers it's done by candlelight, and last night the movement of the sound of young women's voices as they were walking by was a flashback. The flashback though, was not just thirty years to when I did this, but back a thousand years or more. As they walked, singing, carrying single candles into a darkened stone vaulted church, bringing in the light, the music echoes in time--it's not just resonant in space. I actually referred to this chant in a paper last month as part of the link that music is in my pastoral or operative theology. Today Christ is born; my soul magnifies the Lord. Perhaps it is not a surprise that it echoes still. Mary's song, from the first chapter of Luke is one of the most powerful of Biblical prayers, echoing as it does Hannah's song before the birth of her son, Samuel (I Samuel 2: 1-10--can you tell that I'm taking Hebrew Bible classes this semester?). Women's voices bringing light and hope into the dark world: "God makes poor and makes rich; God brings low and also exalts. God raises up the poor from the dust; God lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor." "God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. … God has filled the hungry with good things and the rich God has sent empty away."
One of the contemporary pieces tonight by Libby Larsen used this poem text by Catherine de Vinck which captured that idea:
The Womanly Song of God (2003)
I am the woman dancing the world
alive:
Birds on my wrists
sun-feathers in my hair
I leap through hoops of atoms:
under my steps
plants burst into bloom
birches tremble in silver.
Can you not see the roundness of me:
curves of the earth
Maternal arms of the sea
I am the birthing woman
kneeling by the river
Heaving, pushing forth a sacred body
Round, round the wind
spinning itself wild
Drawing great circles of music
across the sky.
Round the gourd full of seeds
round the moon in its ripeness
Round the door through which I come
stooping into your house.
I am the God of a thousand names:
why cannot one of them be
Woman singing?
I give thanks to and for those people in my life like Cathy Melhorn, and other fine teachers and musicians, who help me and others create life, and soul, and joy, and insight from little black dots on paper: both words and music. May song bless each of our hearts in this season.
Peace, hope, joy, love, and faith: our prayers for this time of waiting,
Nancy
I read a wonderful piece by Henri Nouwen in my Advent readings (November 28 in Watch for the Light by Orbis Press) about the spiritual practice of waiting. This is a time of year when we have to wait, by intention during the Advent season if we pay attention, or by default as we wait in line or on snowy roads. Often at this time of year our waiting is grumpy and passive: "I had to wait for hours!" Spiritual practice waiting is waiting with a sense of promise; spiritual practice waiting is not passive or hopeless, but active. "The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun." (p. 31) From the familiar Christmas story, Nouwen mentions Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary as ones who typify this spiritual practice. Keep the faith as you have to wait for things, or ponder these things in your hearts, the seed that has been planted.
At this or any time of year there is not a restorative spiritual practice that includes a shopping frenzy, or rude drivers, or bad weather, but there are compensatory spiritual practices: smiling at harried store clerks and thanking them, for example, or deciding to spend ten minutes as a gift to ten people and waving the people who are waiting at intersections into the flow of traffic. And remember it's a practice to do this, not perfection.
Friday I took a mental wellness day--excellent timing as we got an amazing thundersnow and that meant I wasn't driving in that, but safely at home. I did a little deconstructive writing about Hell--but I won't go into more of that. School work continues to be engaging.
I did go out to the Mount Holyoke Christmas Vespers concert in Boston--taking public transportation because I hadn't shoveled out completely. As I walked by, I reminded someone who was shoveling and bemoaning that he didn't get his run in today that shoveling snow is really one of the best exercises to burn calories. Good to remember as I face another hour of it this morning.
The Vespers concert was wonderful. Cathy Melhorn, who was my advisor in college, is retiring, so this was her last Christmas Vespers concert. Despite the snow, the church was full of an audience there to honor her and enjoy the music. There was a solid five minutes of applause at the end of the concert--great concert. I also saw a number of friends from college whom I hadn't seen in several years who had come in from upstate New York and Vermont and Chicago. That's one of the gifts of holiday events--the people you might see there. It was good to catch up, even briefly.
