♪ Easy to Be Hard ♪

From the musical, "Hair":


How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold


How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no


And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?

I wandered around this morning, getting ready to simply get out of the house after a looong Monday of Adventures in Dogsitting..but taking Zeus to the vet for personal issues will not be the basis for this blog. Oye no. He's better... and at home with my oldest son today.

While I blow-dried my hair, I thought of texting a friend to go have coffee, and my thoughts wandered to  how I used to go have tea of a Saturday. I started to get wistful, and then remembered that every Saturday was a whine fest about life, church, and church. We rationalized it as venting until one day I said to the person I happened to be with," we've been having this conversation for  a year." 


It took me another year to distance myself from all of those relationships that were based on 'faith'. They weren't based on 'faith'...okay maybe a few. But most of that fellowship was bi-polar in nature.We were either at a party -- or -- helping someone in a crisis. Nothing in between...and it's not just that church, or those people. 

Bad news makes for good gossip. Just think of any news broadcast...we read the ticker across the bottom of CNN and make a judgement on the story, out loud, before the end of it makes it across the big screen. It's easy to be hard, easy to be cold, easy to write a check for tsunami relief and pack shoeboxes for needy children at Christmas, easy to show up at a grieving widow's home with a casserole. It makes us feel good about ourselves. We are helping the less fortunate, the needy the hurting, sometimes in the name of God.

So many churches have this country club mentality, this birthday party/funeral attention deficit dysfunction. If you go twice a week and give of your time and money, you are a member in good standing and get a gold star on your membership card. 

So many people have turned away from organized religion for just this reason -- that little song "the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is the people". 

The Church is not a people... it's not decorating for Christmas and Easter and vacation Bible school and Sunday School. It's about worship, reverence, homage and service to a Creator God, who chose to live as a human being.  

Friendship, true friendship, is not based in crisis or celebration either. Authentic friendship is not bi-polar. It grows and curls around your life and heart like a vine, sometimes dormant in 'winter', but the roots are always there. Kind of like faith... true faith in a Higher Power. Waxing and waning with the seasons, sometimes, but the root never dies,and the tendrils reach out to everyone, not just eligible 'country club' members or poverty-stricken afflicted folks in need.

♪ Silent Night ... by Taylor Swift?

In my weekly missive to my Jonathan's family, I mused on celebrating Advent.  As an adult it seems a little passé, sometimes, since baby Jesus was born all those years ago and hasn't decided to come back as He promised, thus so far...and yet...

...within the mystery of why He chose to become incarnate is the reason for the annual liturgical observances.

No other god, no other deity, no other supreme being walked among mortals. Why would they need to? They were SUPREME beings. No need for mortal sustenance, mortal relationships, mortal interactions. Why demote yourself to this planet if you are a Greek or Roman deity, an female goddess, a  Creator God? No need, no interest. 

I listened to a new version of Silent Night this morning with a little Appalachian influence, more plaintive, quietly reflective. Funny that it would be from a teen-idol pop star, the flaxen-spiral-curled Taylor Swift, who is this generation's crossover Olivia Newton-John. ;-)

Yes she's a pop star...and a musician who writes her own music in response to what is around her..Silent Night. When the organ pipes failed and Franz Gruber wrote a song that Father Mohr played "unplugged". He wrote in response to what was happening. God did the same thing, in deciding to show up here, incarnate.

That particular story of the manger sums up God to me. A Creator of galaxies, the universe, and this silly planet with all of its wonders decided to go through what we do.

 Glory in spite of mortal failure.

Birth, childhood, adolescence, single adulthood -- living with his mothah until he was 30 ( in Jewish cultchah,  when he should have been mahrried at 20, oye, the shame ) -- in a primitive barbaric oppressed nation, and then choosing an agonizing death. 

Glory in spite of mortal failure.

God cares about us silly stupid stubborn people, who live in poverty like He did, or comfort like King Herod did just up the hill from the manger. He cares, far beyond enough, about us to literally go through this life.

I got to watch Brett and the other Youth hang banners proclaiming joy this morning, in spite of my crazy life and achy off-balance existence without my grey-haired blue-eyed boy. A group of families came to lay garlands on the altar rails, and another couple placed huge poinsettias on the chancel altar. Little kids hung gold and white Chrismons on a sparkly tree. Not just tradition, although some take comfort in that, but a big vivid Thank You because He, Jesus, chose to live this mortal life.

You've seen the adage 'only two individuals give their lives for you, the American soldier and Jesus Christ". True enough...but the American soldier didn't choose to be born. Only one person ever did, and His birthday is celebrated at the end of this month.

♪ Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ♪

I wrote this on the plane today, instead of sleeping. :-) 

Waiting. 

 Just a few moments ago we were waiting on the runway, under gray skies at O’Hare, waiting for clearance to take off…and now we are cruising at 30,000 feet in the sunshine, above the clouds.

Funny how life alternates like that.

Lots of life passes waiting for wonderful moments… when you are 5 waiting to be 6, or at least tall enough to ride the good rides at Disneyland without a parent… waiting in lines AT Disneyland… yearning to be 16…18…21… anticipating high school/college/grad school graduation… counting down the days to the wedding… waddling through the days to the baby… crossing off days to Christmas/vacation/retirement…

…and conversely, waiting for moments that you wish you just skip… dozing in a crowded airport, wishing for a shorter delay…sitting in traffic when you could be home…when a marriage ends and you have to pick up the pieces… tensing up for the lab results when you just haven’t felt ‘right’… holding the hand of a loved one while they transition from this world to the next.

