Wisdom Tree

LIttle Songs

For years, many years ago, I was a musician. Not a professional--I was never that good, but I was pretty good. And I sang all the time. Then things changed, and I stopped singing. My life of writing books had emerged, and my voice was failing, so I let it go . . .

Now I find myself singing again--to myself, while I walk or drive. Songs are a great gift. Sometimes I sing the songs I wrote back in the days of songwriting and small concerts. Mostly I become attracted to a particular song and learn it and sing it. A few of my musical companions:

During Advent: "The angel Gabriel from heaven came . . ." / "I'll Be Home for Christmas" / "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

Lately: "If Not Now" and "I Do Not Know Its Name" by Carrie Newcomer

Always, from time to time: "Trumpet Child" by Over the Rhine

From Babette's Feast (and we've sung it at my church): "If Thou But Suffer God to Guide Thee"

It's always good to have a song, to discover a song and learn it by heart, to sing it to yourself when you want to feel the air spinning inside you and marvelous phrases lifting out of yourself and beyond . . .

Ash Wednesday Sermon 2012

I had the true privilege of preaching for two of my church's Ash Wednesday services yesterday. For anyone interested, here's the text. And thanks to my writer friend, Ellen, who, when I said the sermon must be only eight minutes, replied, "Wow--that's a poem!" This turned out to be a great way to approach the writing.

Is Forty Days Time Enough?

1
Today, we begin the 40-day march toward resurrection.
Just as we’re tempted to rush through Advent to reach Christmas Day,
we might want to hasten now, through the gray weeks of Lent
to arrive at the great, bright moment we call Easter.
But it is not advisable to hurry when it comes to journeys of the spirit.
Interior progress never happens quickly.
It takes time to learn how to pray,
or to discern with wisdom,
or to unravel our conflicts,
or even to change our minds.
Sometimes, I think it takes a lifetime
to understand why resurrection is even necessary.

2
Lent is the season for truth-telling.
Isaiah, with devastating accuracy, tells people about their lives.
A prophet knows that no one is healed before there is a diagnosis,
and no justice occurs before judgment shines its light.
Sometimes it takes decades to see ourselves clearly,
to name ourselves as wounded and lost and undone.
We do not like to be needy.
We do not aspire to vulnerability.
Is forty days time enough for us to know our truth and speak it?

3
We wear these ashes because we recognize our need to repent,
also, the ongoing necessity for divine help.
I am not okay. I hurt. I hurt others.
I participate in systems that oppress entire peoples
and destroy the very earth that supports us.
I hold grudges. I find it hard to trust or to open my heart.
I judge and reject other people; I judge and reject my own life.
I am leveled by dangerous illness; I am assaulted by horrendous loss.
I try and try, but fail at the best results.
I want and want, but am never satisfied.
This is my life; this is our life.
Is forty days time enough to comprehend what it means to be human?

4
During Lent, many of us will fast
in the hope that the ache for food might awaken our deeper hunger.
When that happens, we may discover that some desires—
the ones at the center of us—are so large and wild
that we fear they are too tall an order, even for God.
But God built us to be hungry,
to move because we are restless,
to reach and grow because we long for something more.
Is forty days time enough to grow brave in our desire?

5
These ashes also convey, simply this: we will die.
The human body consists of the stuff that stars are made of.
We are the universe in particular form.
We do believe in resurrection, and life eternal,
but a day comes when the breath fails, and the heart stops,
and we proceed to mystery while this body becomes, once again,
a collection of cosmic elements returned to earth, sea, and sky.
Is forty days time enough to build our courage for that day?

6
Is this season of Lent really adequate for so much to be accomplished in us?
Is it long enough for our slow understanding; is it deep enough for our bottomless want?
The good news is—yes! It is enough.
Otherwise, we must wear ashes every day and always.
But the prophets would not have prophesied our dire state
except that God’s compassion sent them.
The psalmist would not have sung our deliverance
except that grace was already out to find us.
And Jesus would not have embarked upon this journey
except he knew that we would finish it with him.
They all knew that every journey—that is, every transformation
—begins because there is mercy; with the turning of every day, mercy.
And each step and stop and stride and stumble
leads right into the open arms of God.

7
Today, we begin our march toward resurrection.
Let’s take our time.
Let’s enjoy one another’s company.
And let us tend with patience our fragile and beautiful life.
Because God does love us, and walks with us,
preparing us for everything.

