A day in the sun...

Or the shade, as the case may be.

Read into what you will my last post. All is NOT well in wonderland, but I won't be blogging about that. Instead, I want to tell you about my day yesterday, which was such a day that I will hold in the pages of my heart.

First, when I awoke and turned on my email, my online devo finished up the book of Job. The point of Job not being that he ended up with twice of what he had before God smote him... (read below, from Words of Hope)

The narrator ends his story with a version of "They all lived happily
ever after." But that is not really the point. To conclude that
faithfulness always results in earthly rewards flies in the face of
experience and goes against the grain of what the book of Job is all
about. It's not about the goodies. It's about God, and God alone.
"Does Job fear God for nothing?" It turns out that he does.

Prayer: Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; nought be all else to me, save
that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or
sleeping, thy presence my light.

Now, I take stock in when I hear or see the words of my favorite hymn. I first learned "Be Thou My Vision" in Vienna, (yes, Austria) when I was a sophomore in college. It was a hard summer--I was leaving Pittsburgh, transferring from Carlow College to the small school in Maryland I eventually graduated from. My parents were still living in Poland, so I was doing a lot of the legwork on my own. You might say I had to grow up fast. Well, and I did. But my parents offered me a gift: "Would you like to go to Vienna Summer School?" They had both gone when they were in college. YES! I would love to! So I spent a week with people my age traveling Europe, including Prague. Then I spent three weeks in Vienna, with weekends in Venice and Salzburg. The one weekend we were in Vienna, I insisted on going to church. So I found the English language church and some people from the program joined me.

The prelude was Schuman or Schubert, a violin solo. It was the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard, and if I hear it again, I will leap for joy. (I never found out what it was.)

And one of the hymns was Be Thou My Vision. Which for many years I thought would be the processional in my wedding but then I came upon [German hymn, cannot remember it at the moment] which has a steadier walking beat. BTMV has sort of an irregular beat. (It is Irish Celtic, and the one I've since picked is German. Go figure.) (I'm finding the mental block fascinating, and strangely comforting.) (update at 11 pm: It's "Fairest Lord Jesus.")

That was the summer of D, who fits the profile of most of the men I've dated since (and bears a great resemblance to a certain fella.) A PPK (professor and preacher's kid), he was agnostic but brilliant. I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. We went to the art exhibits at Upper Belvedere--I had the sense that he had a girl back home, but we didn't talk about that. It was your quintessential "summer fling." For those three weeks in Vienna, it was us.

(Interesting tidbit--my father had the same sort of relationship with D's aunt when HE went to Vienna Summer School. D's aunt was engaged, and yet my dad and D's aunt spent the summer together, as friends.)

Converse to everything I say about what I keep or don't keep about former beaus (I generally get rid of everything), I still have the two letters D wrote me when I returned to my tiny college in Maryland. The second was a letter in which he told me he was getting married. I never wrote him again. But the letters, I cherish, as they are really the only "love letters" I ever recieved in the mail and D was very precious to me, for that period in my life.

Funny how writing takes you to places you never thought you'd return...so what I meant to write to you about was actually another song I learned, during the same period of my life. I think it was the next summer, the summer of my junior year of college, that I found an English speaking Christian fellowship in Warsaw. I was working at the Embassy, in the USAID office. Every Wednesday, I met with a group of people my age and we sang songs. I treasure that time, and many of those songs are songs that I have never sung with groups since.

One of them is this one:

You shall go out with joy
and be led forth in peace
and the mountains and the hills
shall break forth before you
there will be shouts of joy
and the trees of the field
shall clap
shall clap
their hands.
And the trees of the field will clap their hands (clap clap)
the trees of the field shall clap their hands (clap clap)
and the trees of the field shall clap their hands,
and you'll go out with joy.

I still remember walking down Dombrowskiego Street where my parents lived, the buildings pocked with what could have been WWII damage, and lined with WWII memorials which had fresh flowers daily. The year was 1991. It was summer, and light late, so I could take the tram anywhere. Off the tram I came, and walked to my parent's house, singing this song and clapping at the appropriate intervals.

