This Is Art (ABP, Day 11)

Today while listening to the '80's channel (during which time we were NOT listening to news or talk radio) Caitlin and I heard this song. It doesn't get played on the radio very much anymore, but it is a classic. It was actually THE very first song ever played on MTV when the channel debuted on August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m. The video below was recorded in 2004 when the Buggles reunited to perform it for a Prince's Trust concert.  The song is a work of art, evoking much more in both text and music than its MTV, 1980's pedigree might suggest. It is not just about video overtaking radio as the prevailing electronic medium; it is about the passage of time, the inexorability of change, and our human inability to fight either. "We can't rewind; we've gone too far."
 

He's Twenty

Twenty years ago today I was experiencing some discomfort but didn't know if it was time to go to the hospital yet. You see, I had never had a baby before and I didn't want to be one of those pregnant ladies who goes to the hospital only to be sent back home. Was this labor? I wasn't sure. So I waited until finally my husband would let me wait no more. We headed to St. John's in Nassau Bay, Texas, but on the way we stopped for frozen yogurt at TCBY. Isn't that what everyone does on the way to have a baby? Whatever. By the time we arrived I was dilated to 5 cm. Trevor was born at 10:43 p.m. and weighed in at 9 pounds, 7 ounces (must have been all that brain matter). We celebrated by ordering pizza.

This is the second year in a row we won't be able to be with Trevor on his birthday. Thank God for Skype. Tonight after he gets back to his dorm room following piano lit class he will video call us and open the package that (I hope) will arrive in his mailbox today.

Where have the years gone?

New Church, Same Cantor

On August 19 my husband was installed as Minister of Music and Worship at a new church. We have been welcomed more warmly than we could have ever anticipated and are seeing with greater clarity each week why God has called him to this place at this time in his professional life. Still, it has been hard to say goodbye to our former church home. We were there for almost thirteen years. During that time we made many dear friends and my husband did much to develop a rich, liturgical, singing piety. In the wake of our departure we have had countless people from our former church reach out to say how much they are going to miss having us in their midst. I have been most touched upon hearing from both young people and their parents about how much my husband's teaching has meant to them in the recent and more distant past. Just a few days ago Phillip received a note from one of his singers in last year's junior high choir. The note read simply, "Alleluia! I'm still in choir. For you, Cantor." When you read something like that you grieve anew for those you have had to leave behind.

But then you see something like this. Another group of children in another place who, just like those we left behind, have a song to sing and need someone to help them sing it. The video below was taken during warm-up for church this morning. It is typical of my husband's approach to working with children: demanding, accepting only the best, but always doing so with a sense of joy and fun. (Former choir members, young and old, will recognize Phillip's "Russian piano teacher" persona.) I told Phillip a few weeks ago that I know that he will be a blessing to all the children with whom he is currently working but that I believe that somewhere among them is a child, maybe more than one, who particularly needs a teacher like him right now, and that is in part why the Lord as called him here.

These children are fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. They have been singing for their new choir director for about a month now. Aren't they sounding beautiful?




"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" - J. S. Bach from Cheryl on Vimeo.

Premonition

Last night Caitlin and I watched Premonition. It was released in 2007 and starred Sandra Bullock. It is of the "psychological thriller" genre, revolving around a housewife who, upon her husband's death in an automobile accident, finds herself caught in an apparent time loop in which she is randomly bouncing around among the days immediately preceding and following her husband's death, but in no particular order. One day she wakes up and her husband is alive and eating breakfast in the kitchen. The next day, she stumbles down the stairs to find that once again he's dead and the living room is filled with mourners. She repeatedly finds herself bumping up against the effects of actions that she has apparently taken but can't remember (for example, discovering a prescription bottle from a psychiatrist that she visited but has no memory of). The result is intriguing, sort of a combination of Groundhog Day and Alfred Hitchcock, and I was quickly drawn in to trying to figure out what was going on and how it would all end.

It was interesting, then, to discover that the reviews of the movie upon its release were pretty poor. Not only was Bullock's performance criticized for being stiff and wooden (she was playing a woman who was in shock following her husband's death, for Pete's sake), but the movie was criticized for being illogical and hard to follow. I would agree that it is confusing. But I think the reviewers that criticize this aspect of it are missing the point. I took the story as a whole to be an allegory of the mind following a life-shattering event. Have you ever had something happen in your life that was so enormous and so pivotal that it seemed to make everything come to an immediate halt? Time seems to stop. And then as you try to come to terms with the event, you find yourself going back in time, reliving not only the event but the days leading up to it. You ask yourself whether you saw this thing coming and whether there is anything you could have done to prevent or change it. You replay things in your mind and pick up on details you hadn't noticed before. You remember and long for the days long before the event, when everything seemed to be normal. And then you find yourself jumping ahead in time, imagining what your life is going to be post-event: wondering how things are going to change and how you're going to manage under the new reality. Sometimes you wonder if you're living a dream--or a nightmare. This is very much how this movie struck me, and as a result, it rang completely true. Sometimes life just doesn't make sense.

