The Chatter

The other day, I had the opportunity to read one of my recent blog posts ("Thanksgiving at Midnight") to a medium-sized group of people. I really looked forward to this, because (to my knowledge) I have never read any of my own writing to others, and I have only once or twice spoken into a microphone. I have a rather deep, resonant voice, and I thought it would be a powerful experience to speak as well as say, if you get the distinction.

But about two sentences into the piece, the most annoying thing happened. An internal monologue started, chatter which sounded something like this: "OMG. This essay is too long. I thought it was going so be shorter. It looked shorter on the page. People aren't going to want to hear what I have to say. I should have edited this piece. Maybe I can skip a few sentences. Hmm...which ones should I skip? Darn, I can't read and edit at the same time. Maybe I'll just skip a few words. It's so quiet in here. They must be bored. Why did I decide to do this in the first place? I am drawing too much attention to myself. My mother was right that I'm self-centered. When is this going to end? Should I apologize to them for talking too long? Phew, here's the last sentence."

You might be wondering, why would a woman who has three post-high school degrees, who was a spokesperson (in writing) for a major magazine, who has taught many hundreds of students over the years and written two excellent published articles about an English composer, why should such a woman be reduced to rubble when reading her own words aloud? Well, that's the point. I've tended to "succeed" when I use words to talk about history and current events and things outside myself. When I've talked about matters close to my own heart or tried to live in alignment to that heart, at least in the past, I have not been embraced. I think "The Chatter," bless it, has tried to protect me from hurt and other people's anger and abandonment. It has tried to keep me from the risk that comes from operating in integrity. Not to be melodramatic, but I think it has been trying to keep me alive.

But the chatter, on that day, also served another purpose: it distracted me in real time from the fact that my voice speaking into a microphone had power. Real. Authentic. Magnified. Power. My inner chatter has tried to keep that power under wraps, and it was working overtime as I broke through another barrier. As it turns out, a few people came up to me later to tell me how much my words had meant to them, so through some miracle my parallel inner agenda didn't completely dilute my words.

Dear "Chatter": thank you for the role you've played in trying to keep me safe and invisible. I know you meant well, and really, you did an excellent job. But it's time for you to retire, and for me as I approach 62 to really start my life's work. To do that, I must write from the heart, and my voice must freely speak and sing aloud. No hesitation, no agonizing self-doubt, and no apologies.

Wonder, anew

If my quick glance at some television news today reported the truth (who knows these days?) I gather that Friday was a huge sales success. Clearly my last blog post didn't reflect the general mood, but hey, I've been out of the cultural loop for decades. In my own little way, I'll continue to follow the deep late November/December pattern that I described in my last blog to the best of my ability...reading, writing, making a few gifts or trying to be a gift to others. Loving the stillness, loving the dark. 

For me, this Thanksgiving week has been like being turned inside out. This re-born being cannot take much frenzy. A few blocks away, a holiday parade is taking place and there is much honking of horns and sirens and the sound of bands playing, but I'm quietly in my perch, thankful to be hearing it from afar. 

There's been an interesting alchemy to writing deep personal things each day for a possible future book, then to feeling the transformation in my bones and in my cells and in my spirit, sort of "as it happens." For over two years, I have spoken of being in a new stretch of river, but I was dragging some mighty heavy old seaweed and ballast through the water. It seems to be dropping away as I honor it by writing. And as it drops away, the boat feels fragile suddenly, but (of course) lighter, freer and easier to steer. I finally see my north star as mists around me are clearing. And understanding is coming in waves, waves that literally make me smile with satisfaction. "Aha, now I get it!"

Perhaps not surprisingly, it was a joy on Thanksgiving day to sing "ABCDEFG..." and nursery rhyme songs with a very musical little two-year-old boy, and to look into smiling blue eyes filled with curiosity and quick learning. I don't really remember being that age, and I'm going to be mighty protective of myself as I go through these early phases again, but I hope that I'll keep this little child's voice with me as a touchstone for wonder.

