Cast like a pearl

almost to the end of September already. i am ready for the rich heady season of October, with pumpkins on the front porch and the creeper blushing to a deep fire red before our eyes. the air carries a deeper chill at night, the cat and my husband both cuddle closer in the wee hours.
i have been writing more in recent weeks. a new song came in the last few days, a real hymn called "This Is My God". i want to sing it over and over, it has a flowing melody and a strong memorable chorus...but mostly it just hangs on and on in my head because it is the most impassioned love song i have produced in years, and it is a love song to my Creator, not to yet another emotionally unavailable person at the end of the bar. this is a change for me...some of my friends would scarcely recognize the person i am becoming these days. but it matters less and less. sometimes i am pierced by loneliness as i feel people steping back and falling away from me. but i am not at all surprised by it, only observant of the startling accuracy of it.
we prepare our house for market with small adjustments and flourishes: today i finished painting the dining room. the raw wall has been sealed in the basement and the faded drywall repainted. more painting remains, as well as gutters to be cleaned, a porch to be repaired. some raking and cleaning of our tiny excuse for a yard.
as we go about the tasks i arrange and re-arrange the furniture in my mind carefully. regarding the people i kove, "goodbye " is not part of my vocabulary. i prepare to strain the love and faith of the people in my life, possibly to the breaking point for some. it is something i apparently have to do. at times i am nearly overwhelmed with guilt and uncertainty over my pending action. it is not my intent to hurt anyone by leaving. but i have to leave. i have to experience something else, for a season at least. i have to find out if i can make some kind of a life of creating songs, once and for all. i have to know the answer to that question. as many answers as i have received from others over the course of my life, who have their own vested interests at heart...i have never formed an answer for myself, based on my own experience. i have to do that now. i will never have the opportunity again. this and this alone is my reason and motivation for going. i pray and hope fervently that i will be forgiven for this indulgence. i am not so worried about God forgiving me; He made me this way. i am confident that He is directing my course and that He wants me to try. the forgiveness i seek is from friends ...i know very well how it feels to think one has been abandoned. i am loathe to be the cause of those feelings in another.
but i am in the stringent process of learning how much control i really have over the feelings of others; about whose choice those feelings are. i am equipped only to manage my own emotions, no one else's. this too is strange new territory for me. i am ready and willing to learn it as God directs.

Just a stranger on the bus

God what a day. How does it go...God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...
i am happy to have a blog, a journal, and a canvas as large as the world to express myself if i so choose. i am also delighted that i have the choice to say nothing. sometimes i even exercise it.
i have an ache in my spirit today. i wake up a little tired from a late night, still a little sore from a lingering cold. opening my email, Facebook and Myspace pages i am confronted one by one with despair, fury, sadness, pain, illness, decay, contentiousness, raging superficiality, piercing loneliness, apathy and one bitch slappin shitstorm after another. sorry about the choice of words but sometimes i just can't come up with anything more genteel because i find that this world is not genteel, know what i'm sayin?
in this corner is God, heartless ringmaster of the barbaric circus we call life. the doting shepherd who breaks the legs of the lamb who strays too far. the silent, implacable figure on death row for not fitting into the box we have so thoughtfully created for Him.
there were alot of years that i didn't go to church. i didn't even think about it. i had no use for it. i was young, full of strength and dreams and defenses. i intended to do it all myself, because God knows nobody else had ever truly been in my corner: from abuse veiled as dysfunction in my family, to a love life that seethed anger, violence, sorrow and brokeness, to dreams stifled by physical and spiritual and emotional illness, to the expectations of people all around me that i could never quite fullfill...if i was going to come into my own as a full blown disappointment i wanted to do it on my own and have no one in my face about it. i had no use for trust, and a million arguments for it being a bad idea.
God, being the gracious one that He is, bowed out as requested. things got worse. lonelier, angrier, bloodier. i became, for a season, everyone and everything i have ever hated and feared in my life. nothing was my fault. i had no nerves, no feelings, and no accountibility. only a great black hole of anger, sorrow and need. glossed over by a mask of normal.
what changed? i would love to tell you that a gang of angels came in and kicked my ass. God spoke to me in a dream. the bird of paradise flew up my nose. typically, stuff like that doesn't happen to me.
i think i just got sick of the whining sound of my own voice.
at some horrible point i gave up and left the gate open, and He came in again, deeper than i ever let Him in before. i gave Him charge of things i never gave Him before, like my wounds, my slights, my anger. i gave Him the things i can't forgive, and the things i feel i can't be forgiven for. i am trying to get closer to these ideas that i have professed as truth for half my life, yet had no connection to the implications of those truths.
today i was in the shower thinking about all the stuff in this world that can't be justified...there is so much of that...and i realized once more that we are promised nothing in this world except Him. He never told us we'd be free from pain, oppression, illness, sadness, injustice, criticism, confusion, tyranny, lusts, wants, needs, desires, corruption in this world... but that we would not be alone in the midst of it, and that we would be free of all of it in the next life. that's what He meant when He said His kingdom is not of this world. Thank GOD it is not of this world. thank GOD there is something better to look forward to!
He gives us small previews of that kingdom in the beauties that He shares: the gift of nature, a child's laughter, the closeness of a friend, the release of tears, the healing of a wound, the intimacy of great art and word...all these things which seem so fragile and temporary and have even been judged as useless frivolity by some...these are the fine delicate windows through which we can look and see (in small glimpses) who God is. while we are waiting to be with Him.
i know many who would take what i've just written and tear it to pieces. They would despise and ridicule me for it. that's something i can count on in this world, even as i cherish and value life. i am really learning these days, that, for now, you just can't have one without the other. God, grant me the serenity...

