The Stuff of Our Lives

I'm amazed sometimes just how easily I become overwhelmed. Sometimes it's too much bad stuff. Sometimes it is too much good stuff. Times like this, it's just too much stuff.

Today was Daniel's first day at his new job. He had positive things to report about it when we chatted on the phone -- he from his room at the Best Western, I at home wishing he were here. That's good stuff, and bad stuff.

Last night we spent about six and a half hours in the car. Well, that's not quite right. We were outside of the car to visit a shop for 10 minutes, to see the townhouse where we'll probably be spending our weekdays beginning August 2, and to get food and gas. However, the vast majority of the evening was spent in the car surrounded by torrential rain. Daniel pointed out one man who was trying to get his kids into their car in the parking lot during some of the worst of it, and the children were nearly overcome by the wind. The already long drive was lengthened by the weather, as we and the other drivers crawled along with hazards on, able to see only a few feet in any direction. That's scary stuff.

The townhouse is pretty nice, for what it is -- temporary housing that allows us to be together while we figure out where to go next in our lives. I don't like to be separated, so, in that sense, it's fabulous. However, it's right in the middle of the city, so we have a view of the wall that separates us from the street. That will take some getting used to again, though I think I will appreciate the proximity to just about every imaginable kind of shopping and restaurant. That's mixed stuff.

There's other "stuff" I don't want to write about because I wouldn't want venting about details of work or people that happen to be annoying me at present or circumstances I can't change to cause needless alarm when all I need is to blow off steam. Someone left the whistle on my spout and turned up the fire. Suffice it to say that I would like to tell some of the stuff in my life to stuff it.

I look forward to the good changes that are upon us, but I look forward even more to a time when where we are on the planet and what we are doing becomes, well, boring. That's comfortable stuff. Right now, it's the stuff of my sweetest dreams.

Sunday afternoon we went to a Red Wings game...

OK, so it was the Rochester Red Wings versus the Durham Bulls, playing fine AAA Baseball. This was my first baseball game ever; Nikki couldn't believe it, because she grew up attending Angels and Dodgers games. We didn't get a seat under the roof, but the sun wasn't too bad (it was mostly to our backs). This is a smallish ballpark, so really the only bad seats were the ones in the outfield, facing the sun. We started out with bratwursts, and I had a couple Yuenglings. Later, sometime before the seventh inning stretch, I went and bought some more low-nutrition snacks, including, for Nikki's pleasure, some peanuts and crackerjacks. The Bulls wound up winning the game, 3-9.

Lest I should forget, we attended the game on the birthday of Wool E Bull, the team mascot. I'm not sure how one calculates the date of birth of a stuffed costume, but Wool E's mascot pals came to celebrate: Mr. & Mrs. Wolf from NC State, the UNC ram, the Duke Blue Devil, the mascot of the Burlington Royals from the rookie league, the mascot of some speedway in the Burlington area, etc. etc., and... Stormy, the Hurricanes mascot! These mascots competed in events such as running the bases, a tug-of-war, sumo wrestling (Wool E vs. Stormy)... somehow, Wool E always managed to win.

Lessons in (Im)patience

I remember an old song that we would sing at church growing up. In fact, when I hear it in my head, it's in my mom's voice. It's taken pretty much verbatim from Isaiah 40:31:

They that wait upon the LORD
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.

with the added phrase:

Teach me Lord, teach me Lord, to wait.

Whether or not we know how to wait gracefully, we've been asked to wait on several rather significant things of late. We're still not able to try again for babies, we don't have any idea when or where Dan may find a job, we don't know where we may be living in a few weeks, and a whole lot of things about the future seem to just get a resounding "wait" when we ask what to do.

My parents will tell you that patience has never been my strong point. However, the moments I decide that it's okay to just be here waiting -- to not have the answers, and to not demand to have them or to force the issue of what we will do by just launching out and doing something without any sense of conviction that it is the right thing -- the more I discover that it is somehow all okay. The bills are getting paid, the roof is still over our head and we are finding that our attitudes about a lot of things are subtly different than they were before.

