We have entered the time of year when I want to listen to Christmas music 24/7. I love the classics – give me a Deck the Halls or Joy to the World any time. I particularly love early music in all forms, but the medieval Christmas classics are favorites. I love a good Personet Hodie or Boar’s Head Carol. In fact, I once went and looked through all the albums with a Boar’s Head Carol in it to try and find some new music. I love Vince Guaraldi doing Charlie Brown’s Christmas Carol. But my favorite albums are the indie, fully original ones.
You know the genre. The one hit wonders. The guy who used to be big 50 years ago but only his Christmas albums is still listened to. The artist who never made it big but has the cult following – including me. My favorite Christmas album is the Roger Whittaker Christmas Album with the fake snow on his beard. I have deep and meaningful thoughts about “Darcy the Dragon”. My husband’s is the Kingston Trio’s “Last Month of the Year”. Neither of these are just covers of the same 50 songs – they include some historic ones but also some really deep discoveries and some new songs. In recent years I’ve added to this pantheon Sting’s “If on a Christmas Night” and Maddy Prior’s “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh“. Sting’s hearkens back to the middle ages. Maddy’s is all original.
But I want more.
I don’t have enough Christmas music to listen to it 24/7 for a month without getting bored. And I don’t want just another cover of Santa Baby or I’ll Be Home for Christmas. I’ve been harassing Bombadil (very politely!) begging them for a Christmas album. I really want one of theirs. But I also want one by Brandy Clark, and the Mountain Goats, and Belle and Sebastian. How has Taylor Swift not taken a crack at this? When Kendrick Lamar drops a mid November album, I want at least one song on there talking about Christmas Eve. I want Shaboozey to overtake his own #1 spot with the banger of the summer by making a banger of the winter we can pull out every year for the next 50, getting all nostalgic about those 2020s and what a time that was. I want some songs that talk about the now – the ever expanding Black Friday, the traffic on the way to the holiday, the wishlists that tell you exactly what to buy, the difficult conversations with family members you only see twice a year. I know it all seems prosaic and boring now, but so were the songs that now seem quaint and atmospheric. I want today’s artists to be poets of our era and pass along the flavor of it to our future selves and our children and the grandchildren who will ask us, confused, what Cyber Monday really was. Or to expand our holiday music – add in the Diwali can’t-stop-singing, the atheists song, the Kwanzaa carol. Bring in the Australian tunes (I do love “Six White Boomers” and “The Longest Day“) talking about the Christmas heat.
Of the twelve months of the year, only one of them does not throw away what is old but pulls out the ancient and brushes it off year after year. I think that to truly pursue artistic immortality, to speak further than the hour, the artists should turn their eyes to the holidays and give us a full month’s worth of music worth listening to.
If I’m missing a great album that understands the assignment, drop it in the comments for me!
Two towns there were, that with one sea were wall’d.
Built near, and opposite; this Sestus call’d,
Abydus that ; the Love his bow bent high,
And at both Cities let one arrow fly,
That two (a Virgin and a Youth) inflam’d:
The youth was sweetly-grac’d Leander nam’d,
The virgin Hero ; Sestus she renowns,
Abydus he, in birth; of both which towns
Both were the beauty-circled stars ; and both
Grac’d with like looks, as with one love and troth.
– Musaeus Grammaticus
First meeting
The last twelve months has seen us bid farewell to our feline companions of the last decade, renowned Tiberius of doughty strength, ineffable charm and unquenchable mischief and lovely Data, the sweetest cat ever to be worn as a scarf. Thus ended our second generation of cats – the first being Justice and Magic. But for us, a house without cats is only a house. It is the tread of paws which transforms it into a home. We gave Data a due period of mourning. We completed our adventures and camping – brainstorming cat names as we drove the sylvan road from Frankfurt to Strasbourg.
We had many pairs of names for boys: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Two girls were much harder, perhaps Tigris and Euphrates? Boy/girl we were spoiled for options: Tristan and Isolde? Abelard and Heloise?