I was reminded that the processional, the second antiphon for Christmas Hodie Christus natus est which is used before the Magnificat, was one of those pieces of music that was absolutely formational in both my musical and spiritual life. At this Vespers it's done by candlelight, and last night the movement of the sound of young women's voices as they were walking by was a flashback. The flashback though, was not just thirty years to when I did this, but back a thousand years or more. As they walked, singing, carrying single candles into a darkened stone vaulted church, bringing in the light, the music echoes in time--it's not just resonant in space. I actually referred to this chant in a paper last month as part of the link that music is in my pastoral or operative theology. Today Christ is born; my soul magnifies the Lord. Perhaps it is not a surprise that it echoes still. Mary's song, from the first chapter of Luke is one of the most powerful of Biblical prayers, echoing as it does Hannah's song before the birth of her son, Samuel (I Samuel 2: 1-10--can you tell that I'm taking Hebrew Bible classes this semester?). Women's voices bringing light and hope into the dark world: "God makes poor and makes rich; God brings low and also exalts. God raises up the poor from the dust; God lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor." "God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. … God has filled the hungry with good things and the rich God has sent empty away."
One of the contemporary pieces tonight by Libby Larsen used this poem text by Catherine de Vinck which captured that idea:
The Womanly Song of God (2003)
I am the woman dancing the world
alive:
Birds on my wrists
sun-feathers in my hair
I leap through hoops of atoms:
under my steps
plants burst into bloom
birches tremble in silver.
Can you not see the roundness of me:
curves of the earth
Maternal arms of the sea
I am the birthing woman
kneeling by the river
Heaving, pushing forth a sacred body
Round, round the wind
spinning itself wild
Drawing great circles of music
across the sky.
Round the gourd full of seeds
round the moon in its ripeness
Round the door through which I come
stooping into your house.
I am the God of a thousand names:
why cannot one of them be
Woman singing?
I give thanks to and for those people in my life like Cathy Melhorn, and other fine teachers and musicians, who help me and others create life, and soul, and joy, and insight from little black dots on paper: both words and music. May song bless each of our hearts in this season.
Peace, hope, joy, love, and faith: our prayers for this time of waiting,
Nancy
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Margin
It's not unusual that a CFO (that's my day job) would think about margin. In financial terms that's the difference between income and expenses, often referred to when it comes to thinking about the unexpected--state budget cuts, staff turnover, increased fuel costs, for example. Margin is essentially the buffer.
This week in conversation with colleagues and friends though, I've become aware of a different kind of margin. "[Margin] is the space that once existed between our load and our limits. Margin is the space between vitality and exhaustion. It is our breathing room, our reserves, our leeway. It is the opposite of overload...." ~Richard Swenson, quoted in Kirk Jones--Rest in the Storm
What struck me this week is a narrowing margin in people I'm seeing (and being). "How are you?" I ask. "Tired," is most often the reply, although "frazzled" also has gotten votes. As we approach the harvest season, the change of seasons, the holiday seasons, the winter, it feels like our collective personal reserves are low. For some, margin has disappeared. Overload is happening. We've reached our limits. Once again I think that our recognition of people on the margin, and life on the margin, mirrors and contributes to the sapping of our own energy. It's just harder. If nothing else we have compassion fatigue because it's hard to look at people devastated by hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or wars, and know what to do. It was people with no margin who didn't get out of New Orleans, or who are now stranded without resources. It is people with no margin who are still in the rubble in Pakistan. And now what do we/can we do ... what happens next?
As often happens, a piece of music presented itself and captures the essence of the busy-ness that often leads to this lack of margin for me. "The Windmills of Your Mind" (from the 1968 version of the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Michel Legrand) is a very insistent piece. (Find the music if you can--it's almost all eighth notes and no rests, and if you can't find the music, read these lyrics aloud.)
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon, like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, like the circles that you find in The Windmills of Your Mind! Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head, why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said? Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand, is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song, half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong? When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware that the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair! Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, as the images unwind, like the circles that you find in The Windmills of Your Mind!
In Rest in the Storm, Kirk Jones invites us to challenge two delusions that leave us without margin, and to confront our denial in another area that blocks us.
The first delusion is our own indispensability. The world won't get along without us, so we can't stop and rest and replenish our reserves. Hm ... is this speaking to anyone I know? (Maybe I know her well.)