Case in point: Daniel says that for the first time in his life he dreads the weekend and that Monday can't come quickly enough. I, on the other hand, still start dreading Monday on Friday afternoon, but the effect is mitigated by the same factors that have driven the change in Dan. For him, the weekday means new possibilities for work leads and developments -- interviews, calls with feedback and other hope-wielding moments. For me, the weekday still spells more stress and the routine of work, work, work. But I find myself impatient to know what the latest is every time caller ID shows one of the numbers I now recognize as his recruiters, and I sometimes wish that the weekend weren't such a wasteland, because it's the time we have to think about all we don't yet know.

Still, we're happy. We're still prone to break out in impromptu dancing in the grocery store aisle. We're still talking to each other and giggling often. We're still sickening some of our acquaintances with our rather newlywed zeal. We ARE rather impatient for the next step to be revealed, but we are also discovering that waiting is not the worst thing we could be asked to do.

Now that we've learned that lesson... isn't it about time to get on with things? ;)

Extempory on Liturgy

This post is a response to this lovely post by L.L. Barkat.

Somewhere in the recesses of my memory boxes, I hope a rather tattered old cassette tape still waits to be exhumed once again. I am afraid it may have fallen prey to a move or a careless removal of "junk" boxes from the garage we used to have. The tape was recorded circa 1979 in my home studios in Whittier, California, and featured special guests (my infant sister) and my own special brand of musical entertainment. I sang a variety of original tunes, some of which I can still vaguely remember. Among the lyrics:

... I love God and He loves me,
Just singing about the love of God, to me.
That's my song of Jesus.

I found the tape sometime in my twenties, I don't remember how or when, and it became an object of immediate fascination. For one thing, it was tangible evidence of my faith as a little child... and it was fascinating to the artist in me, as it was unfettered by the restraint that most of us learn as adults wherein our free expression is confined by rules, social, musical and otherwise. Even my tunes were my own in their simple, improvised, sing-song way.

There was something almost magical in the tape for me... as if I had been allowed to see past my jaded, intellectually-informed and socially adapted adult self to the heart of faith and pure devotion. I looked back and didn't recognize myself, because I had forgotten what it was like to just sing my love for Jesus in such a spontaneous, joyful way.

There is a humility and a beauty in the worship of a child. A trust so complete. A lack of self-awareness. An earnestness. A spontaneity. A joy. Perhaps that is some of what Christ meant when he said, "Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." The same beauty is in extemporaneous prayer... the sort that bubbles out of us like lava from a volcano, the sort that lays before our God the contents of our hearts and minds, unvarnished and free.

As an adult, I learned a new kind of music. Music that reduced me to tears. Music that I had to work and work and work to understand. Music that while not my words, my notes and my composition, somehow expressed my heart in a way my mouth had never learned to do alone. It was music that I shared with hundreds of other voices and an orchestra. Music that could only result when the words and the notes of a master are laid out before us, and we conform to the will of another master, and we each observe the silence and the sounds spelled out on the page with strict obedience, and we make our voices blend with others until, though myriad, the sound is as but one voice. One body that breathes together. One voice that with all of the power and soul of dozens of people who have bent their wills and their talents to serve something much greater than themselves. As a singer, there is nothing in the world like subsuming myself, disciplining myself, and allowing myself to disappear into the fabric of something that could go on without me, but that would not be the same if I did not lend my voice, my talents, and my commitment to be a part.

That, to me, is like liturgical prayer.

In liturgical prayer, I must become more than myself. I must conform. I must let go of my desire to be in the spotlight -- to have things my way. I must work, follow, listen, learn. I must submit. I become part of something much bigger than myself, which humbles me as it exalts me. It also teaches me a new song... one that has stood the test of time. One more beautiful and refined than my own songs, and one that makes my songs, when I allow them to stream forth, somehow richer and finer, because the beauty and perfection of the masterpiece has become part of me. It makes my own way more perfect. It turns my eyes from myself and my own heart to the face of Christ.