Driving back from camping for Labor Day, Adam spent the entire trip filling out online profiles for adopting cats. When we adopted Data and Tiberius, there were probably 40+ adoptable cats in the shelter. But we were finding that there was no “stock” of cats, and they were getting adopted wildly quickly. We got a call on a way to the adoption appointment on Sunday night not to bother – there were no adoptable animals. But there were, she gave us insight, a bunch of them going through the process of being checked, neutered, etc. And we should watch the listings. On Monday late night, 10 adoptable cats were added. I fretted – Tuesday we had soccer and bass lessons and I didn’t know how we could go. But then the rains came and the field was flooded and the bass instructor got food poisoning and all of a sudden signs pointed to cat. By the time we got to the shelter at 6:15, there were only five of those ten cats remaining, and only three within the criteria we were looking for. Sterling, now known as Leander
The first cat we met was a handsome long-haired tuxedo called Sterling. He fearlessly permitted himself to be picked up and handled, and purred under adoring fingers giving him pets and scritches. He was five months old, and just a wee little kitten. Data was a tiny light cat at the end, and this little critter was half his weight. Sterling had extremely long and dramatic whiskers, ridiculously hirsute (or firsute?) and hairy ears and the most adorable socks – the ones on his back legs being extremely decorative. We learned that he was out of Virginia – and just a baby with no history. We pretended not to have decided that we were adopting him when we put him back, but it was all pretense.
Violet, aka Hero
The second cat was a tortie – mostly black with orange highlights except for the very tip of her five-month-old tail which is vibrant orange. Violet, as she was called, was lithe and powerful like a tigress, and ardent in her affections to the hands which stroked chin and shoulders. She’d been returned along with another cat after a week, with no reason given, so we don’t even know where she hailed from. She is DEFINITELY trouble, but that is the nature of a cat. She’s also sweet and affectionate and snuggly and has cat ADHD (in my very professional diagnosis).
Feline mischief, right here
They were not bonded, nor did they come from the same place. (Massachusetts usually imports stray animals from parts of the country with lower spay/neuter rates.) But they were both charming, friendly, affectionate and definitely coming home with us.
Very Dignified Cat
We’ve had them for a few days (each in a different attic room, slowly getting used to each other and each other’s smells). And so far they are very much kittens with so much kitten energy. They’re affectionate and funny and noisy and all over the place. They do have some epic zoomies. We’re totally in love, and can’t wait until we can unleash them on the house, and looking forward to many fine years of their soft and silly company.
Nine years ago, we brought home a pair of 8 year old cats from a shelter. Older cats are hard to adopt, but this particular pair was the most engaging, sweetest and most fun set of cats we’d ever met. I thought at the time that we would have them for a shorter period than if we got young cats. I remember thinking that they’d be coming to the end of their predicted life spans when my eldest son was in high school. This is unimaginable when you have a little kid – an impossibly distant future. But…. Grey is a rising junior. Here we are.
Data actually liked to be worn like a scarf. He’d jump on your shoulder.
Tiberius left us in October of last year. We learned, in that moment, just who was responsible for 99.9% of all the cat related hijinks in the house. We THOUGHT with two cats we probably had two culprits, but noooo. It was entirely Tiberius. With only Data, butter could be safely left on the counter, we never were startled by a cat leaping out of an unsecured trash can, and you could plate dinner without leaving an armed guard or two and still find it on your plate.
Kitty snuggle piles
But Data, like Tiberius, was approaching 17 – quite an advanced age for a cat. Despite being teeny to start with, he was losing weight every vet visit. His kidney numbers weren’t great. He had to have a thyroid cream put on his ear. But for the last year, no lap went unclaimed. I started calling him “Fur and purr” – so insubstantial but omnipresent and loving.
