Category Archives: Soul Care

Attending to Sundays

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

What is it about church that gets into a person’s blood, that makes them put aside their Sunday paper or doings to attend?

Whatever it is, I don’t think it’s God.  At least, not for me.  If two years of abstinence from church has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t need church to find God or to experience the Holy.

I sense God everywhere.  In the everyday. The sunrise, for instance.  Or sunset.  Sometimes in a bite of buttered toast.  Or the smell of rain — especially this year.  The smell of a newborn — always.  Looking into a dog’s soft eyes.  Laughter.  Tears.  Hugs.  Hope.  Joy.  Beauty.  Truth.  Forgiveness.  God is in whatever it is that makes my heart sing, in that which makes me stand in attention and awe.

So if not God, then what?  Well, there is the pastor.  And the sermons — most which I can’t recall an hour after hearing them.  Here it is Tuesday and I’m wracking my brain for Sunday’s topic — surely it was about Advent — I know I listened.  But all I can remember is what the preacher looked like and what he sounded like.  Not a word he said.

Ah, but there are others words for which I do have a soft spot in my heart.  All that rich liturgy — and why wouldn’t I? — being a writer of sorts, there’s something a mite powerful about uttering ancient words passed down through the centuries by those who first heard them spoken by the Christ — or his Apostles — which they recited over and over to ensure they got just right, so they never ever forgot the seeds of their faith.  So help them God.

For the same reason, I adore singing hymns though I can’t carry a tune.  The music, of course, is memorable.  But again, it’s the words that hold and carry such power across time and space:

“Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.  Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us.  Let us find our rest in Thee.”

Who in their right mind doesn’t wish to be free of fear and sins and guilt?  Surely we’re united in this, whether ‘churched’ or ‘un-churched.’

But as I think about it, it’s not just the words.  It’s the act of speaking and singing them in unison.  Or taking communion in unison.  Being a church-goer is about being part of something bigger than myself — sitting in the pew surrounded by others like-minded but totally different sitting in their own pews — with their own individual joys and fears and gifts and quirks.  And when church is really good and right, all these gentle souls simply fade away to leave space for communion with God.  And when that happens, even I fade away.

Something like this happened to me last Sunday.  I was in a chapel full of worshipers, and a preacher in robes in the pulpit with a booming voice  — and for a brief moment,  all I felt was God.  Afterwards —  I think it was afterwards —  I began to remember a recent conversation with my spiritual director; about how I felt Jesus, of late, had become like one of those Facebook “friends” — you know, the ones you knew and hung out with, many many lifetimes ago — that you’d all but forgotten until behold, they found you again on Facebook and asked you to become their friend.  The kind that you say yes to — or is it ‘accept’  or ‘confirm’?–  for old times sake, rather than because you believe saying ‘yes’ will make them friends again.

Well, as I was thinking about this snippet of spiritual direction confession, it came to me that I should read a book  — something contemporary, preferably fiction — where I might actually bump into Jesus and get to know him again.  To really become his friend again.  And so that’s what I’m doing.  I’m reading Margaret George’s novel, Mary Called Magdalene, which I began last Sunday.

Perhaps the best part of attending church is that one never knows what will come of it  — sort of like everyday life, when one really attends to it.

Advent Already

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Beyond my big picture window, the world dresses in blue shadows, as it does every clear day before the sun rises to yellow its world.  I sit in my same comfy chair with a cup of coffee beside me and pen and paper in my lap.  I’m suppose to be writing, but instead my eyes bounce between the view outside — to the view inside, where with help of man-made light, lives a tiny world of my making on top my coffee table — a table-scape where fake pumpkins have just given way to flickers of a winter candle.

The year revolves around the dance floor, each turn coming faster and faster, making it a struggle to keep up.   Then, just like that —  the dance slows down.   The music stops.  And I look up —  I look up  to see it’s Advent?   How in the world can Advent already be here?

Well, it is.  I know because I went to church for the first time in two years yesterday.  And to top that, I went for the best reason of all:  I wanted to.  For me, for now, It was time to wake up.  Time to crawl out of a warm bed into the cold of a morning.  Time to resume everyday life with church being part of the picture window.

And how wonderful to do just that.  To wake up to the sounds of a beloved husband snoozing.  To dogs snoring and sprawled all over the bed as if they owned it.  To listen to the swooshing heated air falling out of ducts hidden within my walls.

It’s Advent.  Advent, as in, ‘coming.’  As in Christmas is coming soon.  As in, all is well. All is calm, all is bright.  Sleep in heavenly peace.

And what’s not all calm and bright — well — Advent grants us time to prepare ourselves — to put our best faces on, so to speak —  sort of like putting a dash of red lipstick on in the rear-view mirror of the car, while waiting for a traffic light to shine green — or for some, less mobile, while sitting in a wheelchair waiting for death and two tacos from Taco Bell to come.