Living Water

i am characteristically a busy person...someone doing many things, TOO many things in any given week...i have been known to collapse in a moaning quivering heap when the calendar spins out of control and one day i am confronted by a mass of multi-colored scribbling instead of the expected orderly configuration of boxes and days of the week that run most of our lives...we like to think. i comfort myself by saying, with conviction, that these are all things i want to do, so even if there's alot it all matters. even if this thinking eventually sends me to the couch (the professional kind) i take a certain joy in that sense of vitality and .....mmm....caffeinated urgency that informs those of us who just do too much. i like it. sorry.
one of the things on my list, actually up there pretty high on the list, is a ministry that was started five years ago by my friend Dr. Lynn Schriner. Dr. Lynn is a woman motivated by a great big heart to help a group of people in this world who have very little voice of their own. The effort is now a 501 ( c ) 3 non-profit entitled Damascus Ministries. we partner with a group called Life Outreach (started by James and Betty Dobson about 35 years ago i think). our focus is on getting fresh water wells dug for orphans and faniles and communities in the Sudan. we raise money every year (through events like concerts, auctions and mailings) and send it to Life Outreach; they send teams overseas to do the digging and the sweating. our part is really pretty easy, but it is truly amazing how a very small effort on our part over here can translate to a big result and a very real sense of hope over there. i don't know how much TV you watch, but it seems to me that hope is something in short supply in Africa (as well as the rest of the world) these days, and if i can help to change that even a little i will certainly risk the judgement or ridicule. in recent years we have expanded our activities to include supporting feeding programs as well, and look forward to growing our efforts in the future however we are led. that's the advantage of being a little grassroots cause: nowhere to go but everywhere.
if any of this sounds interesting to you or has caused a slight tweaking sensation in your heart, feel free to visit the website: www.musicfororphansproject.com to learn more. there's information about what we do and how to contact us there. we also have Dr. Lynn's novelette "The Angel and the Orphan" and her CD "Sparrow" for sale on the site, with all proceeds going towards the work (we take no cut...another plus to being small potatoes!). come and visit; it is our hearts' desire to help these kids and we can do it best with your help and support.
That's all i've got today!!

The Greatest Thing

there's an old song i hear from time to time that always stops me in my tracks, like wind chimes on a summer night. it speaks across time. i think it's called "Nature Boy". the first time i heard it was on an old piece of vinyl by the Nat King Cole Trio that Robert, my first husband, had found in a used records store. the line that stands out is the very last one in the song..."the greatest thing you'll ever learn is how to love and be loved in return." isn't this just a pop music version of the two greatest commands in the Bible (to love God with all your soul and all your heart and all your mind and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself)? remarkable that such a small, deceptively simple pair of statements can be the twin root of such hoped for joy (in their achievement) and such universal misery (in the failure to achieve them). i have an unfinished sewing project upstairs in my work basket, begun years ago when Robert and i were still married: a piece of rough linen with the words from that old song embroidered on it, surrounded by a field of daisies. about a third of the design is filled in with colored thread; the rest is still only sketched in pencil, waiting to come to life. it was intended to be a wedding gift for a couple who were then friends of ours...i never finished it; we ended up giving them something else more conventional like a serving dish or something...and a few years later their marriage crumbled, and all of our once intertwined lives blew away into futures that none of us could have predicted at the time. i still work on that forlorn needlepoint from time to time, still unfinished...as unfinished as the riddle printed on it.
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn..." and if you in fact really learn that thing, learn it and cling to it and make it not just a pretty footnote to your actual grimy life, but the very fabric of which your life is made...then everything else will flow from that. how do we do this? are we even capable of it? we, the willful, the vain, the corrupt, the stubborn, the selfish, the unforgiving species that we are? we, the little crown of creation, that thinks it is alright to tell God what His plans are? how is it that we think we can ever learn to love rightly? we can scarcely tie our own shoes without getting angry. we are deeply challenged to truly look anywhere beyond our own personal suffering, without the filter of our own experience and self-righteousness...how then are we capable of the polar opposite of what we are...love? it's a tall, tall order for a small small creature.
we are not expected to do it alone (because we can't), but i believe that we are expected to do it. we are expected to look beyond ourselves for the means. we are expected to ask for help, to seek God; but to seek Him humbly, not with an agenda. Love is only love if it comes without conditions. without any thought of what anyone may or may not deserve.
that's the bitter pill...but anything else is just a sales pitch. we humans love to envision ourselves as a highly evolved species, but what a crock that is! Unconditional love and true forgiveness are as intangible to our natures as that word from space we've never heard; the close encounter we've never had. we know in our hearts, in our cells, that we're not alone, but we are profoundly hard pressed to believe it.

