Three Movements

I struggled with whether to write a post this week. I decided to because the witness of my readers helps move my thinking forward.

My beloved father has been in the hospital with pneumonia that may be an indication of a more serious problem. Daddy has been in remission for almost 20 years from prostate cancer that had metastasized. His doctor 19 years ago, described the cancer as being “all over him.” Through the miracle of chemo by mouth, the cancer was arrested. Now it may be back. Or not. We’re waiting to hear the lab results. We do know that one of his lungs is not expanding because of a hard mass.

Despite the cancer, until recently Daddy experienced fairly good health except for low back pain due to a growth near his spine. He has lived to watch my children grow up and attend university and to meet his first great-grandchild. Until the pneumonia he daily took walks, read two newspapers and enjoyed a cold beer. He also traveled to family reunions, tended his tiny garden, attended jazz festivals and watched my brother, a blues musician, perform.

We have had him with us far longer than any one could have expected. Still I‘m reluctant to think about letting him go. He has told me several times in the past months, “I can’t live forever. I’ve got to go sometime. I’m 80 years old. I’m tired.” And well he should be.

Daddy was born in Jim Crow-era Newnan, Georgia, to a sharecropper father whom he watched cheated repeatedly as he sold his cotton to the powers that were. A leader in his community, my grandfather was reduced to less than less-than. He dared not protest nor hint at any anger for fear of losing his life as well as his livelihood. Unfortunately he turned his rage on his family. When my father was a teenager, my grandmother, tired of being battered, walked to the train station and headed north. Her six children soon followed.

My father didn’t find the North much friendlier. After serving in the Marines, he worked in Ohio steel mills. Black men received the worst jobs in the mills; Daddy worked in the lowest, hottest parts. Workers were frequently laid-off which made it difficult to pay the mortgage on our little house. During the off-times he worked at a car wash to support us. Other times, he worked as much overtime as he could. He often worked seven days a week to help pay for my university tuition and extras like a short trip abroad.

Despite his hard work, Daddy was not afforded the dignity he should have received. Bankers refused to cash his paycheck—even though it was drawn on their bank. Toward the latter part of his work life, when he drove red-hot steel on tractor-trailers between mills, his loads were often refused at the gate. He would have to wait 8 hours or more to unload and reload; paid by the load, this cut into his pay. And when he had to take disability retirement because of the cancer, he was denied one of his pensions.

If anyone deserves rest, it is he.

Because summer is almost over and it’s almost time to move again, I have slowly begun moving small loads into my new apartment. It’s a beautiful place with views of the Potomac. In the winter I’ll be able to see the Washington Monument and the Kennedy Center clearly from my windows. At first I wasn’t sure about moving to this particular place, but after seeing it I know it’s the right place for me.

Moving now holds more emotional urgency because of my father’s situation. I’ve already moved into a place of gratitude for the gift of time I’ve had with Daddy. Most of his brothers are gone, and, as he recently told me, “All the guys my age are dead.” I know when I see him tomorrow I’ll have to move to a place of acceptance: of his fragility, his suffering and his refusal to be treated for certain conditions. When I protest, my friends remind me to ask him what he wants. It is his life and he can live it—or not—as he will. I have to remind myself of what I’ve told others, “People choose the time of their death.” That could be 10 years away. Still when the end does come as Daddy so often reminds me that it will, I imagine my final movement will have to be to a place of grace beyond imagining.

What is Noise

Despite last week’s post, I received a message from the universe that I hadn’t gone far enough.

I was walking at the edge of campus in the shade while reading the latest news on my Blackberry. I was so absorbed I didn’t look up until someone tried to pass me. Then I heard a voice saying, “Vikki, didn’t you hear me calling you? I’ve been calling you and calling you.” And she didn’t mean on my phone.

It was my program director. Apparently she had been following me trying to get my attention. I had no inkling that she had been behind me. I neither heard nor felt her presence, so absorbed was I by the tiny screen in my hand. I was stunned.

Last week several articles popped up online (where else?) about people’s absorption with technology and how it affects their quality of life. One of the articles included a sidebar with a test for internet addiction. Of course, I took it, and, I’m embarrassed to say, I passed (or would that be flunked?). As someone who prides herself in getting through the 60s and 70s without imbibing in anything, I was undone.

