This past week, I conducted a very informal experiment with music in my college classroom. I would like to repeat the process in future semesters, but here are my findings so far.
For Valeria and all of them.
Today, at the end of an 11-hour workday, I was suddenly faced with a dozen new faces who came to “learn English,” sent by their community education teacher, because they heard that we run a free conversation group on Tuesdays. We regretfully told them we had decided to discontinue the group this semester so we could focus on our enrolled students. We gave them free dictionaries and Spanish/English books, and I stayed with them long enough to learn their names and home countries and life goals. They were from Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Cuba. Their collective goal was to “learn English,” and that made sense, because I don’t know that I would have any other goal either if I was living in a small, cold, gray, northern city far away from anything warm or familiar.
They were at a lower language level than I expected, and even though I slowed down and spoke deliberately, I could tell they had unanswered questions. I seized one of our best students, originally from Mexico, who had recently become a campus ambassador and asked if she would speak to them for a short time. She graciously agreed, and surrendered to their relentless questions for at least a half hour.
This particular student was in the same place not so long ago, but she is thriving. She is talking to me a lot this semester, telling me about her academic worries and hopes, and she came to me tonight after the students finally left. She calls me “Miss” and she said, “Miss, before I wasn’t so good at translating, but I think I’m getting better.” (She’s amazing at it.) “My mom was not happy when I decided to come to [our community college], but I’m glad I’m here. I can do so many things, and your class, I love it, because I wrote essays in high school, but we didn’t go into detail like we do here.”
I said, “That’s great, Valeria, and when you’re done here, you can go to any college you want to!”
“I know, miss.”
The light in her face. The knowledge in her eyes.
The hunger in their body language, begging for a summer class they could attend to “learn English.” Their fear of speaking something as simple as, “I am twenty years old.”
And then I come home and find this song. “Coincidentally.”
poised with grace in this poisoned place
and how you ever manage to keep it off your face
but you don’t even know, you can’t even see
the butterfly that you’re going to be,
the butterfly that you are becoming.
you’re the one, you’re the one.
Of Love by Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver and I must be woven from the same thread.
Of Love
I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some — now carry my revelation with you —
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine
this is how it began.
From New and Selected Poems, 1992, Beacon Press, Boston, MA
Jesus Christ has gone into hell in order to get us out of there. For with everything he does, that is his goal, that he may get us out, reconcile us with God, and fill us with God’s Spirit. He had to despair of God for us (‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’) so that we do not have to despair of God. He has taken this upon himself so that we may become free of it. — Emil Brunner
My Lent readings lately have impressed upon me the necessity of suffering as a Christian, the idea that we must take up our crosses and follow Christ. Although I still think this is true to an extent, I was weighed down by the thought. How much do I have to suffer in order to be a “true Christian”? And then this reading came along, and I realized anew that Christ suffered for us so we would not have to. He went to hell so that we would not have to. He took despair upon himself to give us hope. This is the free gift. How marvelous, this grace.
Why I’m Practicing Lent
I’m almost 30, and this is only the second year that I’m practicing Lent–giving up something I normally consume for the 40-day period preceding Easter. Last year, I gave up coffee and alcohol. This year, it’s no candy, dessert, or soda.
I grew up in Super Protestant Land, in a non-mainstream denomination that distanced itself considerably from anything that smacked of Catholicism. We lit Advent candles, but I barely knew what Lent was until I was in college, and it wasn’t until I was a grad student barista that I first saw someone with a cross on her forehead on Ash Wednesday. That might have been the turning point, actually. How was an ancient tradition still so important to people that they were willing to put soot on their faces and go out in public? I was interested.
I’ve drawn closer and closer to liturgy and tradition as I mature physically and spiritually. So many people ask, “How do I get closer to God? How do I feel his presence?” It’s different for everyone, of course, but the answer is usually some variation on spend time with Scripture, with prayer, with gratitude, with confession. And it’s eternally fascinating to me that ancient Church rituals give us a structure for just those things. I don’t have to flounder around on my own; I can join the throng before me in their pursuit of the presence of God. It’s not about me and my personal preferences; it’s about the Body and joining in its function.
So I’ve taken up the practice of Lent. And I chose to give up something basic, sensual, physical…something that some may say doesn’t really “get in the way of your relationship with God” (Sandlin).
Except I think it can. I believe that we can glorify or defame God with our bodies. I believe overconsumption, thoughtless consumption, is sin. And if we attack sin, even with baby steps, and submit ourselves to discipline, we can understand a little more–just a little–about Christ’s ordeal with sacrifice.
I am not a better person than anyone else because I am practicing Lent. I am not communicating my actions in order to play the holier-than-thou game. I am not in competition with you. All I know is that I am addicted to sugar, and my fortunate position as a middle-class American allows me to indulge such an addiction at every opportunity with no social repercussions. Attempting to remove this fixation from my life, even for a short time, teaches me more about what my life truly is. Yes, we have senses for a reason, and dessert is delicious, and it’s not wrong to enjoy it. But I need to learn that I can be happy without it. I need to learn the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (Phil. 4:12)
Lent, for me, is learning contentment. And this, certainly, has everything to do with understanding that I need not pursue the living God; he is waiting right here for me, behind all of the things that I think “I need.”
“I Shall Not Want” by Audrey Assad
From the love of my own comfort
From the fear of having nothing
From a life of worldly passions
Deliver me, oh God
From the need to be understood
From the need to be accepted
From the fear of being lonely
Deliver me, oh God
And I shall not want
I shall not want
When I taste your goodness, I shall not want
From the fear of serving others
From the fear of death or trial
From the fear of humility
Deliver me, oh God
And I shall not want
I shall not want
When I taste your goodness, I shall not want
Christmas
I went to this beautiful church on Christmas Eve.