This last week, though, he started refusing food. Including tuna. I may not be a vet, but I know that a cat who will not eat tuna is a cat who is done living. I took Data in to the vet who said that he basically had no more kidneys whatsoever, and that his numbers were literally higher than the test could measure. He also looked very uncomfortable – hunched up. He started hiding, and could only endure about 10 minutes of lap-petting before he went back into a hidey hole. He was telling us in clear terms that it was time. I asked the vet to take some palliative measures (rehydration, anti-nausea meds) and called Lap of Love to see when they could come. Data purred past his last breath.
Watch cat
His parting was easy and painless, if not quite as funny as Tiberius’ (who literally died with a Dorito in his mouth). Unfortunately, both boys were away, so it was just Adam and I saying goodbye. Data was the sweetest, snuggliest, softest cat it has ever been my privilege to live with. He had a kind heart, and was very simple: he just wanted to love and be loved.
Take us with you!
With no children and no cats, the house is very quiet. I find for myself, cats are what transforms a house into a home. My nest is not yet empty, but my children are fledglings. We are unanimous on one thing: we definitely want more cats. I’m not really even sure how long we’ll hold out before we welcome new furry friends into our house. I can only hope and wish that we may again experience the joy and pleasure like Data and Tiberius brought to us.
Farewell, Fur and Purr. You are already deeply missed.
On this Small Business Saturday, if you find yourself struggling for a gift for that new married couple, matriarch/patriarch or person who has zero storage space, consider a generational gift like a family crest (which also gives you personalized gift ideas from local artisans for years to come!).
We have now arrived at one of my favorite times of year: Christmas card time! I love every part of it (except the bit where I send about 150 of them): finding the perfect picture, picking the ink for the envelopes, spending a few moments thinking of the friends I love as I address their cards and write them a note with my thoughts and wishes for them. But my very favorite moment is the sealing of the card, when I take my family crest embossed on a gold notary seal and put a benediction on my prayer to and for them.
The cards haven’t been sent yet, so I can’t spoil the surprise!
The seal is one of the three places on my Christmas cards that my family crest appears this year, and it’s similarly salted through my house. The crest was designed by Fealty Design – the brainchild of my creative friend Julie. (Actually, so were the Christmas Cards and Mocksgiving Cards, but that’s a secret between you and me, right?) She’s a creative director and brand designer, and her favorite part of the design process is taking the time to understand what’s important, and show that in a design. She founded Fealty Design as a way to do more of that creation process she delights in!
I’ve had my crest for about three years, and taken particular delight in finding new ways to use it, especially ones that make opportunities to work with small artisans and artists. One of favorites in that regard is the stained glass window we had custom made to fit our picture window by Barbara Conners. She executed Fealty’s design superbly – and came to our house to fit it in the window. (Unfortunately, the window is now a new size, but that’s a problem for another day.) This window would have originally had stained glass, but it burned in 1947. Putting this window back to the way it should be – only for us – was a deeply satisfying result. And it wouldn’t have been possible or as meaningful without our family design!
Glorious day and night
My other favorite craftsman job is this Camping Sign. These kinds of family markers are common among the family campgrounds in the White Mountains. They include cast iron pans with paint, gifts from grandkids made in shop, or the work of master craftsman now retired. I have wanted a camping sign for some time, and Adam came through with a version done in our crest. To our surprise and delight, the best qualified craftsman for this custom project was just down the street: SignMeUpCustomSigns.com He actually dropped the sign off in person, and showed off the marine grade lacquer and craftsmanship. He said his homemade CNC machine is big enough to do a standard sized door.
So I took it out to do a photo shoot….
In the lowest budget version of this, it turns out the vinyl stickers are amazing for … everything. Every thermos and water bottle in our house is marked with a shockingly dishwasher safe sticker, ensuring that anyone who finds the lost objects enjoys their lovely decor and personalization. (OK, and there’s a very outside chance we get it back.) My kids often ask for a Flynn sticker for a device, book or thing they don’t want to share. It feels surprisingly spiffy to have your own stickers!
From back when we used to send kids into school….
Tell me – what gifts have you gotten that still bring you joy years later? Which ones lead themselves to ongoing themes and years of additional simplified and meaningful gifts? What especially marks you and your family?