The second delusion is our invincibility--really, we do have limitless reserves of compassion and energy. (I hope I am over this one, trust me, the creaks in the joints are making me pay attention.)
But the biggest block that depletes our margin, and I think that also puts people on the margin, is what Kirk Jones calls "subjugating" personhood. I deplete my own margin when I get so caught up in being CFO, parent, minister in training, caregiver, listener, friend, etc., and forget that first and foremost, I am a person. That 'who I am,' just me, is what is important, not what I can do. "Before you are a minister, teacher, ..., and even before you are a parent, spouse, or friend, you are a child of God, a person whom God loves unconditionally." ~Kirk Jones.
It's a person that goes for a walk and scuffles in leaves; it's a person that takes time to listen to music; it's a person who sits and enjoys a cup of tea; it's the person who takes time to notice and share that the wrinkles in her own hands remind her of her mother's hands.
In the same way, too, we put others on the margin, by labeling them and not recognizing the person that is there: it's the welfare mom; it's the nursing home resident; it's the poor Pakistani peasant; it's the jerk who cut you off at the light. Where is the person? Who is the person? Paying attention to the person moves the person out of the margin, off the margin, makes the person central again, if only for a time. But that time of centrality is essential. Running out of margin, as we have witnessed, is really dangerous.
So, how do we restore margin?
Margin on a page of course gives us space, clear space, all around us. So restoring margin requires making space for clarity, for remembering what is central to us. Kirk Jones reminds that Jesus went to the back of the boat to sleep, before being awakened to calm the storm. So, find the back of the boat ... give up the delusions of being indispensable and invincible ... remember who you are.
Perhaps this song (also by Michel Legrand with Hal David) puts it in a way we can hear:
The first time I heard a bluebird,
I stopped and listened and it was beautiful, beautiful.
The next time I heard a bluebird,
I kept on walking.
Still, I remembered that it was beautiful, o beautiful.
Day by day the way I once felt grew harder to recall,
till one time a bluebird sang
and I didn't hear it at all.
You've got to learn to hear again ev'ry single day.
You've got to learn to make yourself feel the way you did
the day you first heard a bluebird, a bluebird.
I first heard a bluebird when I was playing in my garden,
looking at my father smiling at me.
Now ev'ry time I hear a bluebird
I still can see my father smiling at me.
The first time I heard a bluebird,
I stopped and listened and it was beautiful,
and it was beautiful.
I invite you to stop to find
something beautiful to hear or see: a bird, a leaf, a smile;
to stop and rest
and remember that you are a person.
Step away from the windmill of your mind.
Find clear space or clear a space.
If you can't do this by yourself, ask for encouragement or help.
And/or when you stop and think or want to do something about the person on the margin, who is not the label, think of her or him first as a person, yes, who may need clothes, shelter, heat, food, or comfort, but, as much, needs a smile and something of beauty, just like you do.
As for me, I found some time after an exam to come home and sit, read a nonassigned book (recommended: Rest in the Storm or Addicted to Hurry, both by Kirk Jones), play some music (Michel Legrand--can you guess), and write a bit. It was a nice bit of margin making.
"Peace, be still!"
In prayers for grace, clear space and peace,
and heading toward the back of the boat,
Nancy
This week in conversation with colleagues and friends though, I've become aware of a different kind of margin. "[Margin] is the space that once existed between our load and our limits. Margin is the space between vitality and exhaustion. It is our breathing room, our reserves, our leeway. It is the opposite of overload...." ~Richard Swenson, quoted in Kirk Jones--Rest in the Storm
What struck me this week is a narrowing margin in people I'm seeing (and being). "How are you?" I ask. "Tired," is most often the reply, although "frazzled" also has gotten votes. As we approach the harvest season, the change of seasons, the holiday seasons, the winter, it feels like our collective personal reserves are low. For some, margin has disappeared. Overload is happening. We've reached our limits. Once again I think that our recognition of people on the margin, and life on the margin, mirrors and contributes to the sapping of our own energy. It's just harder. If nothing else we have compassion fatigue because it's hard to look at people devastated by hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, or wars, and know what to do. It was people with no margin who didn't get out of New Orleans, or who are now stranded without resources. It is people with no margin who are still in the rubble in Pakistan. And now what do we/can we do ... what happens next?