I talked with my spiritual director about it, and she asked, “Do you think you are?” I responded with the classic addict’s line, “I can stop anytime.” She, a recovered alcoholic, gently laughed and said, “For a good week, and then you’ll start again.”

During our weekly Benedictine Life and Prayer meeting, we talked about our attachment to technology. Fearless Facilitator Greg explained that he refuses to engage with anything electronic before his morning prayers: no TV, radio, internet or iPhone (lucky guy). I knew he had refused to join Twitter (he’s the one who gently guided me toward blogging rather than tweeting) and has consciously disengaged from Facebook. I also know him to be someone who very carefully guards his time, and I understand completely why he does.

I used to be more like Greg. My daughter, Fod, who works for Verizon Wireless, decided when we switched to her company that I should get a Blackberry. I hated it but found that it made it very easy to read the news or check my email on the run. Slowly and insidiously it worked its way into my life. Now I understand why people have nicknamed it the Crackberry (likening it to the highly addictive form of cocaine, called crack, that plagued the inner city in the 80s). Before I began using it, I used to laugh at people hunched over their phones everywhere. Then I became one of them.

I’ve since realized that receiving input at all times of the day is antithetical to the life I want to lead. It is noise, to use a communication term. In this context noise is not just sound; it is anything that interferes with a person’s ability to listen. Noise can be visual—such as the bright beckoning screens of electronica.

What Greg does—and what I used to do better—is to reduce the noise. When I do I can more clearly listen for God and to God. Checking my emails, text messages or the news first thing often sends me in a direction I don’t want to go. By the time I sit to listen, my mind is often so crowded with the day’s tasks that it’s hard to be still and acknowledge what God might have to say to me or even what emerges from my best self. And those are the two reasons why I joined this life of radical balance.

Obviously, I won’t stop using technology; I can however put it in its proper place. It’s a struggle, but I have been experimenting with different ways of dealing with it: Recharging the phone across the room instead of near my bed, using a dead PDA for my alarm, forcing the Blackberry back into my pocket or bag when I’m tempted to read while walking, or simply just saying No to the little red stars that pop up on my screen all day.

Benedict did not have technology to contend with, but he did make provision in his Rule for the many interruptions that life would bring. He emphasizes that when the bell rings for daily prayers (seven times a day!), the monk should “immediately set aside what [is] in hand … ” because “… nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God.” (The Rule of Saint Benedict 43:3)

Certainly not a 2.44 inch screen.

Ear-ily Familiar

Last week I took some long-neglected hearing tests. My children had complained that I couldn’t hear them. Fod had gotten so frustrated she told to me that she didn’t like talking to me on the phone anymore—which is one of the main ways we communicate since she lives in another state. Fyd got tired of having to repeat herself. Finally, last fall as the classroom became nightmarish when too many students spoke at once, I asked for a hearing exam.

What could be the cause? I wondered. I didn’t use ear buds or headphones. (Someone had told me when I lived in Japan in the age of the original Walkman I was not the kind of person who should use it out and about. I would get too lost in the music to function safely.) I didn’t go to loud concerts in my youth (my older brother practicing with his band in the basement excepted). I had suffered through a couple of sinus infections throughout the cold months that seemed to go straight to my ears, but still.

The audiologist remarked that I had tiny ear canals so she used pediatric ear buds for my tests. (When she took them out after the final test, I wanted to take a fork to them, my ears itched so badly.) That explained the impactions I had endured as a child.

"Your hearing is excellent. It’s like a 10-year-old's," she announced. “Then why can’t I hear?” I practically sputtered. “It could be that you have a lot going on or you’re easily distracted. If you’re not getting enough sleep or under a lot of stress your hearing may suffer,” she replied.

That explains it. I've said I haven’t seen my bedtime for the past four years. Due to my chaplaincy duties I am often up past 10 p.m. which is my optimal bedtime. Even when I don’t have those duties, I have gotten into a bad habit of going to bed late. And when I do get to sleep, I am easily awakened—no doubt also due to my excellent hearing. Who knew? Add that to my peripatetic life—teaching here, on-call there, meeting somewhere else, maintaining up to 6 email accounts. Yes, I had a lot to be distracted by, and, especially last fall, I was carrying a load of poorly managed stress.

I started thinking about what I teach students in my Communication classes: Hearing is involuntary and physiological; listening is voluntary and psychological. Listening takes more energy than hearing. So I was hearing people—that’s why I was so easily awakened—but because of my reduced energy from lack of sleep and rushing about the city, maybe at times I wasn’t able to fully listen.