In 2012, back when I was young and the world was a different place, I planted a plum tree in my back yard. I had a dream – a vision – of finally making damson plum jam. This after years of scouring farmer’s markets and orchards for the rare English plum. It was audacious, to decide to commit to a mini-orchard in my plucky and not super bright tenth of an acre of land, but I try not to be limited by common sense too often. The story of my plum tree is familiar to many of you, since it might be just about the most written about topic in my desultory blog. There was one memorable year when the lectionary had the story of Jesus and the fig tree and no fewer than three pastors of my acquaintance asked my permission to use my bitter, hopeless plum journey as a sermon inspiration. Oh pastors, consider this permission to use anything I put on my blog in your sermons.
Wee small tree
And then I waited, while the tree grew. I discovered a saying “You plant a plum tree for your children, but a damson tree for your grandchildren.”* For years it flowered abundantly and never fruited once. It was lovely, but so far barren. I upped my game, my fertilizer use, and on one memorable night even rigged up a space heater as a suburban smudge pot to prevent a die-off when winter had one last late fusillade for us.
Yankee ingenuity – or possibly insanityHope in plum form
In 2018, I got really excited. There were all these little plumlets! Thousands! Tens of thousands! Even a 5 or 10% survival rate, and I’d be swimming in plums. I began looking up recipes for plum wine, plum sauce and plum puddings. But when we walk through a forest of acorns, it is a warning to us about how rare the success of life is in the face of the cruelty of nature and chance. By ones, and in great bunches, through every stage of life, I watched my plums fail. In the year of my greatest harvest, I had many hopes, but only in the end three plums, which I ate late – not understanding that my tree ripened to gold instead of purple plums. (Dammit, I’d bought a purple plum tree!)
The lone fruit
Then, that winter, I discovered the first knot of the blight that will kill my tree. Instead of having planting a gracious tree that will bring fruit to the world for the rest of my life, and for many years thereafter, I have planted this tree and I will watch it die. And worse, I will never get a single batch of jam out of the damn thing. I fought it of course, as we do mortality. I pruned and I fertilized and I read up on it. On the afternoon we learned a friend had two weeks to live, my husband couldn’t understand why I had to cut off the blackened cancerous growths RIGHT THEN. But from this vantage, both you and I can see it. This tree is not a garden object. It is a metaphor for life, for longing, for generations, and for mortality.
Black mark of deathly doom
I have come to a point, now, where I have passed through the phases of denial and bargaining in my grief for this tree – this metaphor for mortality. I no longer expect to eat a fruit from its branches. I do not believe I will be able to pull it through, or that miraculous healing is possible. I did not cut away the black places this summer – there are too many and they are too high to reach. I let the tree be, and only cut away the branches that made it hard to sit around it.
The main trunk has begun to weep sap. It will not be much longer now.
This moment of acceptance has in some ways freed me. While I planted the tree for fruit, in this long hot summer, when we spent so much time in the back yard, I came to love the tree for the shade it gave. I spent days sitting below its branches, sheltered under gracious leaves. The tree is home to an entire ecosystem of ants and bees and aphids and ladybugs. I admire its enormous elasticity, as when weighted by snow it will bend halfway to the ground and then spring back to the sky once it has dried off. I love the glorious puffy white blossoms it still bravely throws against new-blue skies in spring. Now that I have stopped expecting more, I can love it for what it is, for as long as I still have my friend.
The tree has become a frequent backdrop for our pictures and life
I will not, however, have this tree much longer. It is hard to watch it blacken and wither. And our yard is small to be home to a dying tree for very long.
So I had a choice. I could give up on a foolish, childish dream of fruit. This is tempting. There is no argument that my attachment to this tree and this hope is a sensible one. I know that any other plum I plant would likely suffer a similar fate – this blight will likely linger in soil and suckered-sprout for years yet. Our land is not appropriate for orchards. I have no skills or abilities to raise a healthy tree. I should just go buy my fruit like a normal American. I can feel the weight of the pressure to just be normal already. To not care so much about things that are so stupid. To pretend to myself and the world that this is just a tree like any other, and use it as an opportunity to teach my kids how to use a chain saw. Maybe put in a nice patio or something, with a sun umbrella.