Life seems to rush by, but consists of many chapters in limbo, wondering what comes next.

Waiting.

I waited thirty years to see a friend again, and after that time, he fell in love with me and I with him. We’ll see each other face to face every six months for the next two years while he covers overseas assignments…and Skype and Yahoo chat in the meantime.

Waiting.

Stretch marks the size of the Grand Canyon by the time my first child decided to get here, and then took 29 hours of labor and a C-section before he felt like hanging out in the hospital instead of pressing on my bladder.

Waiting.

Twenty years’ estrangement with my academic alcoholic father, and then found myself sitting with my sisters and both of our parents in their dining room, for Christmas, with my sons.

Waiting.

Two years after a mastectomy, five surgeries and an aberrant infection in irradiated tissue… still waiting to see if marginal wholeness will ever be attained.

Waiting.

I’ve learned that waiting can be good, even if often agonizing and generally tedious. We have no control over anything so if we plan, if we don’t plan, life goes on anyway. Marriages end, babies are born, earthquakes happen, friends reunite -- the ebb and flow of the tides over the sands of time.  

While we were on the tarmac just now, a little kid in the back belted out “twinkle twinkle little star, <murmuring next line and then crescendo> up above the world so high like a diamond in the sky” cut off by his mamma before he could finish the verse. HA!

Check out the scenery while you are waiting for whatever you look forward to, and find something beautiful to focus on. Look carefully at the loved ones waiting with you, and mentally jot down what you love about them. Belt out a song that you love.

Fill the moments while you wait… and gray skies will give way to brighter times eventually.

♪ I Hope You Dance

     I dunno if you saw this, but today when I saw 'Where in The World is Matt Lauer?' and his piece about a tribe of Namibians who live the same way their ancestors did thousands of years ago, in dung huts and with little water, living on goat milk and goats' meat -- I got a little wistful.
    Wistful?? <she has definitely gone over the edge, you say>. Wistful. These people are herders.They have no phones, no computers, no electricity. The men wear western dress now, but the women still wear goatskins garments and use a mixture of ocher, ash, and grease to protect and beautify themselves. To make of for lack of water, the women cleanse themselves with smoke from burning a local herb, so they smell pretty.  
     Every evening they sing and dance in front of the holy fire, as the sun goes down, thankful for another day. The sheer joy on all faces is what made me wistful.
   There is an undercurrent of malaise among us these days. Nothing seems right, like when you are a little kid and one of your parents goes away on a business trip or an extended visit, and the house isn't the same until they come home. We have fleeting happiness, but rarely know that sheer joy.
    Most of us Westerners certainly would not  in front of a small fire -- before retiring to a dung-covered hut to sleep on the ground for the night.
    That is all they know, and ergo, all they need.
    I am looking at my laptop, a TV remote, my 3G cell phone, a flat-screen TV, XBOX 360, DVD player, and a cozy living room full of stuff that I have acquired, arranged, and adored for quite some time. Not saying that I wanna go live in a dung-covered hut anytime soon, but the pang of near envy I felt for that thankful face in a desert sunset near a fire really grabbed my consciousness.
    Similarly, yesterday morning in church, I had that same longing for simplicity and peace, and it was answered in a manner most removed from the Namibians' day-to-day existence. I sing in a church with great gleaming organ pipes above each side of the chancel where the choir sits, and we face each other instead of looking out to the pews. Every Sunday, the organist plays the prelude while people straggle in from the parking lot, the restroom, the classrooms, wherever. My section sits and chats about the events and folks listed in the bulletin, and there is a pleasant buzz of fellowship and conversation throughout the sanctuary.  I tuned out yesterday, and just listened to the music.
    The combination of the soaring rich notes of the organ emitting from those gleaming pipes, the sight of 10-foot stained glass windows arching high above warm stone walls, and the intricately carved woodwork gracing the tops of the pipes like a mahogany curtain somehow removed me from the chatter and the crowd. I didn't move, didn't consciously tune out, but the glory of what I was seeing and hearing took me to a place where sheer beauty and I existed alone for just a few moments.
   I struggle with what I don't have. I can't point to a long and lucrative career, my body has been attacked by cancer and cancer-related surgeries, I haven't had the same 'regular' life as my peers, and have yet to 'catch up' with the ones I deem successful. I struggle with the fact that I feel the same way I did in high school, present but not really part of the scene. LOL
   God has a way of yanking me out of the doldrums. The wondrous sight and sound of the prelude yesterday evenly matched the wonder of the joyful faces of those simple people this morning, and then a friend posted this from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
      "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
    Joy can be found in rich, sumptuous experiences -- and in sparse simplicity. Your spirit can dance beneath mahogany woodwork in a cathedral, or on a desert floor. We are all minutiae in the story of the universe, but we can dance while we are here.


I hope you never lose your sense of wonder 
You get your fill to eat 
But always keep that hunger 
May you never take one single breath for granted 
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed 
I hope you still feel small 
When you stand by the ocean 
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens 
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance 

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance 
I hope you dance 
I hope you dance 


Lee Ann Womack