The reason this song came back into my life was that on yesterday, this day of days, I accompanied Mr. FF to the church where he plays piano as a summer substitute. And we had to go early so he could attend a meeting to plan music for an upcoming picnic/worship service. And I was invited in on the meeting. Two of my suggestions, The Trees of the Field (see above) and Shine Jesus Shine, were added to the mix. It was glorious, to be welcomed in so quickly by these people, and included in the creative process.

Stay tuned, for more of "The day that I will treasure."

(Which in some ways resembled Lucy's experience in "While You Were Sleeping" -- the family welcomed her in. It was not FF's family, but the family that has taken him in at this lovely country church, but we were treated as family, and I was brought into the fold as if I'd been there for years.)

Then the time came when the risk it took To remain tight in a bud was more painful Than the risk it took to blossom."--Anais Nin

I am working things out in my mind and heart with fear and trembling. These are the words I comfort and challenge myself with:

When I grow tired of my students, as I always do--
staring at their faces till my sockets burn,
I remember one girl told me
how she followed a boyfriend home--
found him in tears--
He rocked on the bed,
screamed at her to Get away.
So she turned off his light
and closed the door,
and sat on his floor till morning.

When I think of this girl speaking in her gentle voice with its rough edges
I think of how teaching is like crouching sleepless
in a darkened room refusing to get up
knowing nothing will come of this,
--or only a story, maybe.

(anon, from Small Victories by Samuel G. Freedman)

**************

The Dare

Come walk the alley fence
Come tight-rope like a clown
Before Dad sees we're up too high
and shouts to get us down.

As confident as cats
We'll glide across the top
Hoping Mom doesn't look outside
And order us to stop.

We'll maybe lose our nerve
We'll maybe crash and fall
They'll probably shake their heads and say
"This doesn't make a bit of sense!
We warned you girls just yesterday!"
And send you home and make me stay.
But still--I dare you anyway,
To walk the alley fence.

--Ann R. Blaksler

********************

“What do you do when there’s nothing you can do,” Gram said. “I dunno, I do something else,” Dicey said. (Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt)

********************

Keep walking right through the hard things to where you can see Me. Leave the past behind and look up to me above all anxiety and grayness. I've already risen above them and am about to show you a new day. You'll find out who you are as you face the pain and help other people through it. And intimacy comes when you quit running from the truth about yourself and decide to turn loose...and walk into the future with Me. (the narrator here is God, as written by Keith Miller.)

****************

Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons by Diane Wakoski (snippets. It's a super long poem, but it's worth printing out and reading the whole thing--go to the link.)

The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard,

as if you were walking on the beach

and found a diamond

as big as a shoe;

***

Love is a man

with a mustache

gently holding me every night,

always being there when I need to touch him;

he could not know the painfully loud

music from the past that

his loving stops from pounding, banging,

battering through my brain,

which does its best to destroy the precarious gray matter when I

am alone;

he does not hear Mrs. Hillhouse’s canary singing for me,

liking the sound of my lesson this week,

telling me,

confirming what my teacher says,

that I have a gift for the piano

few of her other pupils had.

When I touch the man

I love,

I want to thank my mother for giving me

piano lessons

all those years,

keeping the memory of Beethoven,

a deaf tortured man,

in mind;

of the beauty that can come

from even an ugly

past.

Diane Wakoski, “Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons” from Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987. Copyright ¦copy; 1988 by Diane Wakoski. Reprinted
with the permission of David R. Godine/Black Sparrow Press, www.blacksparrowbooks.com/titles/wakoski.htm.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, an all manner of things shall be well. (Dame Julian of Norwich)

Sweet William strikes again...

Billy Joel has not succeeded at life, you say. I agree. He is a bit of a tormented soul.

But when I'm sitting here, browsing the New York Times most emailed list and realizing how much I am like my father (emailing apropos articles to friends), an instrumental of "Just the way you are" comes on my radio station.

And I stopped, stock still, and put my feet up on the side of my desk, and listened, filling in the words.

Don't go trying some new fashion
Don't change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion

Looking at the lyrics, I realize it's Mr. Roger's song "It's You I like" for grown-ups.

And thinking theologically, I open my Women's Devotional Bible (NIV) at Psalm 139. "You hem me in -- behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me... (vs. 5)

"I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful (AND I'M ONE OF THEM, is the silent shout.) (vs. 13-16)

A little call and response for this Sunday morning.

It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair--

As my friend from high school Scott would say, Good morning.