Or. I could double down on crazypants dreams. I could pull out the core of my desires and longing, and find another way to express them. Maybe buy a tract of land without this problem? What if there’s a saleable set of orchard already growing? Do you think Farmer Dave would let me, like, sponsor a tree? Could I plant one at Camp Wilmot? Guerilla gardening along the greenway?
Then, there came a moment when I suddenly knew exactly what to do. I myself do not understand the genesis of this idea – the germination or pieces that went into its creation. I do not know how I knew these things. But I knew … I had to plant a pawpaw tree. I’m working on my patter for “What the heck is a pawpaw?” The pawpaw is the largest native north American fruit. You possibly might vaguely remember having heard of it through songs like “The Pawpaw Patch“. It is slightly larger than apple sized, has a thick skin and a few big seeds, and the fruit is described as a citrusy custard – like a cross between a banana and a mango. It’s been grown in America since before we colonists arrived. Although Massachusetts would have been traditionally too far north for its zone, with the change in our climate we are now warm enough to host it. The reason you’ve never heard of it isn’t because it isn’t delicious. It’s because there aren’t any varietals of pawpaw that are durable enough and last long enough to survive the American Corporate Food Chain. It doesn’t ripen once picked, is very fragile, and only lasts about 5 days after it ripens. So you just can’t pick it, pack it, ship it, stock it and eat it in time. It is an unbuyable, historic fruit. In other words, absolutely perfect for me.
There are two practical considerations. The first is that TWO pawpaws in the area are required in order to get any live fruit. I can’t find any self-pollinating varietals. This is a challenge since I have a paucity of pawpaw space. I have a plan, but if any of my neighbors would be willing to plant a tree, I’d happily buy it, plant it and tend it for you! (JAY THIS MEANS YOU. YOU ALREADY TOLD ME YOU READ THIS SO HA HA YOU CAN’T PRETEND YOU DIDN’T SEE!)
Pawpaw and plum: the old and the new
The second is that the tree, in its early years, really requires shade to grow. It’s best planted underneath a mature tree, until it gets its feet under it and begins to shoot up. So the best place for it is in the shade of my dying plum tree. And here we return again to our mortality allegory. To be dying is not to be dead. There are still gifts that we can give and receive, after any hope of fruit is past. I will ask my beloved plum for another year or two of shade, blossoms and the gracious hosting of life. I will give it fertilizer, water, and compost for its nourishment, as well as my unabated love. And in in return, I hope that it holds on to strength and life long enough to give the live-giving gift of shade to the next generation.
It seems like every few months we’re broken-hearted by the treatment of our black brothers and sisters. I am thinking about George Floyd today, and I think about Ahmaud Arbery every time I lace up my running shoes. I’m still haunted by Tamir Rice’s death, as I look at my own boy stalk through the neighborhood with his NERF armaments.
It’s so hard not to wish these were aberrations – rare and unexpected events. But they’re not. There is no reason or excuse other than that we have created a system that does not value human lives as equal.
The only, small hope in this is that human systems are created by humans, and can be changed by humans.
Keep working, friends, until all people are as valued by the systems and habits of our society as you are.
“To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it – a clarity that men
depend on men to make.”
– The Mad Farmer Manifesto: The First Amendment
Wendell Berry
Right now, I should be in Terminal A in Logan. Perhaps I would be traversing that long tunnel, lit by colored lights and sped by moving walkways, with man’s triumph over gravity taking off and landing overhead – the sky a checkerboard of contrails. Maybe I’d be stopping at the Starbucks at the end of the long staircase up to the gates. I’d be with Adam. Grey and Thane would be in flight already, headed to Atlanta. It was to be the first time that Grey counted as “accompaniment” and I wouldn’t have to pay extra to fling them into the loving arms of a grandparent. Adam and I would be looking towards an ancient land. Tomorrow morning, bleary eyed, we would land in Rome to celebrate the twenty years we have been married.