It’s Episcopal, and I’m not Episcopal, but I tell you what, I’m this close.
Because it was gorgeous and radiant and reverent, and I could hear the voices of ancient saints pealing through the choir. Some say tradition holds you back in the past, and I suppose that’s possible, if you’re forgetful. But the liturgy here only increased my mindfulness of the present. It led me into humility, as I watched the acolytes bow toward the altar, and made me wonder how often I am willing to assume a posture of submission, figuratively or literally. It inspired awe and reverence, as I was quieted by the candlelight, listening to old chants and hymns, and I thought about how seldom I sit in silence and wait. And I found joy in the greetings of strangers; how often do I offer a word of peace to those around me? Yes, for me, this ancient liturgy connected me to the past, but it surely did not keep me there. It propelled me forward; I carry it with me.
A collect from the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son totake our nature upon him and as at this time to be born of apure virgin: Grant that we, being regenerate and made thychildren by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thyHoly Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, wholiveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit ever, oneGod, world without end.Amen.
Excerpts from “The Divine Dawning” by Karl Rahner
One of the best Advent readings so far. Full version here.
Karl Rahner was a German Jesuit priest who lived from 1904-1984. He was born in Freiburg, was was, coincidentally, the first German city I visited.
Here are some of my favorite excerpts from “The Divine Dawning,” which appears in Watch for the Light that I mentioned in my last post.
Are you the eternal Advent? Are you he who is always still to come, but never arrives in such a way as to fulfill our expectations? Are you the infinitely distant One, who can never be reached?
Are you only the distant horizon surrounding the world of our deeds and sufferings, the horizon which, no matter where we roam, is always just as far away? Are you only the eternal Today, containing within itself all time and all change, equally near to everything, and thus also equally distant?
Contrary to all our fond hopes, you seized upon precisely this kind of human life and made it your own. And you did this not in order to change or abolish it, not so that you could visibly and tangibly transform it, not to divinize it. You didn’t even fill it to overflowing with the kind of goods that men are able to wrest from the small, rocky acre of their temporal life, and which they laboriously store away as their meager provision for eternity.
No, you took upon yourself our kind of life, just as it is. You let it slip away from you, just as ours vanishes from us. You held on to it carefully, so that not a single drop of its torments would be spilled. You hoarded its every fleeting moment, so you could suffer through it all, right to the bitter end.
Is that your real coming? Is that what humanity has been waiting for? Is that why men have made the whole of human history a single great Advent-choir, in which even the blasphemers take part – a single chant crying out for you and your coming? Is your humble human existence from Bethlehem to Calvary really the coming that was to redeem wretched humanity from its misery?
Slowly a light is beginning to dawn. I’ve begun to understand something I have known for a long time: You are still in the process of your coming. Your appearance in the form of a slave was only the beginning of your coming, a beginning in which you chose to redeem men by embracing the very slavery from which you were freeing them. And you can really achieve your purpose in this paradoxical way, because the paths that you tread have a real ending, the narrow passes which you enter soon open out into broad liberty, the cross that you carry inevitably becomes a brilliant banner of triumph.
Behold, you come. And your coming is neither past nor future, but the present, which has only to reach its fulfillment. Now it is still the one single hour of your Advent, at the end of which we too shall have found out that you have really come.
Advent: A Time of Waiting
I found a great book of Advent readings this year, Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. It contains essays and poems from well-known religious writers, including Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Henri Nouwen.
I’ve realized through my reading that, every Christmas, I am reaching back, in nostalgia, for the Christmas of my childhood. The lights, the cookies, the poinsettias, the tree are comfortable and secure. I love these things–they’re full of peace and joy. But I am reminded that the original Nativity had none of these comforts. A teenager gave birth in a shed, and had two choices for where to let her baby sleep: on the floor, or in an animal feeding trough. She was visited by the wise men, but after that, she waited thirty years to fully understand the purpose for her son’s life, and then he was violently taken from her. When I look at the story itself in contrast to how I “celebrate” the story today, the disparities are startling.
Still, though, Christmas lights inspire my reverence. Christmas gifts allow me to bless others. Christmas carols force me to consider the offspring of a virgin’s womb; veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity.
And Advent…
Advent teaches me to wait. Teaches me slowness. Teaches me what I teach my students: learning takes time. Great gifts are quiet, and gradual. Although the trappings of Christmas are in no way representative of the first Christmas in Bethlehem, I think they create a circle of remembrance, a sacred place that allows me to consider the truths of Christmas. Through them, I honor Mary’s waiting, Israel’s waiting, and the world’s waiting for Christ.
Henri Nouwen wrote a wonderful essay on waiting in my book. Here’s an excerpt:
Much of our waiting is filled with wishes: ‘I wish that I would have a job. I wish that the weather would be better. I wish that the pain would go.’ We are full of wishes, and our waiting easily gets entangled in those wishes. . . . But Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were not filled with wishes. They were filled with hope. Hope is something very different. Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises and not just according to our wishes.
And the book begins with a simple poem about waiting. This is my prayer this Advent season.
Lo, in the silent night
A child to God is born
And all is brought again
That ere was lost or lorn.Could but thy soul, O man,
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright.(15th century)
John Newman – “Love Me Again”
Well if this isn’t the best thing I’ve seen all semester.
crystal-clear 