And what was the first word of the Rule of St. Benedict again? Not hear, but “Listen.”

As usual when I have self-diagnosed an ill, I had looked up the treatment. Over and over the advice to people who are hard of hearing (or who think they are) was: pay attention.

The latest iteration of my personal rule includes something about rest and, more specifically, sleep. Sister Joan in her commentary on the Rule seems to be writing just for me, “Pay attention to the instructions in [your] rule and attend to the important things in life.” (The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages, Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, p. 19)

What is Fun?

I attended the wedding reception of two dear friends his past weekend. They are a young Ghanaian couple who did a distinctive first dance as husband and wife. Afterward we had fun toasting them and dancing to Ghanaian music. The best man, who supplied the music from his ipod play list, kept it playing as we piled into cars to take bridal party photos at various D.C. landmarks. He told me that if we had been in Ghana, the celebration would have gone on until 4 a.m. the next morning. That sounded like—fun.

Fun is not a word you will find in The Rule of St. Benedict. I looked. It’s not there. Life and times in the 6th century were probably too hard for common people to think about what today we call fun. Fun is probably more of a 20th century concept. Actually, according to Oxford Dictionary Online (yes, word nerd that I am, I looked it up), the word is:

late 17th century (denoting a trick or hoax): from obsolete fun 'to cheat or hoax', dialect variant of late Middle English fon 'make a fool of, be a fool', related to fon 'a fool', of unknown origin. http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1249505

I remember fun being a watchword among my more bohemian friends in the 70s at my conservative Christian university. Other friends couldn’t understand why everything had to be fun or why fun even needed to be pursued. Still most of us were convinced that the administration did everything in their power to intercept any fun our young minds could devise.

So I was surprised when my spiritual director, an associate of a monastery and a married vowed solitary who had previously been an attorney and most likely had much fun in her day, looked over my emerging Rule of Life, and said, “There’s no fun in it.”

Oh. I had thought cultivating friendships and seeking beauty covered fun. Under that part of my rule I had had lunches with friends, gone to a couple of concerts with my cousin and seen a play with an erstwhile prayer partner. I thought those were fun.

I had been accused of being too serious or taking myself too seriously in the past, but I’ve laughed more—mostly at myself—within that last 10 years than I have my whole life. Ask the community; I’m a veritable crackup during our weekly meetings. Maybe funny doesn’t come under fun. Maybe only you can decide what’s fun.

So I thought about my past experiences of fun: Being swept across campus by my friend, Randy, as we sang the lyrics to the Follow the Yellow Brick Road; trying to learn card tricks from my floor residents; playing hand games with my students from the Caribbean; FYD and I playing a board game on a blanket on the lawn on a lazy summer afternoon when she was six; her sister, Favorite Oldest Daughter (FOD), inviting her whole sophomore class to our apartment for a dance party after vespers (don’t tell their parents, please); the three of us singing along to 70s tunes during road trips. And, of course, playing with my Favorite Only Granddaughter (FOG) has always been fun. (Hmmmm, fun often seemed to involve people younger than I. Without them, apparently very little fun would be had by me.)

I was looking forward to having fun with FOG, for a couple of days this past May, but due to a confluence of circumstances I saw her for only about 45 minutes.

FOG was soaking wet after their long drive from Tennessee. Her mother was hungry, overwhelmed by the heat and disappointed that I wasn’t ready or able to go. FOG’s father was annoyed that he’d had to come into the city and lose their driving momentum. I was angry at myself for miscalculating my readiness for both the move and spending the holiday weekend with them. FYD was nowhere to be found.

My apartment was full of half packed boxes and everything else was everywhere but where it should be. It really wasn’t a safe environment for a toddler. Since we needed to get FOG washed and changed, I carried her through the mess to the bathroom. Meanwhile FYD had arrived to help carry things I was giving (back) to FOD to the car. She was the only person happy about us not spending the weekend with them. She had thought doing so would spoil her weekend fun.

As we walked back through the living room, my granddaughter looked down and spotted, in midst of the chaos, a tiny orange basketball I had unearthed from some box. "Ball," she said (the first word she had spoken since she arrived) reaching for it. So I gave it to her. I marveled at how quickly and easily she had found an object associated with fun among the physical and emotional chaos that threatened to bury the four people who loved her most.