As often happens, a piece of music presented itself and captures the essence of the busy-ness that often leads to this lack of margin for me. "The Windmills of Your Mind" (from the 1968 version of the movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Michel Legrand) is a very insistent piece. (Find the music if you can--it's almost all eighth notes and no rests, and if you can't find the music, read these lyrics aloud.)
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon, like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, like the circles that you find in The Windmills of Your Mind! Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head, why did summer go so quickly? Was it something that you said? Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand, is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand? Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song, half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong? When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware that the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair! Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel, as the images unwind, like the circles that you find in The Windmills of Your Mind!
In Rest in the Storm, Kirk Jones invites us to challenge two delusions that leave us without margin, and to confront our denial in another area that blocks us.
The first delusion is our own indispensability. The world won't get along without us, so we can't stop and rest and replenish our reserves. Hm ... is this speaking to anyone I know? (Maybe I know her well.)
The second delusion is our invincibility--really, we do have limitless reserves of compassion and energy. (I hope I am over this one, trust me, the creaks in the joints are making me pay attention.)
But the biggest block that depletes our margin, and I think that also puts people on the margin, is what Kirk Jones calls "subjugating" personhood. I deplete my own margin when I get so caught up in being CFO, parent, minister in training, caregiver, listener, friend, etc., and forget that first and foremost, I am a person. That 'who I am,' just me, is what is important, not what I can do. "Before you are a minister, teacher, ..., and even before you are a parent, spouse, or friend, you are a child of God, a person whom God loves unconditionally." ~Kirk Jones.
It's a person that goes for a walk and scuffles in leaves; it's a person that takes time to listen to music; it's a person who sits and enjoys a cup of tea; it's the person who takes time to notice and share that the wrinkles in her own hands remind her of her mother's hands.
In the same way, too, we put others on the margin, by labeling them and not recognizing the person that is there: it's the welfare mom; it's the nursing home resident; it's the poor Pakistani peasant; it's the jerk who cut you off at the light. Where is the person? Who is the person? Paying attention to the person moves the person out of the margin, off the margin, makes the person central again, if only for a time. But that time of centrality is essential. Running out of margin, as we have witnessed, is really dangerous.
So, how do we restore margin?
Margin on a page of course gives us space, clear space, all around us. So restoring margin requires making space for clarity, for remembering what is central to us. Kirk Jones reminds that Jesus went to the back of the boat to sleep, before being awakened to calm the storm. So, find the back of the boat ... give up the delusions of being indispensable and invincible ... remember who you are.
Perhaps this song (also by Michel Legrand with Hal David) puts it in a way we can hear:
The first time I heard a bluebird,
I stopped and listened and it was beautiful, beautiful.
The next time I heard a bluebird,
I kept on walking.
Still, I remembered that it was beautiful, o beautiful.
Day by day the way I once felt grew harder to recall,
till one time a bluebird sang
and I didn't hear it at all.
You've got to learn to hear again ev'ry single day.
You've got to learn to make yourself feel the way you did
the day you first heard a bluebird, a bluebird.
I first heard a bluebird when I was playing in my garden,
looking at my father smiling at me.
Now ev'ry time I hear a bluebird
I still can see my father smiling at me.
The first time I heard a bluebird,
I stopped and listened and it was beautiful,
and it was beautiful.
I invite you to stop to find
something beautiful to hear or see: a bird, a leaf, a smile;
to stop and rest
and remember that you are a person.
Step away from the windmill of your mind.
Find clear space or clear a space.
If you can't do this by yourself, ask for encouragement or help.
And/or when you stop and think or want to do something about the person on the margin, who is not the label, think of her or him first as a person, yes, who may need clothes, shelter, heat, food, or comfort, but, as much, needs a smile and something of beauty, just like you do.
As for me, I found some time after an exam to come home and sit, read a nonassigned book (recommended: Rest in the Storm or Addicted to Hurry, both by Kirk Jones), play some music (Michel Legrand--can you guess), and write a bit. It was a nice bit of margin making.
