Lo, he comes

A canceled end-of-the-day lesson leaves me with several hours in a row to do with as I please.

There are a host of things on my to-do list. The least of which is the hours of practice I still have yet to do in preparation for what may prove to be the most difficult final of my academic career.

Every part of me knows that I should practice. I have successfully avoided it all day, and tomorrow's Mary, as well as next Thursday's Mary will be annoyed with present Mary for not using the time she has.

But my soul is restless, in a way I can't help but attend to.

And as I allow myself a moment to sit, they come. 

The tears. 

The ones that have been brimming all day, all week.

From where, I don't exactly know.

Maybe they spring from anxiety, from exhaustion, from overwhelmedness. 

Will I make it?

Will I be enough?

Will I find any more reserves of strength within me?

Will I get it done?

Will this, too, pass?

Maybe they spring from soul-weariness, from grief, from disillusionment with the fight.

Will the wrong ever be made right?

Will the evil ever be broken?

Will the light ever overcome the darkness?

Will the truth win out?

Will this, too, pass?

Maybe they spring from joy, from wonder, from surprising, unspeakable beauty.

Will I give in to the joy?

Will I dare to hope?

Will I choose to feed my faith?

Will I continue to keep my eyes peeled for the glimpses of light?

Will I refuse to let the moments pass me by without choosing to be present to them?

As I write, I find myself mesmerized by the brilliant hues of the setting sun peering through the shadows of a tangled web of bare branches.
The contrast is stark.
The branches are cold and lifeless - the sun, warm and inviting. 

And isn't this the perfect picture of Advent?

The dark and the light. The cold and the warm. The now and the not yet. 

The hope and belief that the baby will come, and the honest acknowledgement of the reality that he is not here yet.

But it is more than that. It is the belief that his coming does not happen all at once. That his coming is gradual. That he is still in the process of coming. That his arrival wasn't only in the past, and that it isn't only in the future.
It is ongoing. It is today. It is now.

The last glimmer of daylight fades, and we settle in for a long, cold night.

But there is life in the darkness.

Though all seems still, cold, lifeless, tired, dead....yet there is movement, imperceptible to our near-sighted eyes. While we sleep, the dancing globe will continue its slow and steady twirl. And tomorrow, when we wake again, we will once more greet the light of the sun. The light that has been there all along. The light that even as it leaves us, has already begun its return.

And so we give thanks.

For the light that has been.
For the light that is now.
For the light that is, even now, coming.

Lo, he comes, the long-expected one.

Lo, he is here, Emmanuel.

The one who has been with us.

The one who will be with us.

The one who is being with us.

the possibility of sky

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming.

- Frederick Buechner

As I reflect on the passing year, my mind centers on a word that I have been chewing on for quite some time now: gratitude. It has been an intentional practice in my life for a number of years. I keep a gratitude journal and regularly track the blessings, large and small, that fall by the bucketful on my head.

This year, the intensity, intentionality, and even sense of urgency, of my practice deepened, as I began to see the roots of bitterness in the lives of the people around me. I reflected on this, and on the ugly parts of myself that have the potential to harden into bitterness. And I sought an answer to the nagging question: how do I prevent this? How can I remain soft, open, compassionate, joyful towards the people and world around me?  The answer was clear: the best cure, and even preventative measure, for bitterness is gratitude. 

I was sharing this with a friend this fall, and through our conversation, I began to see the patterns in our culture that often feed our bitterness. It is our American practice to ask each other how we are - and unfortunately, it's more of a greeting now, than an intentional question. But we often respond negatively: I'm tired, stressed, overwhelmed, just OK, busy. And as I continued to ponder this, the question arose: how would we change if we replaced this greeting with, what are you thankful for?

So this has become our practice, my friend and I, when we see each other. No meaningless how-are-you's allowed. Only expressions of thankfulness. And over time, our practice has been refined. A few ground rules have been established. The answer must be true, pure - not twinged with sarcasm. How often do we issue a complaint, shrouded in a cloak of thanksgiving? 