Musicians use the harmony of Bach as the guide because from it could be distilled rules and guidelines that allow even the least experienced musicians to create from a single melody a harmony that works. So, too, the Church uses liturgies to teach us how to pray, to help us crowd out the disorder and clutter of our minds with order and beauty. It puts scripture on our lips, into our hearts. It teaches us that we are not at the center of worship -- God is.

Liturgy and form-prayers do not take the place of our own hearts' groanings. They do not drown out our own songs. They don't take the place of our everyday conversation with God. They do not confine the Spirit. Instead, they make it possible for us, like Paul and Silas in jail, to sing hymns -- most likely the songs of David -- with the Psalmist himself. They allow us to be more than ourselves, and to be transformed when we pray, into our perfectly functioning part of the body, working in harmony with each other part in service to Christ, our Head.

Liturgy doesn't take away from the beauty of a quiet moment alone in God's presence. It doesn't silence our hearts. It does makes an ordinary moment extraordinary by transcending time, place, language and individuality by bringing the church of eternity into the moment we inhabit now. I can't help but find that beautiful.

A Bad Apple

June 23, 2008. 3 pm. We cracked the case.

It all started with the spring, when the buds on the backyard apple tree gave way to tiny green-fleshed wonders. The apples, still too young to whet a human appetite, started to disappear with alarming rapidity. One day there were 20, within a week there were but five. Finally, there was only one left. But where were they going? Nobody at the precinct seemed to know, and they were too busy with their own rash of somewhat less petty crimes to take the case.

That's where I come in. No case is too small. No crime insignificant, and with my band of operatives, it was only a matter of time before I nabbed the thief.

The plan was simple: gather evidence, set up surveillance and wait for the apple bandit to strike. Good fieldwork was essential. I went to the tree and examined all of the branches carefully, undercover, of course, in my guise of gardener. I carefully watered the ground beneath the tree and canvased for footprints or anything that may have been left behind. I found one small apple on the ground - firm, half-missing - and realized that it must have been left by the thief when he was surprised in the act by a lawnmower man or other threat. The tiny apple had been half-eaten by then but the thief had been careful not to leave identifying bite patterns.Next, I talked to one of my informants, a pretty little birdie dressed head to tail in black, with flashy good looks and a sharp beak. Still, I know she's the sort of chick who gets around in the backyard underworld on her mocking wit and quickness as much as her looks. I asked her to put her ear to the ground for me. She chattered and strutted, saying she had seen some squirrely looking guy in a fur coat hanging around the tree, but she didn't know him. She could only say that she suspected that he was part of a large "family" who run and sometimes overrun the yard like so many rodents. She didn't want to say more and she grew increasingly nervous, so she shifted her attention to flitting from branch to branch, displaying her plumage to the best advantage for a passing male of interest.

She'd already given me a lead, but I knew I couldn't trust her implicitly to tell me everything she knew. She'd not be above pointing the finger at someone to throw me off the scent of her wing-man. No, she was slippery, but she could be influenced, in spite of her mocking glances and shrill protestations. So, I laid it on the line: she helped, or I'd find some way to persuade her.

Finally told me she may know someone who can help: Red Hawkins. He was young, intimidating, and eagle-eyed and fairly new to the neighborhood himself. He was also an avid flyer. Most startlingly, though, he was on the up and up. The underworld couldn't touch him, but he knew every burrow and furrow of the area, and he kept it free of snakes and rats when they crossed him. He was a bit of a Lone Ranger, but if anyone knew who the culprit would be, it would be Red, because it was rumored that he kept one eye open, even when he slept, watching both sky and land, waiting for the right moment to pick off some member of the criminal element just often enough that they feared his talons. She said she'd put the word out, and if he wanted to get tangled up in my business, Red would come to me.