Love, Gradually

A friend of mine died several years ago, leaving an eight-year-old daughter. Due to the father’s work situation, this girl has lived with my husband and me, off and on, for going on eight years.

I still let God know, every now and then, what I think about this. A girl needs her mom, in fundamental, crucial ways. Moms need to stay around. The wrongness of this loss cannot be expressed without screams and obscenities.

I never tried to be mom to this girl, because I knew I couldn’t come up to the golden standard set by the real mom. I didn’t want this child to think that I thought her mom was replaceable or that I deserved the kind of love and respect her real mom deserved.

Still, even with no mom, mothering needs to happen. So over the years I’ve tried to do everything a real mom would do—from tucking into bed to making rules and enforcing them, from being silly to sharing sadness. It’s been an interesting kind of love. It had to be a love that made few demands for reciprocation. It had to be a hands-off kind of love—and yet it had to be a love that held her securely.

Actually, this is the kind of love that any parent must learn. I knew from the get-go that this daughter did not belong to me. But I hear women all the time speaking about the hard lesson of allowing their children to be their children but not their possessions. A woman gives birth to a child that formed from her own body; yet that child is a person separate from her, one who will develop her own style, likes and dislikes, passions, and priorities. At some point, any good parent understands this and turns loose.

But what happens when the love begins in this posture of turning loose? How effective can hands-off love really be? When must a parent or parent-figure stake a claim and hang on? When is it—if ever—appropriate to make demands?

So far, it has been a dance, sometimes an awkward dance, at least on my part. It seems that there is no one time to turn loose or hold on but a progression that involves both. Some days are hands-off days; other days the door must be breached and direct questions asked and the parent must stand there in the room until the daughter reveals her heart and allows discussion.

I like to call this gradual love, because it’s the real thing but grows over time. It goes its own way and forms its own landscape. Forgive me for saying something so predictable, but this landscape is, for me, holy ground. It is where two people decide, from one moment to the next, how much information to offer, how much emotion to invest, how widely to open their lives to each other.

It’s gradual love, dynamic and unpredictable. But also, intense enough to change your life, sometimes every minute of the day.

 

 

Enough Love

This Valentine's Day, I'm twenty years married to the same guy. We're not all sizzling romance as we were in the early days, but love is good.

Still, I don't have enough love. Actually, I'll probably never have enough love.

That's the way it's supposed to be, isn't it? Aren't we made for desire, for longings fulfilled and unfufilled? It seems to me that I'm much more active and motivated by longing than I am by being satisfied. Whether it's longing for rest or food or touch or company, most of the real living happens between longing and fulfillment.

So, I hope that always, always, I'll be needing even just a little more love. That way, I will be more fully alive, awake, and paying attention to any and all possibilities.

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all.

Should Be Age Requirements for Perseverance

I've never been one to shy away from challenging the Divine. Maybe it's the way I was brought up--in a household where we all bitched pretty freely. I don't think bitching should be a habit, just an honest response when appropriate to the situation.

So today I present my bitching in the form of a suggestion to the Almighty. I realize that I am not wise enough to give God advice--that's not even the point. Consider this a form of prayer.

A person really should reach some sort of minimum age requirement before having to learn perseverance. For instance, hungry babies should be fed and not expected to simply hold out until food is made available by the prevailing government or occupying force or whatever.

Also, adolescents should not have to fight cancer before they've been to their first prom. That's just wrong, in my human opinion. A kid should not have to devise elaborate plans for eating, sleeping, moving, managing pain, and keeping food down. That's a form of perseverance that could certainly be kicked up a level, don't you think? Could we please allow that adolescent to learn how to, say, keep a part-time job and manage a bank account first? Could we give the kid time to fall in love and be silly and skate on the edge of rebellion at school and home?

Perseverance should be reserved for people who have built up some steam already, for those of us old enough to have fallen down and gotten up a few times. And perseverance should be developed in increments anyway, not in huge servings all at once and with no warning.

Okay, then. Amen.