But. I will not stand in the Forum Sunday, drinking in espresso and diesel fumes in equal measure. We will not explore the catacombs or marvel at the rococo splendor of the Vatican. We will not see works by Michelangelo and eat pasta made by strong-armed old women, decanting wine and prayers with equal familiarity. Instead, we mark a time increasingly trackless, as we enter our fifth week spent in our homes, morally isolated, masked, in a world we would not have recognized even two months ago. We’re growing weary of gazing at the world through the windows – of our homes, our computers, our televisions. Every vista is framed in by the constraints of the virus.
This all has started to feel almost…. normal. There are mornings I wake up, and don’t think I’m late for the bus. There are days I do not leave the house, and do not mark that I have not left. There are even cheerful days and hours now, where within the inscribed circle of my life I am pleased and even energetic. But every time I find my feet, an aftershock ripples through and reminds me how uncertain and unstable everything really is right now. Layoffs among my friends. Plans for returns two years out. Closings. Deaths. Intubations. Work shifted, changed, urgent or deprioritized. Rumor of pending shortages, as the people who make things and grow food also look through their windows at untended fields and idle factories. My daily ritual is looking at the numbers and ages of those who have died today in Massachusetts from the virus. Yesterday there was an entire page of deaths of people in their 80s, and a second almost as long of people in their 90s.
I’ve tried not to mark what I’ve missed. I delete the calendar entries, trying to forget what has been lost. Del’s funeral, and the beer I planned with my surviving cousins to remember the one who died this fall. Piemas. I have so many pie fillings in the freezer, marked for that date. My children do not like pie. And we were going to remember BJ there. My husband did a “virtual gaming convention” last week, and I kept thinking I heard him over the speaker – where he most assuredly would have been had his heart not given out. I had finagled traveling to Dublin for training. I’d never been to Dublin. Two concerts: Brandy Clark and the Wailin’ Jenny’s. My son had shown astonishing proactivity in signing up for an MIT educational course, which made me proud and hopeful. His 8th grade graduation and dance are added to the pile of “unknown but unlikely”. And we are the lucky ones – we don’t have a senior, or a wedding, or a once-in-a-lifetime trip. Or worse, a farewell and funeral denied and delayed.
Last week, I was talking to my sister and telling her my idea for one of those online quizzes, of your “lasts”. Last in person concert. Last flight. Last conference. Last meal in a restaurant. Last hike. Last night in a hotel. Last road trip. Last in person church service. I’ve held these lasts in my head. Some of them I knew were lasts – the last hike and last meal. But most were unmarked, and felt like part of the relentless pressure of life, piling on event after event and journey upon journey. I did wish that I could step off that relentless track – just for a little bit. I’m trying to be grateful for what is, at very least, a break.
And there are some consolations. I think few of us would prefer this life to our prior one. But I have spent more time with my husband and children than I ever would have, in any other circumstance. There has been more space for thoughts, despite work which swells to eat my extra hours. I’ve had breakfast in bed every morning for a month. I have cleaned things that I always meant to get to “someday soon”. I have watched every single slight move of spring with the hungry eyes of a hawk looking for their prey to clear cover. Have the forsythia and daffodils and hyacinths ever had so appreciative an audience? Have they ever lingered so long? And I am taking great comfort in art – old and new. My gaze has lingered over the watercolors on my walls, painting detail and adventures into their broad strokes. My mind has lingered on poetry, with the extra space resonating words and phrases with unusual meaning. My ears have sought new songs and new singers. And although I am not with my friends, we talk. Via group chats, 1:1s, video calls, yelling from windows – even as we are distanced we still reach out to each other.