Thanksgiving at Midnight

It probably won't come as much of a surprise to my regular readers that you won't find me lined up outside a big box store Thanksgiving at Midnight, chomping at the bit to buy a flat screen TV. Money aside, it is hard for me to reconcile what I had always assumed to be the spirit of the season with people stampeding to buy flashy items which are mostly made abroad by workers who may earn only a few dollars a day. In fact, the whole season-as-it-has-become nearly brings me to tears. It doesn't seem sustainable or fair, and doesn't seems to be "about" what it's meant to be about. I know there are people who love this coming Friday and the ensuing holiday hoopla, and I genuinely wish I were them sometimes! 

But as usual, I can't help but wonder, "What if?"

What if, Thanksgiving at Midnight, we all fully entered into Nature's gift of silence, darkness, and stillness? What if we all had the next four weeks off (from work or other obligations) to at least half-hibernate? What if we woke up late every morning with the sun, and went to bed early, soon after sunset? What if we stayed close to home, and after an early supper, turned off all electronics and most lights, just leaving one on to read by? What if this coming month was dedicated to our creative selves, so that artists would paint during the daylight hours, and musicians and dancers would practice, and writers would write, and mystics would think, and knitters would knit, and sewers would sew, and woodworkers would build? What if we really did just make a few homemade gifts for our dearest friends? What if those who loved to cook spent the month baking and simmering winter stews on the back of the stove, in readiness for the celebrations of late December? What if we walked more, or helped neighbors more with shoveling and warm clothes, or watched stars and northern lights more? What if we really remembered what it was like to be still, and slightly sleepy, looking out from our warm caves at the brilliant night sky or bare trees bending sideways in the frigid wind?

And then, what if mid-to-late December's chosen festivities really were about the return of the light, and songs and carols breaking the silence, and pageants celebrating life's hopeful, brave story? What if our feasts hungrily and enthusiastically ended a month of basic survival? What if, after a quiet, inward-looking few weeks, we embraced each other and gave select gifts and heard the heavenly choirs and really understood what it was all about? What if the holiday season made sense again? What if Thanksgiving at Midnight made sense again?

Unthinkable

The other day, a post crossed my path that said, essentially, why would our lawmakers want to make America a land of poor, sick, uneducated, homeless people? The cynical, but I think arguable, answer was something along the lines of, to create powerless slaves for big corporations. It is impossible to understand how leaders with even the slightest iota of true humanity would pass the kinds of laws that are currently making their way through the pipeline. It is literally unthinkable. But the unthinkable seems to have become our bread-and-butter. Forget cake. "Let them eat 'unthinkable.'"

Hopefulness comes and goes with me, but mostly, I am heartened by how, around the edges of what my eyes interpret as a train wreck, real, caring humans are waking up, being heard, insisting on loving and embracing others, and creating beauty and new growth. I remember back in 1989, I visited Yellowstone Park about a year after the terrible fires there. Huge swaths of the Park were blackened, with dead tree stumps as far as the eye could see. Yet on the forest floor were millions of green shoots, even lawns of colorful flowers. The infrastructure had burned to the ground, but the impulse of life and beauty coming from under the surface couldn't be stopped. 

I guess at the moment, that's where I am at with the unthinkable. We clearly see what's happening. Yes, some who currently think themselves powerful may grin like banshees at their clever and selfish manipulation. Many of the rest of us see destruction where our values used to be, and feel nearly left for dead. But we are still very much alive, in some cases being completely reborn, and our verdant shoots will continue to grow. In the end, thankfully, life and love are the only lasting powers-that-be.

Home

You know how it is, when you get on a certain wavelength, and suddenly books appear out of nowhere, or album titles speak to you, or songs have meaning that didn't have meaning the day before. I suppose it's not surprising, what with all that's happening with me, that I just discovered the song by Stephen Paulus called, "The Road Home." The song's lyrics were written by Michael Dennis Browne, according to the composer's website (https://stephenpaulus.com/blogs/news/17806884-work-story-the-road-home). I mean, there cannot be lyrics in the entire world that resonate more with me right now. But it's the last verse that bowls me over: "Rise up, follow me, come away, is the call, with the love in your heart as the only song, there is no such beauty as where you belong. Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home."