FOG held onto the ball as she was carried to her stroller, as I hugged her good-bye and as she was lifted back into her car seat. Her mother said she played with it until their dog claimed it as his own.

At the car FOG’s mother, father, FYD and I smiled and hugged each other—something we hadn’t done when they first rolled up. (It’s amazing what a little fun will do.)

If fun is the “enjoyment, amusement or lighthearted pleasure” that the Oxford Dictionary defines it as, I know of four adults who, led by a two-year-old, experienced a bit of fun on that last Friday in May.

Moved; Un-settled

Two weeks and two days ago I discovered that moving day was in 24, not 48 hours. I switched into panic mode—which for me is instant mental and physical paralysis. According to my Favorite Youngest Daughter (or FYD, introduced in the Teen Travails post), I would slowly pick up something, stare at it and set it down. Apparently I did this several times.

When FYD told me this I did what I do best: initiated a plea for help. “Janice,” I cried into the phone, “Remember when you said you could help me with packing?” Janice is a colleague and the mother of seven who had moved several times including while pregnant, with all seven children and/or without her husband present.

Janice came in, surveyed the apartment, and perceiving my nearly catatonic state, asked my permission to pack boxes. Her energy broke my paralysis. Seemingly within minutes the kitchen, the bedroom and the closets were packed. In addition, she helped me decide that:
1. FYD could be responsible for her own things.
2. The items in my plastic stackable drawers (my kitchen had no drawers and little storage space) could be taped closed rather than removed and boxed.
3. Things that needed to be sorted or tossed (less actual garbage) could be packed and reorganized later.

Before the point at which paralysis set in, I had been so overwhelmed that I was ready to either set everything on fire (but that would have made me an arsonist—not a good thing for a chaplain) or walk a way from it all (umm, not good stewardship).

Suddenly I began to see the wisdom of Saint B, who wrote:

… without an order from the abbot no members may presume to give, receive, or retain anything as their own, nothing at all—not a book, writing tablets or stylus—in short not a single item … For their needs, they are to look to the prioress or abbot of the monastery, and are not allowed anything which the prioress or abbot has not given or permitted. (RB 1980 The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1982, Chapter 33, p.56)

I outlined in green and surrounded the above passage with huge question marks in my copy of The Rule. I hadn’t liked it when I first read it in seminary nor when I bought the book in 2007.

Still as I attempt to sort through the boxes that came with me (most of my things—I hope, it’s most—are in storage until my final move), not having to be responsible for material objects seems like a great idea.

Not only do I have sort through my things, now I also have to find different places for them. FYD and I are constantly reconfiguring arrangements of things. We’ve moved the electric coffee maker three times. She’s put things away; I’ve pulled them out and rearranged them. I’ve decided not to hang the art objects I thought I couldn’t live with out, so I’ve arranged them on a dresser that’s been moved within this apartment three times. FYD has zipped together and hung two hoodies to block the light that glares through her window at night. I’m on my second arrangement of window dressings for the same reason. Some things we simply can’t find to arrange. We also have to adjust to new routes and routines for laundry, trash disposal, banking, transportation and grocery shopping. And we’ve moved less than a city block away!

I’m not complaining; I’m grateful for the change and the added space (I can now look up at pictures of my granddaughter from God’s lap. I had never thought of putting them directly across from me rather than beside me). I’ve just forgotten what an enormous amount of energy it takes to move and settle in.

That’s probably what Saint B knew even in the 6th century. Just moving yourself and the clothes on your back was simpler than having to sort through, pack and unpack your possessions. New monks could more easily slip into the routine of the monastery with no things to rearrange.

Since I don’t have an abbot to direct me, my sorting and repacking will have be executed with settling in as my goal. I might just accept Janice’s offer to help again too!

Moving, Moving, Moving

I am in the process of moving from one apartment to another within the next week. It will be the first of two moves this summer. It is unsettling to say the least, but I am reminded that movement--conversatio morum, change of life, "continual conversion and ongoing transformation"--is as much a part of Benedictine life as stabilitas, stability. It is all part of the opus Dei, the work of God.