I sat in my office, pouring over my notes, a few days later, nursing a tall glass of iced tea and redistributing the North Carolina heat with a fan. The morning had been a bust. I had fielded several calls, but they were mostly false leads. That's when I saw him outside my window - nattily dressed and unruffled by the excitement. Red called to me from the fence with a voice both strong and piercing. My blue eyes met his gray ones, and we came to an immediate understanding. He would lead me to him. All I had to do was wait for his call and stay out of his way. But would we be in time, or would the final apple fall victim before we had a chance to nab the thief?
Apprehension mounted as I waited for the moment of truth to arrive. Minutes stretched into hours, and hours felt like they were days. In reality, it was only about 3 hours before I heard it -- Red's call. I grabbed my camera and ran for the window. There, bounding across the grass was a small creature dressed in the elaborate gray fur coat of the "family", and in his jaws was a tart green fruit. The culprit was soon joined by other members of the family - each wanting a piece of the spoils. But there they were, and I had proof of the theft. I would never catch him alone. I knew that. I might not even be able to thwart the plans of the family next year... but I had cracked the case wide open, and it was only a matter of time before Red would take care of the rest.

I found myself growing a bit sad. The thief had avoided detection for months, during which time he had made now fewer than 20 hits on the tree. Genius like that demands respect as much as it demands revenge. But I know that revenge isn't mine to exact. He's still on the prowl. For now. I snapped a photo for my notes and then saluted Red as he circled high above me. He called out again, his voice pierced the chatter and buzz of the afternoon. He said, "Don't you worry. I have family, too. No crime will go unpunished where we rule from the skies." It won't be long before this bad apple falls from his tree.

The Great Outdoors

I spent a good hour this morning thrilling at the sight and sound of a red-shouldered hawk that chose our backyard as its hangout this morning. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get very good pictures, because when I went outside (I was sneaky and went out the front door and around), it moved on. I can still hear its call, but it is no longer right outside my window. Here are the photos I did manage through the windows and the foliage.
Here is a link to the call that I listened to (click on the link to play the sound from this species), and which helped me settle on its identity as a Red-shouldered hawk over the other options. I have spent some time playing the recorded call and listening to the hawk outside reply. They've been talking for a while now. Simple things really entertain me.

Since we moved here, I have had quite a lot of fun trying to identify the birds, arachnids, insects and animals I encounter. For one thing, there are more of them. For another, I enjoy a challenge, and when discovering which beetle I have spotted out on a trail takes me through about 200 pages of photos, each with about 5 types of beetles, I gain a new appreciation for the richness and diversity of living things... though I sometimes think I could do without the thought that there are thousands of types of beetles.

I'm much more aware here of the passage of time and the seasonal changes. Just a few weeks ago the leafy vines that hide the house behind ours from view were light green and immature and only created a sort of screen. Now they are full and form a lush green curtain. Everything is green (with the exception of what passes for our lawn), despite the moderate drought. Ferns have swarmed the creek bed, stretching feathery tendrils down to toy with the minnows and tadpoles.

Yes... I must say that summer has its charms. We went walking through town two nights ago when the temperatures had cooled and our feet ached to explore. Getting out of the house seems like an imperative now that we both spend so much time here. We walked past the library and into a new neighborhood, and we each picked a wild blackberry from vines just off the road.

Last night I awoke to the rumble of distant thunder, and dozed off and on as the rains bathed our house. Our apple tree has one fruit left trying to make it to maturity. Our tomato vines are starting to bear a few small, green fruit. Daniel has taken to tinkering in the "back 40". Vibrant red cardinals flit from branch to branch. The hibiscus are in bloom. We could ask for somewhat more (a job for Dan, for instance), but there is quite a lot to quietly (or not so quietly -- hawk calls can be rather noisy) enjoy in the meantime.

Drumroll, please...

Behold, the new Dan.