One of the things most criticized in the reviews I read was the movie's ending. I don't want to spoil things for anyone who has not seen it, but I think the ending was stunning. For the entire story we see Sandra Bullock as the wife at various times before and after her husband's death. She is like a detective trying to piece together a puzzle, wondering if she might even be able to do something to prevent the terrible thing from taking place. When she discovers that on the day of his accident her husband was driving to meet a woman with whom he had decided to have an affair, she wonders if her husband--and her marriage--are worth saving. She visits a priest who tells her every day is a miracle and she needs to fight for the things she cares about. But it seems a moot point because the time warp she is stuck in won't allow her to wake up on the actual day of her husband's death. Finally, though, the needle skips out of the groove in which it has been stuck and she finds herself reliving the events of THAT day. Rushing to the scene of her husband's accident, she is metaphorically ready to face the truth, whatever that truth is, and move on with her life, wherever it may take her.  

We think of life as a linear thing. And it is. There's a beginning, a middle and an end. But for our brains it's not always that simple. We have a way of replaying things in our minds, tormenting ourselves with the "what if's," "maybe's," and "if only's," wondering whether if we look at a thing from this perspective or that one it will somehow look different. It's something that we need to do, I think, to process great grief or shock or change. But there comes a time when we need to jump off the hamster wheel and move on. We can run on that wheel all we want; it's not going to change the facts. Once we jump off, we are ready to quit reliving the past and start planning and hoping for the future.

I just wish it weren't so hard to make that leap.

Letting Go

Lately I have had a recurring dream about moving from one house to another. The houses in the dream vary. Sometimes the house I am leaving is one from my past; sometimes it is the one I currently live in. The house being moved into is always one that I don't recognize--a figment of my imagination. I have had this dream at least three times in the last week and on at least one night the dream seemed to pick up where it left off the previous night. There are several recurring aspects of the dream. One is a sense of relief--that I am leaving some problem behind with the old house. But that is always balanced with the realization upon moving into the new house that there is something not quite right about it--something I didn't anticipate.

Another recurring feature of these dreams is the process of unpacking and trying to figure out where things go. This is complicated by the fact that the previous owners always seem to leave things behind. Sometimes I like what they have left; sometimes it is in the way. I remember one dream in which the bathroom was filled with someone else's toiletries and cosmetics. Oftentimes it is the curtains, and I have to decide whether to keep them or replace them. In my dream last night it turned out the previous owners had left a bunch of stuff in the basement. Some of it was very nice--for example, an antique sewing machine (even though I don't sew!--why would I dream about a sewing machine?)--and I wondered if I should call them to come get it or if I could keep it. But some of it--for example, some old toys and a big stash of Christmas wrapping paper and decorations--was just taking up space that I needed for our own things and I was annoyed to have to figure out what to do with it.

It is said that dreams tell us things about ourselves--that they reflect things we are struggling with or reveal our minds trying to work through unresolved questions. I don't know if that's true, but as I was thinking about my dream it occurred to me that I am definitely at a time of life where it seems lots of things I have long held on to are asking me to let go of them and I am trying to figure out where the things that remain are going to fit. I am reminded of what a friend told me recently. She said that she has been surprised at this point in her life (she is a few years younger than I) to find that she is in some sense turning her back on many things that heretofore had defined her. I wonder if that happens to a lot of people in middle age. We spend the first half of our lives acquiring things--knowledge, skills, jobs, careers, opinions, friends, spouses, children, possessions, wealth, etc.--and drawing our identity from them. Then in the second half of our life we find ourselves to some extent needing to let go of many of those things (hopefully not the spouse!). Our "career" (whether it's in the workplace or not) takes a turn we didn't expect. The acquisition of knowledge and skill is no longer so important or intense (thank goodness, since it becomes even harder to do!). Instead we find ourselves passing our knowledge and skill on to others. Friendships change, children grow up and leave home, parents die and leave us behind, and siblings drift away. The closer we get to the grave, the less important our possessions seem, and the wealth we have (if any) becomes merely a tool--something that we may need to spend to take care of ourselves our remaining days on this earth. Whatever degree of physical strength and acumen we may have attained starts to dissipate, as does our "beauty" (as defined by the culture). No wonder there is so much written about the so-called "mid-life crisis." We find ourselves at the theoretical midpoint, having attained so much that we have spent our lives seeking, and as we watch it begin to depart from us we ask, "Now what?" What comes after all the seeking?

I think I'm in kind of a "now what" place. In some ways it's nice. It's nice to not have to try so hard, to not have the pressure of needing to prove oneself that seems to accompany youth. It's pleasant to think about slowing down--about sliding down the hill instead of climbing up it. Climbing is hard. But it gives one a focus. And it feeds that dearly held human desire to feel in control.

Now what? Twenty years ago I would have thought I was the one to answer that question for myself. Now I know better.