The quote above is from Benedictine scholar Esther de Waal's book To Pause at the Threshold. I read this book four years ago at this time when I was contemplating a change after receiving my first seminary degree. (A notation I made in the book even reads "5/06.") I've re-read the portions I had highlighted almost yearly since then. Today the following jumps out at me:

"Our God is a God who moves and he invites us to move with him. He wants to pry us away from anything that might hold us too securely: our careers, our family systems, our money making. We must be ready to disconnect. There comes a time when the things that were undoubtedly good and right in the past must be left behind, for there is always the danger that they might hinder us from moving forward and connecting with the one necessary thing, Christ himself. ... I am called upon to move forward to hand over the past freely, putting it behind me, and moving on with hands open and ready for the new." (p. 55-56)

So amidst the boxes, packing tape and markers, I am preparing to do just that--both inwardly and outwardly. The next time I write, it will be from a new place in all senses of the word. Stay tuned.

Teen Travails

Last week at this time I was preparing for my newly minted sophomore and Favorite Youngest Daughter (FYD) to come home with all of the stuff she had accumulated during her first year of college. I was also preparing for my space to be invaded.

And I was going to be prepared this time. On her journeys home during the year FYD had done a couple of things that disappointed—and well—annoyed me. Once after I had prepared her favorite meal, she didn’t come home until nearly midnight. The next time, not to be caught again, I didn’t prepare her favorite meal. Instead I sat up worrying about her until I finally texted her, and she blithely answered, “I’m spending the night with ... .“ When she finally arrived home, she got an earful about when-you- (no matter that you are 18 and of legal age) are-staying-with-anyone- (especially me) you-need-to-let-me-know-what-your-plans-are-that’s-common-courtesy.

Other times she brought a friend or friends who stayed up all night giggling in the living room or who slept three-a-bed until after noon. Then—as she had done since she was three years old (I know mothers of the world, I should have trained her better)—she would insist she had to use the bathroom at the exact same minute that I did or that she had to take a shower right now when I was commencing my leisurely bedtime routine. And let’s not even get started on the unrinsed dishes in the sink and the clothes heaped on the floor.

But this time, I was going to lay down the law about how the bathroom would be shared, kitchen should be cleaned, clothes kept and comings and goings noted. Then she came home.

All my good intentions and preparations fell apart. Actually that happened even before we left her campus. We had several emphatic (as in “I am not yelling, I am being emphatic!”) discussions about her desire to live off campus next semester—and her not signing up for on-campus housing as back-up. If she had not fallen asleep in the car, I’m sure we would have had a very unpleasant ride.

When we arrived home after unloading only half the car because of exhaustion, I nearly locked her out of the bathroom so I could quietly pursue my bedtime preparations. The next day she slept half the day as worn-out college students do and then insisted that we stock up on her favorite foods before we finished unloading the car. I should have known that the never-take-your-child-to-the-grocery-store rule extends into young adulthood. I ended up spending more money in one trip that I had in the last month. I admit it was partially guilt for so artlessly setting boundaries the night before.

The trip to the grocery store made us late getting in line for the Corinne Bailey Rae concert that was her belated birthday present. FYD was not happy. She let me know she was not happy. I was not happy with her either. After a series of quietly heated exchanges, I finally had to move to another seat on the shuttle bus. As we stood in line at the venue, both still seething, a friend of mine came up. We agreed to sit together, because my progeny had already told me that she was going to be standing in front by the stage—by herself. And she did.

Later my friend, a former seminary classmate, told me about her travails with her own daughter at that age. She mentioned something about an opportunity for grace-filled responses. I tucked that away.

FYD was ecstatic after the concert. She was like a different person. She had met and posed with the singer who preceded Rae, wrangled a copy of the set list from a roadie and took almost 1000 pictures of her idol from her vantage point in the front row (where she stood for four hours in cowboy boots).

I, on the other hand, was through. I had also stood most of the time, but I couldn’t see anything. Since I’m only 5’1” without shoes, even with two-inch clogs, when other people stand—which they did—they block my view. And I was tired from the trip the day before. And it was late, later than I usually want to be out. I did break down and buy her the signed poster she wanted, but still my child chastised me for not being as cheery and perky as she was.

The rest of my week was really busy with school year closing and COR activities. Since FYD had been keeping a vampire sleep schedule, we barely spent any time together. I briefly wondered if we—who often seemed to communicate almost telepathically in the past—would ever be on the same wavelength again.

Meanwhile I’d been inwardly raging at Saint B. “You’ve never raised a teenager. You’ve never been a mother dealing with the complicated relationship we have with our daughters. And you’ve certainly never been a single mom with no one to shelter you from the emotional blows from the one you carried in your womb and subsequently rearranged your body trying to get out." (And if Saint B were a teenage girl, he would retort, “Well, I didn’t ask to be born.”)