The hardest part, when you are still in pieces, is believing that such a thing can happen. But I can feel a subtle shift now that I have sewn my pieces back together. These lyrics don't sound silly or make me cynical or angry or hopeless as they once would have. Love is the only song. There is a beauty to being where you belong, and where you belong is where you belong. There is a gentle but powerful river of love capable of leading us all "home" -- and we don't need to die to get there. Whether that home is a place, or a group of people, or a beloved activity, or "just" that blissful moment when you finally love and trust yourself, this is the work we are meant to do more than any on the planet. Rise up, gather up the scattered pieces, put them back together as best we can, and then follow love home to where we can be our finest selves. 

The Real Miracle

Well, this certainly has been quite a week. My last post  ("Finally") was picked up by the good people at Choralevensong.org (https://www.choralevensong.org/), and within days had well over three hundred readers around the world. (This is the wonderful site to go to if you are visiting the UK, and wish to find out where and when to attend evensong. They also provide a lot of written material about the service. Check it out.) I have a handful of dear, regular readers, but to have hundreds for a few days was the first miracle. 

Life has started to return to normal, well, "my" normal anyway, but any of you who are American women of a certain age may understand that the real story went deeper. I have the feeling that when my little mystic, brilliant, musical, creative soul was born into 1956 America with its shiny kitchen appliances and shiny teeth and shiny cars and moms in aprons and dads in suits and briefcases, she immediately broke into hundreds of pieces from shock. Talk about an energetic mismatch. And I've been carrying the pieces around ever since in kind of a metaphoric knapsack, sure that this had all been a mistake, that I was born on the wrong planet and wanted to go home. Yet somewhere around age 55, I think it finally dawned on me that if I was still alive (and I was) I really was on the right planet and if nothing else, at least I had to try to sew the pieces back together. These last few years have been a valiant and, at times, balancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin scary effort to do that, which my blog posts have attempted to chronicle. Yet two sides of the quilt were irreconcilable. No matter how strong my thread, the edges would fray then break back into two distinct panels.

By what grace did I wake up last Monday morning with the right words in my head? I scrambled to find my journal and pen and scribbled them down. Then within a few hours, I wrote the blog post. And here's the deal. A week has now passed, and the seam is still holding. I still understand, and feel in my heart, the place where the almost-500-year-old choral evensong tradition overlaps with my 21st century woman's soul. I'm still holding my breath. After all, life is about a million times more complex than it was in 1956. My quilt feels extremely fragile. But so far, I am in one piece. The stitching has held. All my pieces are back together. I may be, just may be, reborn, at 61-going-on-62.

That's the real miracle of it all. 

Finally

If you have followed this blog for a while, you probably know that I have regularly engaged with what seems to be the core conundrum of my life: how is it that I (a 21st century American feminist who has undergone a wrenchingly diverse and difficult spiritual/life journey) am still drawn to the Church of England's choral evensong service? I mean, I literally live to sing or hear that service in an English cathedral, abbey or college chapel. Most of my major life decisions have been predicated on "getting over there" or, conversely, on trying to escape the tradition's hold on me, thinking I might be happier that way, which never worked.

Yesterday was a case in point. I attended a church service in a denomination that I am not super familiar with. There was lovely music, and there were interesting readings. There was a thoughtful sermon. There were great people, and fellowship followed afterwards at an extended coffee hour. I left feeling somewhat bewildered, but that's been the story of my life. I have felt that way in most of the settings I have found myself in; they don't "speak" to me. Yet I felt a sincere appreciation for the fact that the experience spoke to others.