Hallelujah

i was raised in a caldron of passion, hope, despair, guilt and submission called Catholicism. at five i was baptized and told that Jesus had His eyes and His heart fixed on me and would always be with me. by the time i was ten i was a member of a family where alcoholism and sexual abuse dwelt cozily beside classical music, a solid B average, and weekend picnics in the mountains every summer. i graduated from Sunday Mass to evenings beside the record player with Dylan, Young, Mitchell and ...Cohen. Leonard Cohen especially was the perfect soundtrack for my soul: a balanced blend of sadness, torment, wit and romance. at times i remember feeling sometimes like this faraway Canadian was doing Jesus' work; that his eyes were fixed on me even though we'd never met.
i survived my childhood. i survived my adolesence. i continue to survive adulthood, although i suspect it will kill me eventually. some days i land squarely on my feet, unsurprised and mildly encouraged, chewing on an idea or a project that woos me to action. others find me a rolling ball of misplaced feet and elbows, pitching forward out of control downhill to land painfully, all broken bones, tears and exposed nerve endings. this seems to be what we are dealt in this life: one or the other...with the blessed ability, built into our DNA, to forget what one was like when we are in full thrall of the other. no wonder we are all so crazy.
Jesus still looks after me. i recognize Him daily in the beauties around me, the beauties rising up in the midst of ugliness. the moments of laughter and gentleness.the hope. the healing. the forgiveness.the love. but He can be vaporous, this Saviour of mine. He can dissolve between my fingers like mist if i try to predict or define him. i prefer Him this way...His way, not mine...as maddening as He can be. God help us all if He were created in my image and not the other way around.
so i opened my eyes today and the words of Leonard Cohen strolled regally through my mind. a most unlikely disciple of the Lord...but weren't they all? aren't we all?
i change the words a little when i play this song...i hope Leonard would not hold this indulgence against me...i simply can't leave this particular issue to chance, for myself:
(his version) Maybe there's a God above
(my version) i know there's a God above
But all i ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not complaint you hear tonight
Or pilgrim who has seen the light
It's a cold, it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah...

Wrinkle In Time

Well hello again,
and welcome to the next phase of my blog...my old site having become a casualty of the socio-economogeddon we currently find ourselves waking up to every day. God help the small businessman and woman, and i say that with no sarcasm whatsoever.
anyway i hope you will bear with me as i learn the tweaks and twonks of THIS site...so far i can see that it still involves typing, which came as a great relief to me. new skills are not completely out of reach at my age, but they are a little more hard won all the time. let's just say that i am really astounded that i figured out, on my own, how to use the automatic needle threader on my new scarily lightweight sewing machine from Walmart. and just in time, too, since i probably hear better than i can see now. that is not to say that i am legally (or even illegally) blind, so as long as i can still read what i type i shall continue to hammer away. lucky for YOU.
it's a very hot Sunday afternoon and all is quiet as a coma around here. we had a really busy weekend. Friday we went to a baseball game; the Colorado Rockies lost to the San Francisco Giants. i ate a brautwurst and shelled about 12 lbs of peanuts; the evening air was soft, silky and mosquito free. there was a lovely peach colored sunset and a men's chorus (Marked Men For Christ) sang the national anthem. it was very Norman Rockwell. there was even a pinch hitter, Seth Smith, who nearly saved the day...but no.
saturday i woke up cranky with a headache (probably from the salt on the peanuts) and realized that we had to pull ourselves together for a house gig that night. "pull ourselves together" means drag all manner of instruments and PA out of the basement, make sure it all works, and throw it in the van in a more or less organized manner. additionally, set lists need prepared, light rehearsal needs to happen...i was not initially in the mood for any of it. for somebody who likes to play as much as i do...it is curious how much i really dislike the preparations. but let me say in my own defense that the two are not at all alike. playing music is fun. packing is a giant pain in a private place. there you are.
by the time we were done rehearsing etc. there was enough time to hit the shower, put on a dress and get in the van. the house gig turned out to be completely enjoyable; we played for a small party of about 25 people and two lovely Belgian sheherds (dogs), had lovely barbecue, sold a few CD's and were home by 11:00. THEN we were up at 6:00 this morning to play two services at church. so now you understand why it is now very quiet around the house. we have been napping. in fact that is precisely what i was doing until i got up to start this here blog.
in the future i shall figure out how to invite all the same people back who were reading before...i'm sure some of you are scratching your heads trying to figure out how you were singled out for this distinction...but you know me, i just like to be on the radar occasionally. The Lord gave me alot more words than I can use in my lifetime without an outlet like this. hopefully every hundredth one will be worth a cent...and maybe in my lifetime i'll get to say something golden (although i'm sure if that happens i'll just be speaking for someone else).
in any case, welcome and blessings. nice knowin ya. be well and be kind. more soon...