Of course, I had to pause. Saint B, though neither a woman nor a mother was certainly single, and, apparently he did raise teenagers. He talks about it in the Rule. He calls them “the young” or “juniors” and even speaks specifically of 15-year-olds—an age few mothers want to re-visit with their teenage daughters.

Then this morning I had a thought. My daughter and I had been so at odds that we had not even embraced when we first saw each other. In fact we did not even sit close to each other until last night when we watched a movie together on the couch. How could we establish our telepathic connection when we had not even reconnected by touch?

Saint B talks in chapters 53 and 63 of The Rule about exchanging the “kiss of peace” not only with guests but also with “brethren (daughteren, in my situation?).” How much more should I do this with my own child? So the real issue is not about a returning teenager. It is about me welcoming the fruit of my womb “like Christ,” according to chapter 53. (See http://www.osb.org/rb/text/rbeaad1.html)

FYD is out now with her friend. When she comes back she will receive a big, long, warm, rocking hug and several kisses like I used to give her when she was little. Even if she resists, which I already know she won’t, I will know that I have done my part to heal our rift.

I suspect Saint B would approve.

God: Hands and Hips

When I sat in God’s lap one morning, my eyes landed on the beeswax candle I had made on a pilgrimage last month. I smiled remembering how I had felt slowly rolling the sheet of beeswax ever so gently around the cotton wick. The texture of the sheet felt good pressed against my fingertips. It seemed to take on a life of its own as I stroked the beeswax upwards to smooth the top into a conical shape. I then placed my thumb flat against the bottom to make it able to stand on its own. The beeswax scented my fingertips for the rest of the evening.

While rolling the beeswax and shaping it into the candle, I had thought about nothing but what I was doing. It was as much a meditative act as walking the canvas labyrinth later on. As I walked I could feel the cool, uneven stones beneath my feet. Before I walked, I had taken a ribbon on which I had written “abundance” and tied it to a cherry blossom branch in the front of the chapel where the labyrinth was nestled. After placing the ribbon and before walking the labyrinth, I had also lit a scented tea light candle. The candle sat among ones that had been lit by other pilgrimage participants. I used the flame from one of those candles to light mine. Later during reflection time I said that I had been on many pilgrimages, but I had never been on one so tactile.

I’ve been thinking about tactility and corporeality since then. Every week when I go to the Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage, I do something tactile. It may be something as simple as lighting a candle in front of the icon in the Still Point, writing out a prayer, or cutting out a simple icon I have written and pasting it into my journal. This past Saturday, I picked the dried blossoms off the dying cherry tree branch and placed them in an envelope for a future project. Next week I may untie the ribbons and put them somewhere for safekeeping, or, as someone suggested, tie them to a tree outside the Cathedral.

According to chapter 31 of Saint Benedict’s Rule, “… [We] should regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, aware that nothing should be neglected.” I interpret “regard” as to mean not only to think about but also to handle. Of course when those of us who are Christians partake of communion, we hear the invitation to come to the table, see the Eucharist vessels, touch the bread, and smell and taste the fruit of the cup. I have come to believe that the other things we can touch, see, hear, taste and smell are as important to our spiritual lives as any ritual we partake of, sermon we hear or song we sing. Beyond those, I have found that the things that we use and do each day can also make the sacred accessible.

The Friday after the pilgrimage when I attended a day of celebration at a university with which I am affiliated, I participated in a Zumba© class. Outside. In the sunshine. On the lawn. In front of hundreds of people. Zumba© is an aerobic dance class based on the rhythms of Latin America (think salsa and merengue). In the 80s I had hated aerobics because moves like the “step-ball-chain” made me feel as if I had four left feet. Even before that I was not known as a dancer. (In fact, my children have asked me repeatedly not to dance—or even move to music—in their presence.)

So why was I dancing as if no one was watching? Because I was full of joy and that seemed to be the only way to express it. I danced clumsily missing the beat more than once. I danced modestly—I still can’t bring myself to wind or to shake my you-know-what. But I danced joyfully, happy that God made hips to swivel (you don’t have to believe it, but I do).