But what a beautiful thing it is to fill the well with truth, to dispel the darkness, to starve the bitter roots. How energizing and life-giving it is to be on the lookout for the gifts, to cultivate an awareness for the things that are so often rendered invisible by our preoccupation with productivity. I find myself keeping track of the blessings throughout the day, ready to give an answer when the question comes. I struggle to give just one answer when there is so much to rejoice in!

~~~

A few nights ago, I had a dream.  Well, I'm not sure if you can technically call it a dream. It occurred in the no-man's-land between fully-awake and out-cold. For some inexplicable reason, a memory broke loose from the hidden recesses of my brain and danced its way across my consciousness. And upon further consideration, I now realize that the event it recalled was ten years ago this year.

I was fulfilling my maid of honor duties, attending a bridal shower thrown by the bride's college friends, most of whom I'd never met. One of them, a kind, thoughtful soul, happened to share my name - a rarity for me, especially with someone my own age. Our conversation turned, quite naturally, to the topic of names. She had grown to love exploring their meanings and implications and asked me what I thought of ours. I laughed as I told her about the little name card I'd been given as a child, which identified the meaning as "blessed fragrance." It couldn't be further from the truth. The name is Hebrew in origin, a derivative of the word "mara" - the word for "bitter." Not exactly high on the list of "names you should give your child to bring them health and prosperity." 

She asked if I'd like to hear her take on it, and naturally, I obliged. She began to talk about the most famous Mary, the mother of Jesus. It was a dark time in Jewish history, she said; the people were angry at God, weary of the weight of the Roman oppression, wondering if He would ever break His silence (a silence that lasted 400 years). Why hadn't He sent a savior to them, to lead them to freedom? How long would they have to wait? 

She went on: how beautiful, then, that salvation would come through the womb of a woman named Mary - in the face of their bitterness. So, she smiled, I prefer to think of it, not as 'bitter', but instead as 'conqueror of bitterness.'  Now there's a meaning I can get on board with.

~~~

Who knows what brought that memory to mind as I lay silent in the dark? Who knows what thought or conversation plucked it loose from its place on some forgotten shelf? 