Later in the afternoon, as it was getting dark (too early!), I decided to listen to Choral Evensong on BBC Radio 3, which came this week from Salisbury Cathedral. Relief poured over me to hear the sung words, "O Lord open thou our lips/and our mouth shall shew forth thy praise." The Clucas responses, the psalms and the Howells Collegium Regale Te Deum were familiar to me (the latter, gloriously so); the service (Walmisley in d minor) and the anthem were not, but it didn't matter. The idiom and the sound were "home." It's not the same thing, listening on the radio or by webcast, but it's closer than other religious experiences. It is the spiritual language that I speak and understand.

That's what hit me when I woke up this morning. The service I attended early on Sunday -- like most of my spiritual explorations from about 1985 to 2010 -- was in a foreign language. Yes, I understood the individual words, but they didn't string together to create spiritual meaning for me. It is a mystery, but it is true. The Church of England's choral evensong service is my language for expressing belief in a Divine Being, even though my 21st century image of that Being has expanded way beyond anything the 16th or 17th century framers of the service would have understood or accepted.

I'm scrambling to try to explain this. Please forgive the inadequacy of my words. We are all energetic beings with a different "signal" going out, and with different experiences matching that signal. Late afternoon choral evensong is an energetic match for me with what being in the presence of the Divine would feel like, sound like, look like. It feels like awe. It feels like wonder. It feels, sounds, and looks like transcendent beauty and harmony. In Britain, you are likely to sit in ancient nooks right near the choir, carved throne-like seats that enfold you and make you feel safe and loved (American churches by and large aren't designed this way). The exquisite musical sounds and their reverberations are, literally, heavenly. The repetition of ancient words and the candle-lit singing of the tradition's music are almost a form of time travel, linking you to distant past and distant future. You are in a liminal space between light and darkness, between heaven and earth, as day is coming to an end. And when you are in the soaring architecture of a cathedral, you literally feel as if the stars and galaxies are right overhead, and that they will continue to expand and swirl through the night until the service the next afternoon.

There isn't a chasm between modern me and this service after all. I know "God/Goddess/Universe/Source" -- however imperfectly -- because I have "felt" divinity energetically at evensong, in all its immediacy. It's not just the music, or whether I do or don't sing in the choir. It is not just the architectural setting. It is not the theology or the readings, which can sometimes rub me the wrong way. There is a much bigger energetic and beauty match at work here. There is a oneness at my core after all, not a split. And with "getting" that, I think I've finally "gotten" that each person who finds meaning in any tradition's religious ceremonies, or none at all, or sitting at the top of a mountain or by the edge of the ocean, has an opportunity to find an energetic match with their concept of Source. Thank goodness for all of today's options. Choral evensong isn't for everyone. But finally, after half a century of trying to explain it away, I get why it is my spiritual language. And I embrace it. Finally. 

New York and Colorado

So much is being said. There is so little that I can add, except my usual. I don't understand wanting to hurt people. I don't understand wanting to kill people. I don't understand wanting to own, make, or use weapons against other humans even when it might "protect" me. And what a strange moment this is, when any of us could potentially lose our life walking down the street, or at a concert, or at a big box store, or at work. Violence democratized. Violence showing us exactly how nasty and pointless it is. Violence in our faces. 

I think if there is any purpose to it all, it is just this -- no more hiding behind "wars" (just or unjust) or distant lands or behind the scenes. No more "it's just a video game" or "it's just a movie." No more, "it's over there, not here." No more, "we'll protect our womenfolk and children from the grim realities." No more delusion. It is right here, and it is traumatizing everyone.

My belief in only one divine power (for good) remains intact, although this last year has sorely shaken it. I think as humans we are graduating from a duality-based reality to a oneness one, and, ahem, some people just aren't ready for the transition. The beautiful, loving stream of life is taking them somewhere where they aren't willing to go.  Those of us who can, today is a good day to do something calm, unifying, beautiful, loving. Today (All Souls' Day) is a good day to remind ourselves that all souls are "us."