When there is nothing more left to say about God—or any transcendent experience—dancing or doing something with our hands, may be one of the only adequate forms of expression left. Go back in time and watch Miriam, the sister of Moses, who danced after the Israelite’s deliverance at the Red Sea or fast-forward to King David who danced before the Lord God and everyone else in the city. Fast forward again to an African American, Latino, African or any given charismatic church and watch people stand up, sway, raise their hands, wave their bulletins, and sometimes break out in a holy dance or run down the aisle. Look a group of teenagers or young adults listening to the music of their generation. They chant lyrics and move in exultation of the shared experience of being young.

I like to think I serve a God who “Kneeled down in the dust /Toiling over a lump of clay/Till He shaped [me] in His own image,” as poet James Weldon Johnson so eloquently wrote in his poem “The Creation.” (See http://www.bartleby.com/269/41.html for the complete poem.) This is a God who not only handled elements of the earth, but also designed a human body that can step, glide and leap across the surface of the earth. I accept God’s creativity as an invitation to participate fully in the life given me. And as I believe God created, I receive permission and inspiration to create: icons, blogs, candles, and dances.

I don’t know if Saint B enjoyed 6th century dancing (at least before he became a monk), but I can’t imagine the 21st century without multiple opportunities to glorify God with my body—hands and hips.

Sitting in God's Lap

Almost every morning I sit in God’s lap. The best light in the room hovers over God’s lap. On clear days the sun shines through the tree outside my window, illuminating me in this place. During winter’s gloom, I receive energy and inspiration from her embrace. My daily intentions and prayers emanate from God's lap. And my best thoughts come to me while nestled there.

God’s lap is is where I sit cross-legged to pray, meditate, read, journal and blog. More specifically it is a circa 1970s chair that looks like a short chaise longue--or a long-seated chair.

But God’s lap has a secret. She is held together by duct tape. Because she is made of what feels like pleather, the tape holds firmly to her. I know I should send her somewhere to be re-upholstered, but I can’t imagine life without her. Despite—or because of—the layers of duct tape that bind God’s lap, she has shaped herself to my form.

God’s lap has not always been this way. When she first came to me she was perfect and whole, but she reeked of cigarette smoke. The person who brought her to me, my former husband, knew I would like her so he overlooked the smell. I couldn’t, so she sat alone for quite a while until the smell dissipated. From that time on she held a place of honor in my home.

During a move heavy boxes were placed upon her. She developed a large rip in her seat. My solution at the time was to cover her with a wonderful brown and cream cloth with a tribal motif. I added pillows that I had made from a deconstructed vintage African dress and a swath of gold-colored raw silk.

Other things covered God's lap as she moved from place to place with me throughout the past 15 plus years. No one but my children and I knew her secret until she had to be moved and was stripped of her covering. I began wrapping her in a sheet to protect her from further harm during those too-frequent moves. Still she lost the brassy caps that covered her wooden feet.

While I was in seminary, I found the brilliant yellow chenille throw that covers her today. One morning while lowering myself to sit in God's lap, I felt the rip expand and her stuffing pop out. I pulled back the throw, grabbed a roll of my younger daughter’s duct tape (she was making duct tape purses at the time) and patched God’s lap back together. A couple of weeks ago, the strain of being sat on pulled away some of the original tape, so I re-patched her. Though heavily bandaged with shiny gray tape, God's lap has become even more comfortable.

So what does my comfortable, duct-taped chair have to do with Benedictine life?

Last weekend Father Simon McGurk, OSB, the prior (the head monk in charge) of St. Anselm’s Abbey (http://www.stanselms.org), the only Benedictine monastery here in Washington, DC, spoke to the Community of Reconciliation about the role of the cloister in Benedictine monastic life. (Visit: http://www.nationalcathedral.org/events/COR20100424.shtml)

According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which runs a branch of the museum dedicated to medieval art and architecture called The Cloisters:

The cloister [is] the heart of a monastery. By definition, it consists of a covered walkway surrounding a large open courtyard, with access to all other monastic buildings. Usually attached to the southern flank of the church, a cloister [is] at the same time passageway and processional walkway, a place for meditation and for reading aloud. At once serene and bustling, the cloister was also the site where the monks washed their clothes and themselves. (http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/the_cloisters/the_cuxa_cloister/objectview.aspx?collID=7&OID=70010742)


(For a from-inside-the-cloister description, visit http://www.religiouslife.com/glossary.html#C)

Father Simon talked about how when he was traveling or on assignment away from his monastery-of-origin based in England, he had to learn to take the cloister with him. He didn’t use the exact words, but I understood he was talking about the “cloister of the heart.”