"Peace, be still!"
In prayers for grace, clear space and peace,
and heading toward the back of the boat,
Nancy
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Why aren't you…
"Why aren't you dancing with joy at this very moment? is the only relevant spiritual question." Sufi seer Pir Vilayet Inayet Khan tells us.
Israeli theologian Martin Buber also opens our eyes to this truth: "The beating heart of the universe is holy joy."
When he is about to leave his disciples, Jesus tells them, "These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." What a beautiful legacy--passing on abundant joy.
"Always remember," Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the Hasidic teacher says, "Joy is not incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital." So cultivate it.
Why is it so hard for us to be joyful? Is it the pressures of life which give us no relief, or the suffering of the innocents, or the rampant injustice in the world? Is it perhaps the fact that we don't like ourselves very much and always feel guilty? Or is it the fear that seizes us when we think of tomorrow?
Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English mystic speaks across the ages, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything." That is the secret in a nutshell. Behold the Divine Joy in the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, the past and the future, the magnificent moment and the tawdry one.
Frederick Buechner, a contemporary Protestant writer says: "The world is full of suffering indeed, and to turn our backs on it is to work a terrible unkindness maybe almost more on ourselves than on the world. But life indeed is also to be enjoyed. I suggest that may even be the whole point of it. I more than suspect that is why all the sons of God (and daughters) shouted for joy when God first brought it into being."
Give yourself permission to be dizzy with joy and thankful for all the blessings which abound in your day.
Give yourself permission to rejoice with others. French novelist George Bernanos writes, "To find joy in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness."
Give yourself permission to feel good about helping others. Mother Teresa of Calcutta knows, "She gives most who gives with joy."
from Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, p. 244-5.
Perhaps it was this reminder that I needed today that made me open this book to this reading. And perhaps it is a reminder for each of you. Usually if someone asks Why aren't you ... you are in trouble. Today I invite you to find something joyful and share it. It can be the sunrise, the burst of purple morning glories, the squirrel turning flips on the fence, another story of human compassion from disaster relief...
Share joy. Rejoice, again I say to you, Rejoice.
In joy,
Nancy
Israeli theologian Martin Buber also opens our eyes to this truth: "The beating heart of the universe is holy joy."
When he is about to leave his disciples, Jesus tells them, "These things have I spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." What a beautiful legacy--passing on abundant joy.
"Always remember," Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the Hasidic teacher says, "Joy is not incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital." So cultivate it.
Why is it so hard for us to be joyful? Is it the pressures of life which give us no relief, or the suffering of the innocents, or the rampant injustice in the world? Is it perhaps the fact that we don't like ourselves very much and always feel guilty? Or is it the fear that seizes us when we think of tomorrow?
Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English mystic speaks across the ages, "The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything." That is the secret in a nutshell. Behold the Divine Joy in the good and the bad, the just and the unjust, the past and the future, the magnificent moment and the tawdry one.
Frederick Buechner, a contemporary Protestant writer says: "The world is full of suffering indeed, and to turn our backs on it is to work a terrible unkindness maybe almost more on ourselves than on the world. But life indeed is also to be enjoyed. I suggest that may even be the whole point of it. I more than suspect that is why all the sons of God (and daughters) shouted for joy when God first brought it into being."
Give yourself permission to be dizzy with joy and thankful for all the blessings which abound in your day.
Give yourself permission to rejoice with others. French novelist George Bernanos writes, "To find joy in another's joy, that is the secret of happiness."
Give yourself permission to feel good about helping others. Mother Teresa of Calcutta knows, "She gives most who gives with joy."
from Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, p. 244-5.
Perhaps it was this reminder that I needed today that made me open this book to this reading. And perhaps it is a reminder for each of you. Usually if someone asks Why aren't you ... you are in trouble. Today I invite you to find something joyful and share it. It can be the sunrise, the burst of purple morning glories, the squirrel turning flips on the fence, another story of human compassion from disaster relief...
Share joy. Rejoice, again I say to you, Rejoice.
In joy,
Nancy
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