Beautiful 10 Minutes of Gratitude

Thanks to friends Tom McGrath and Paul Campbell, I've a glorious video for you. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDMoiEkyuQ&feature=player_embedded

Daring to Desire

As a fundamentalist Christian, I learned quite early to fear my desires. They most certainly would lead to activity that God did not desire for me. We tended to interpret "desire" as anything having to do with sensuality, such as sex. Rarely did desire get linked--in sermons or in conversations--to unhealthy appetites for power or control, certainly not to any forms of corporate evil or injustice. Desire was personal and perilous.

I'm about two decades out of fundamentalism, and I have enjoyed freedom of the senses, sexual or otherwise, for many years. But in truth, I still fear my desires. I fear to know what I really need out of life. I fear to acknowledge what I long for. And although you would think that as we grow older we would get better at contentment, it seems that longing deepens and that the soul's interior cries grow more insistent.

Perhaps it becomes more difficult to admit unhappiness as we grow older and become more established in some aspects. We're engaged in long-term commitments; we're partnered up, and we've given years to a career. If we are indeed unhappy, what can we un-do without destroying a life we have built? Chances are, the unhappiness does not issue from some fleeting, insubstantial thing--out of sheer practice we have learned to tolerate inconvenience, pain, and rerouted plans. We've learned not to allow shallow and short-lived circumstances to influence our happiness. The discontent we now experience comes from matters more settled and over-arching. It's easier to avoid thinking about the discontent than it is to approach the magnitude of it.

But I believe that a person's deepest desires merit attention and respect. Usually our true desires mirror Divine desire, and when we neglect them we not only prevent personal healing but also spiritual progress.

This means that 2012 may be a rocky year. I need to understand what my soul needs, what my life wants, what the most honest me dreams of. Not a safe course at all. Not easy, not without its cost.

Gently into the New Year

I usually approach the New Year left-brain first. I list goals, then prioritize, then put them tentatively into a calendar. I create a daily schedule by which to do everything that seems important: exercise, meditation, prayer, writing, and so forth. I can spend hours doing this. I emerge from my cave (writing room with closed door, music, candles, and teapot) with my life sketched out in detail, at least for the month of January.

Wait for it . . . failure in the first or second week. This happens year after year. I do the exercise of organizing life mainly because it feels so satisfying, and we should pay attention to what elicits that feeling. I think it helps me think about my year, my life, my priorities and values. Time spent meditating on those things is not wasted, even if the plan crashes within days of its inception.

This year I did the prioritizing and some scheduling. But I resisted the neurotic urge to create a daily schedule. Time for a kinder, gentler me. Time to say yes to the exercise but no to the plan itself. I have decided to walk softly into the New Year.

Also, time for more gentleness with Vinita. It makes me wince to actually write that, but after so many friends, spiritual directors, and supervisors say the same thing, it seems wise that I listen and do as they ask.

I've been married twenty years. I've been me for almost fifty-four years. I've been an editor and writer for two decades. There's wear and tear involved in simply existing on this planet, even more if you dare to love people and the rest of creation, even more if you work hard and nurture creativity. All of that work and love and creativity walk around in one body, a body that never rests. It keeps breathing and circulating blood. It keeps healing itself. It keeps performing the same motions and functions, thousands of hours on end, with no break, ever.

So it's appropriate, don't you think, to treat the body more kindly and more intentionally? What about a massage once a month? What about lotion on dry skin? What about brisk walks and the liquid movements of Tai Chi, the therapeutic stretches of yoga? What about better food? What about laughing more and sleeping better? What about wearing clothes that feel right and look good?

If not now, when? Here's to 2012, the year of living gently. 

Before Annunciation

Just before snow covers,

it reveals. In the gloom and gray

appear the bright veins of stone

and rippled bark, the sharp character

of shingles, beams, street signs, forgotten

toys and paper bags. It’s as if the interior

of everything has grown outward,

adorning itself in fine lace.

 

I like to think that, before the great angel

pronounced and the Holy Spirit overwhelmed,

the girl Mary had a moment—or perhaps years—

of revelatory and incidental wonders,

and even that morning, taking her breakfast,

she said something startling, and her dreams glistened

upon the outlines of face, shoulders, hips and feet;

and something gusted through the room,

hinting of chill and snowflakes.

V.H.Wright Copyright 2008

After the first of the year, I will make certain this blog is connected to the blog I write for at Loyola Press. For now, take a look at today's post:

http://deepeningfriendship.loyolapress.com/2011/12/21/when-family-isnt-there/