But how beautiful to see the evidence of life, of growth, of hidden streams beneath the frozen surface, of the belief in the possibility of sky, even in the midst of total darkness. Who knew that a seed scattered 10 years ago in a two-minute conversation with a perfect stranger would take root? Who knew that under the dry, crusty, rocky soil, there were forces of life at work? Who knew that this practice of gratitude would sprinkle water and light and nutrients on a long-forgotten seed? Who knew that that seed would wrestle its way to the surface and send a shoot blazing through the cold, hard earth?

~~~

As I write, the snow falls softly outside. I have long been mystified by the fact that we celebrate the new year now, in the middle of winter, when the outside world speaks of nothing but death and cold and darkness. It seems the most illogical time to speak of new life and hope and light. The ground is cold, frozen solid, buried under a foot of snow. Spring seems an impossibility; how could anything survive in this icy darkness? And yet, here we are, turning our faces into the bitter cold, looking forward with expectation, with joy, with gratitude.

willing to wander

"Walking with someone through grief,

or through the process of reconciliation,

requires patience, presence,and 

a willingness to wander..."

-Rachel Held Evans
  
 "Thus when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, 

if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. 

Because where your feet take you, that is who you are."

 - Frederick Buechner

I was reading some Rachel Held Evans this week, as I reflected on the passing year. This phrase seemed to jump off the page at me: willingness to wander. She spoke of it in the context of helping someone seek healing. We are quick to attempt to fix, find a cure, solve the problem. But healing doesn't work this way. It isn't linear. It isn't predictable. There is no formula.  To walk with someone on the path of healing is to walk without a map, without a plan, without an agenda.

But I think this principle of wandering extends beyond the path for healing.  Because to be in relationship with people is to be willing to wander.

Am I willing to wander with my students?
It may be that I have played a song 100 times, coached it with master teachers, soaked in the poetry....but will I be open to a different interpretation? Will I be ready to play it the way that they need to sing it?
Am I willing to hear their questions and resist the urge to give them a ready-made, pre-cut answer? Am I willing to take their challenges to heart? Am I willing to change my mind?
Am I willing to learn from them?

Am I willing to wander with others I hold dear?
Am I willing to watch them go down a path that by all my estimations is wrong...dangerous...not what I would have chosen? Am I willing to stay with them in it...simply to be with them?

Am I willing to wander with myself?
Am I willing to let the journey take me where it will? Am I willing to walk down a path, and resist the desire to apologize for it or seek to explain it to anyone else...or even to myself?
Am I willing to listen, really listen to the voice of my soul?
Am I willing to move in a non-linear pattern....even if it means moving in a circle?
Am I willing to wander into places I do not expect anything Divine to dwell?
Am I willing to seek the light, wherever it may be found?

One of the rules of my weekly Sabbath is the practice of spontaneity. There are of course, restrictions about what I avoid on that day - things related to schedules and work and technology being at the top of the list. But the main purpose of the day is to listen to my soul, to do the things that will bring me life in that moment. And most often, this involves listening to my feet. Often I find myself setting out on a walk, with no agenda, no destination, no ETA. And I quickly find that creating space for spontaneity - for wandering - can lead to space for surprises too. And where there is room for surprise, there is room for wonder. "Attention," says Mary Oliver, "is the beginning of devotion."

In reflecting on this idea of wandering, I am reminded of the famous words of Tolkein, Not all who wander are lost. And, while I appreciate the sentiment, I might be so bold as to add: Some are, but there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes 'living the questions', to borrow a phrase from Rilke, means wandering for awhile.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps then, someday far in the future,  you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer."

 - Rainier Maria Rilke

bertha, wilfred, and a cup of strong black coffee

7:00 AM.  I roll into the music building parking lot (lucky for me, there is no competition for parking spots at this early hour).  I unload my three bags (one for my lunch, one for my teaching materials, and one for my 6 binders of music) and trudge into the building.  There is a bit of fumbling and muttering as I attempt...for the 40th time...to remember which of the 9 keys on my ring opens the recital hall door.  Lights on.  Piano cover off. Lid up.  Good morning to Big Bertha (our 9-ft concert grand).  Bench adjusted.  Metronome and pencil ready.  Binders unloaded.   Coffee cup within an arm's reach.

Ready.

Set.

Play.

I begin with choir music.  I am playing for 2 choirs this year, at two different universities.  Most of their music will be sung a cappella - but there are a couple of pieces with some hefty piano solos.  I work them slowly, at first, saying fingerings aloud to myself, isolating one hand at a time, listening and repeating until the voicing is just right.  I make the same mistake three times in a row.  The coffee must not be kicking in yet.  I pause to take another swig.

By 8 AM, I have moved on to my four (soon-to-be five) binders of solo music for my 75 singers. I start with the music I will be playing in lessons tomorrow and flip through the binder, making a mental note of which ones I need to look at more in depth.  Played that one.  Sightreadable. Sightreadable.  Played that one.  Played that one in a different key - probably should go through it once.   Sightreadable.  Played that one.  Oh, new one.

Out comes the metronome (Wilfred Jr.).  I find a ridiculously slow speed and have a go at it, pausing every now and then to mark fingerings or add accidentals.  I trod along, attempting to sing the vocal line as I work through my own part.  It's slow going, but I'm in no rush.  

This is my time.

This is my home.

This is my sanctuary.

The first few weeks of school were crazy.  I stayed afloat, and managed to arrive at each class, lesson and rehearsal at least mostly-prepared.   But I knew I was floating.  I knew I wasn't fully present, fully grounded. And it took me a few weeks to discern what the real root of my unsettledness was:

I have not worked hard enough to guard this time, this sacred space.  

A few more minutes in my bed...and 7:00 becomes 7:30, and 7:30, 8:00. Lesson planning and photocopying that should have been done the day before is put off until the hour before my first class....and 10:00 becomes 9:30, and 9:30, 9:00. Before I know it, 3 hours has become 1 hour...or has even disappeared completely.

But this time is precious, necessary.  My body relaxes as my fingers find their way across the familiar black and white terrain.  My mind is drawn into focus as I tune out the to-do list for the remainder of the day - and I work to concentrate all my energy on this moment, this song, this chord. My soul sighs as I soak in the energy of the empty hall, inhaling the quiet, exhaling each phrase.

10:00 AM.  Binders, pencil and metronome returned to their homes.  Lid down.  Piano cover on.  Lights off.  I emerge from my solitude and head upstairs to prep for my 10:25 class.  I haven't even made it to the office, before I am stopped by a student with a question on the homework assignment.  Reality sets in, the chaos ensues, and I begin my day of multi-tasking.

But my center is lower than it was when I first fumbled for my keys this morning.  I can feel my feet on the ground.  I'm breathing a little more slowly and deeply, and my shoulders are a bit more relaxed.  I memorize the sensation, in an attempt to prolong it and perhaps even make it permanent.

Wishful thinking?  Probably.  I know the tension will creep back in.  I know my center will begin to rise, as the day progresses.  And at some point, I will most likely realize that my feet are no longer touching the ground.

But tomorrow at 7:00 AM, I will start afresh.  And after I have tried, for the 41st time, to remember which key opens the door, I will step, once more, into that sacred space.

For three hours, I will have the luxury of focusing on just one thing.

For three hours, I will breathe, lower my center, release the tension in my shoulders and the song in my heart.

For three hours, it will be me and Bertha and Wilfred and my coffee mug.

Photo Credit: Chinwe Edeani  www.photosbychinwe.tumblr.com