There is no chance that we will emerge from this time unchanged. It is not an option. We cannot go back to being who we were, or living the way we did. Even if the world were miraculously the same, we are inexorably changed. What will we be, when we have been transfigured? How will we grow, with the snow on our blossoms? Will we be destroyed, or made stronger? Will we ever be so busy again we cannot see the spring around us? Will we be able to take thing so for granted? We are in a crucible, and our civilization is being melted. We can only hope – and work – to make sure that when we are recast, we are recast to be the best version of humanity we can possibly be.
Seven years ago, I took the bus to work. Both kids were little. I remember picking them up at the Y, rushing to get there before 6 pm. I’m guessing Adam dropped them off, since I don’t remember it. I drove to the tiny lot near the bus stop for that reason, and stressed about parking every day. Over time, I made friends with the people at my stop. I got to know the folks on the bus by sight, if not name. I read a whole lot of frivolous novels. I was kind of sad when that commute came to an end.
Then the word came that my office was moving from Cambridge to Boston for a little while – about 9 months. I’d been very tired of driving anyway, so driving into Boston was a no.
Now there are no daycare pickups (thank heavens!) And there is a beautiful new Greenway almost directly connecting my home and that bus stop with a brisk 20 minute walk. So here I am again, sitting in the 354, headed to work!
This post is best read while listening to “Sweet Hour of Prayer” by Anonymous 4. Their whole “American Angels” album is worth a listen for those to whom this post will resonate.
Harkness Chapel was home to the Compline service, some of my most meaningful worship
I always liked to joke that I am an “Born the first time around” Christian. I was a missionary baby born in the hospital my father helped run in the Congo. My earliest days were a compassionate example, as my mother visibly nursed me to show that this healthy & cheap option was good for any child. I was baptized by Pastor Kafiamba – fire-eater. My first memory of music were the songs of Maranatha when I was three. And I have never fallen away from church, from my faith, from my God. Even in college, the notorious time of not-going-to-church, I was one of a faithful handful who attended Sunday and Wednesday services, huddling in a tiny corner of the vast and magnificent Harkness Chapel.
My good-church-person resume is extensive. I’ve been a member of the Presbyterian Church in Burlington for nearly 20 years. I’m on session. I am a Sunday School teacher. I run the website. I have served on almost every committee a person can serve on. I show up on Sundays, and sometimes Tuesdays. I ran the process to listen to what mission God calls us to, and led the search for our new pastor. I run the Christmas pageant, play trumpet, serve communion, bring coffee hour treats, and can walk through the halls in total dark without stumbling.
But lately, it’s been harder and harder to reach that font of living water, and I have felt my soul getting parched. I suspect some of this has to do with age. Nothing feels quite as vivid or fresh or spooky-special at 40+ as it did when I was 19. Repeated experiences, like sitting in the pew on a Sunday morning, can either gradually add to or gradually wear away at meaning. Or sometimes, both. But in the last decade or so, as my labors have increased, my deep connection to the “why” of those labors has started to wear thin. Simply put – my heart has been growing hungrier, even as I do the things I’ve always done to feed it.
After grace. I think that might be my cousin, since my hair was never that neat in my entire life.
When I think of my mother’s parents, their deep faith and devotion are a huge part of what I remember. They had two chairs in the living room, with a big bookcase on one side. One for her, and one for him. And every day, often in the quiet cool of the morning, they would sit in those chairs with their well-loved Bibles and pray and read. Both those Bibles are still in their hands, in the cool quiet of their shared tomb – a fact I often reflect on. But this time of prayer was central to their lives, if always a little foreign to me (and hard to stay quiet for, when I was wee).
In this desert-time in my spiritual journey, I’m looking hard for things that fill my cup, and inspire me. I’m looking for things that make me feel big feelings, and have a heart overspilling with unnameable emotion. I’m looking to have mind and heart and soul be more expansive, and to see a world that is grander and more mysterious than the narrow boundaries of my life. And so, into the cracks of time my schedule permits, I’m trying plants expansive seeds of soul-dilation.