Still alive, though a far cry from her everyday self, that’s what my lovely mother-in-law did during yesterday’s daily visit with my husband, her son.  She put on a dash of lipstick and a few other cosmetics to make herself feel better while waiting for a couple of fast-food tacos.  Perhaps she did it to make herself feel more like her old self  — maybe to reclaim a small fragment of an everyday life she no longer owned.  Or leased.

And who knows that maybe the gloss did the trick for a while, since she and my husband enjoyed a leisurely visit for a change —  instead of one truncated by sleep, like others this past week.  But by nine o’clock, the shine must have worn off because nothing was calm or bright in Janice’s world.  We know because — completely out of character — she called my husband on the telephone to fix it.  And after failing to do it, she asked for me.

Hello.  That’s all I remember saying before she launched into a series of short whispers.

She needed to find a place to stay for a couple of days.  Her husband needed a break from his around-the-clock care-giving.  She knew her husband hated her.  Stuck in bed, she wasn’t tired.  She couldn’t sleep.  She was desperate.  Needed to get out of there.  Tonight.

I listened until she grew too tired to talk, until she had said her piece, until she wound down enough to fall into what I hope was a peaceful slumber —  in a world far removed from heavenly peace that — well better to face it — doesn’t even try to put its best face on most of the time.  Unless it’s running for office.  Or posing before a camera.  And then not always.

The call left me unsettled.  It left me feeling powerless.  It left me feeling blue.

How strange that blue skies denote happy times while feeling blue is anything but.  There is a heaviness to blue.  But thank God, not so heavy to keep the sun from climbing the sky to lighten life up a bit. For the calendar to chug along its way to the light of Christmas Day.

Real light, true light — why it’s enough to warm a soul from the inside out —  to set a face aglow.  No lipstick required.

Advent Already?   Yes.  Advent Already.  Amen.  Amen.

Come what may.

Still Life

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care, Writing

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

“And if she did not remember these things who would?  After she was gone there would be no one who knew the whole of her life.  She did not even know the whole of it!  Perhaps she should have written some of it down…but really what would have been the point in that?  Everything passed, she would too.  This perspective offered her an unexpected clarity she nearly enjoyed, but even with the new clarity, the world offered no more explanation for itself than it ever had.” 
– Evening, by Susan Minot
 

I woke up thinking about last night’s mad dash to post a few October stills while October still had breath in its body.  As if this blog was my very own Pinterest board to remember life with a few little links.

Then as one thought always leads to another, I began thinking about all those October moments — no less important — that passed without an attempt to preserve the moment.  No written words.  No images, published or otherwise, at least in my possession.  Like,

  • last Sunday’s final Moveable Feast for the year, a rare event where every family member sat in attendance,
  • a cute almost 10 month-old Reese Caroline dressed up like a little lamb for her first Halloween, so unhappy in her costume you’d think she was being led to … (no I can’t say it…),
  • the beauty coming forth in the east garden, once a forgotten side yard used to grow weeds and hold leftover stone,
  •  the nine Nellie Stevens hollies planted on Saturday — doesn’t this sound like it belongs as a stanza in the Twelve Days of Christmas?, and
  • my new kitchen finally finished… except that I’ve decided to repaint it all again.

And the list lives on into infinity.

And then I look up to see the morning light casting this lovely November image on the wall — the very one that became header for this post.  Perhaps, I think, it’s a gift for All Saint’s Day to remind me that what we see is not all that’s there?

I reach for my camera to capture it.  To find, with no surprise whatsoever, that it wasn’t at all what I saw, it wasn’t at ALL what I experienced.  Not by half.  Because what I observed was so much better and richer than what I’m able to preserve.

I post a few words and images knowing, even as I write, it’s not necessarily the best of everyday life or even the best of me.  But sometimes, yes sometimes — perhaps when the light is just right, and maybe’s it when I’m most aware of the play of the light and shadows, that a few words are born into the blog that mimic life in the moment enough to breathe shallowly upon the page.

A still image begins to sway and dance so that it’s a trick and treat to the eye.  Mere slats from my window blinds cast shadows on the wall which mysteriously transform into a musical staff; the shadow of curled ironed work of the floor lamp looks like a treble clef; and something — I’m not sure what — maybe leaves on the tree outside my window? — begin to jump up and down the lines looking like musical notes dancing upon staff lines.

The shadow and light become a symphony like this.

And I think: Can life get better than this?  If life is like THIS every moment of every day, then there’s no such thing as an everyday life — at least, as. everyday is commonly thought of — COMMON.  PLAIN JANE.  VANILLA.  Dare I say….BORING?

And because of this mind set, and our own lack of attention — for surely I’m not alone in attention deficits — is it any wonder we can’t know the whole of our lives?