My prayer-view
And that brings me back to the sweet hour of prayer. (OK ok, honestly, sweet fifteen minutes.) I’ve started creating my own sanctuary and litany. My quietest time is morning, after my boys are all already gone to school and work. (I am not a morning person.) I sit on the white chair by the window and look out at the morning and the sky and try the rusty skill of prayer. I’m really not very good at it for someone who’s working on their fifth decade of Being Christian.
Then I sing a hymn. Hymns are my emotional soft spot, especially the old ones (like Sweet Hour of Prayer). Grey accused me of “flexing” in church this morning because I knew all the words to “Praise to the Lord, The Almighty” by heart, and it includes the word “Ye”. The hymns sound strange in the acoustics of my bedroom, with just my voice. But the words connect me to the great cloud of witnesses who have come before me.
Then, if I have time, I read. My goal was to find things that would inspire me when I read them. I read the Book of Matthew first, a little because I had to start somewhere. I’ve probably read Matthew through 10 times? So I wasn’t expecting to find anything new, or surprising there. But that’s the great joy of a book like the Bible. There is so much to it, so much complexity, that you see different thing based on where you are in your own life. Different things stand proud and catch your notice. In this case, for me, it was the theme of being judged by the measure you judge others, and the phrase “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” which showed up several times. It is funny, reading the Bible, to know that there is so little to find that others have not already seen. I bet both of those have PhD theses, if not entire books written on them. But I’d never noticed before.
Book pile
I’m working on my next book. I listened to “The Reason for God” on my commute, which was particularly fascinating when read alongside Steven Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now“. I tried Bonhoeffer, but despite his excellent quotability he was annoying instead of inspiring me. I’m reading Luke while I figure out what I want to do next.
I’m also mindful that books that have great spiritual resonance for me are not always actually Christian. There is no book more capable of evoking a spirit-response in me than Lois McMaster Bujold’s Curse of Chalion which is written about a religious Pantheon which is distinctly Not Christian. But yet, it makes me feel closer to the creator. I also have come to the conclusion that John Muir is a prophet to *me*, speaking to a very important part of my heart. I think poetry may come close to this soul-expansion I so deeply desire.
The last thing I’m doing is my one faith-fail-safe for my whole life. I feel closest to God when I am in nature. There is a meditative quality to an expansive hike which cracks open my hard shell and lets air and light and water in. It is as though altitude helps me get closer to heaven. The time I spent this summer and fall with hiking boots strapped to my feet was time I spent nurturing the soul-fire God has given me.
With time, prayer, song, poetry and nature – I have hope that embers of my joy in God will rekindle. There’s a heat to someone whose soul is well tended. I remember the soft warming glow of my grandparents, in their quiet devotion. I also know that there is a more blazing, inspiring fire that comes sometimes. I’ve rarely heard a story of someone who converted to Christianity without an encounter they have had with someone who seemed lit by an internal conflagration of joyful spirit. I wish to be such a beacon.
I was asked to do the invocation for our Town Meeting in Stoneham tonight. I found myself thinking a lot of those who had spoken words of meaning to this group in the nearly three hundred years we’ve been meeting like this.
On the 14th of December, 1803, Reverend Mr. Stevens preached a sermon on the book of Haggai to the assembled town, as they gathered to dedicate a new meeting house for the Stoneham. According to Deacon Silas Dean, the sermon was focused on the words, “I will fill this house with glory”.
As we come together today, we remember the legacy of hundreds of years of good governance, careful planning and thoughtful preparation that have given us a town filled with green spaces, beautiful buildings and strong institutions. We live in a town where our children and our elders are both carefully treated and dearly loved – where the happy sounds of the soccer fields float through the historic windows of the senior center.
Let us come together, in a sacred intention to build and sustain our community so that those who live in our town in another 200 years may look to us as examples of wise planning, good decisions and respectful communications.
Inspiring spirit, be with us in this time and place. Let our decisions be well-thought and wise. Let our speech with each other be patient and kind. Let our community thrive from our efforts. And let all who live within the bounds of our borders benefit from our good planning. Let us, like our ancestors, fill this house with the glory of good governance. Amen.
My Truant Pen 