Since we live outside monastery walls, I understand my cloister of the heart to be that place that nourishes, centers and anchors me. It is the place I take with me into the world to remind me of my intention to live according to my Rule for the glory of God and the good of the people around me. (For more about the cloister of the heart, see Carl McColman’s blog http://anamchara.com/2009/09/30/cloister-of-the-heart/. McColman is an author and blogger who writes about contemplative spirituality among other things.)

During our monthly Creating a Rule of Life meeting that usually follows a weekend teaching, our facilitator, Greg, asked us about the cloisters in our lives. Of course, I said God’s lap is my cloister. And being the fearless facilitator that he is, Greg, listening carefully, asked me to explain why. After I had babbled about duct tape and vintage plastic for a few minutes, Greg said, “Listen to what you are saying.” He helped me to see that God’s lap has been not only a cloister, but also a companion on my journey.

God’s lap would look pretty shabby without her bright yellow covering, but she is held together, as I am, by the grace of God and the support of friends.

Lyrically Speaking

Two weeks ago one of the COR members, Charlene, sent an email to me via our Fearless Facilitator, Greg. The email contained the lyrics to a song. Commenting on the Chittister quote I mentioned last week, Charlene wrote, “I highlighted the portions that reminded me of things [Vikki] spoke of.”

These are the lyrics, in part:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

I loved the lyrics, but I didn’t pay attention to the song title. When I had more time I asked Charlene for the title and the author and did an Internet search. As some of you may already know, the song is “Anthem” by Canadian singer/songwriter and poet, Leonard Cohen.

I had heard Cohen’s name before, but had never consciously followed his music. I remembered seeing his name come up in the newspaper (he had won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in January and had been inducted in to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008). When I searched YouTube for a hearing of the song, I was enchanted by his mournful voice (once described as a “vampire baritone”)—somewhat like Bob Dylan, but more tuneful and poetic.
(See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e39UmEnqY8&feature=related)

I watched video clips of not only Cohen in performance but also his back-up singer, Sharon Robinson. Over and over again. I was captivated by their music and his poetry. I also noticed that Cohen had written the song “Hallelujah” which many of us with children recognize as the song sung by Rufus Wainwright in the first “Shrek” movie. I had adored that song from the moment I heard it and had wondered who had been inspired to write it. Now I knew, but I wanted to know from where his inspiration flowed.

Given my journalistic tendency toward immersing myself in a subject, I read as much as I could about Cohen. I was almost not surprised to discover that he, an observant Jew, had spent five years in a Zen Buddhist monastery in Los Angeles, before touring again at age 74.

One New York Times article I read notes:

… Mr. Cohen appears to see performance and prayer as aspects of the same larger divine enterprise. That may not be surprising, coming from an artist whose best-known songs mingle sacred concerns with the secular … “There’s a similarity in the quality of the daily life” on the road and in the monastery, Mr. Cohen said. “There’s just a sense of purpose” in which “a lot of extraneous material is naturally and necessarily discarded,” and what is left is a “rigorous and severe” routine in which “the capacity to focus becomes much easier.” … About the meaning of those songs, Mr. Cohen is diffident and elusive. Many are, he acknowledges, “muffled prayers,” but beyond that he is not eager to reveal much. … Zen has also helped him to learn to “stop whining,” Mr. Cohen said, and to worry less about the choices he has made. “All these things have their own destiny; one has one’s own destiny. The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.”

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/arts/music/25cohe.html?_r=1)

Cohen’s obvious discipline inspired me. Last week after I confessed in this blog that my Rule of Life was in disarray, I sat down with the notes I had written in my journal and the sticky notes plastered to its pages and actually typed out a more orderly Rule. Then I loaded it into my PDA, sent it to myself at two different email addresses and printed it out. I now have my Rule in three different forms. I no longer have any more excuses to ignore it. It’s not perfect (but that’s not the goal) and maybe not even complete (and maybe never will be), but I’m allowing it to shape my life.

And because Charlene reached out and connected with me via Cohen’s song, four of the things I wrote in my Rule came to fruition. I discovered a new source of beauty in Cohen and Robinson’s work that I will be sure to spend many happy hours exploring. I feel as if I have found another kindred soul not only in Cohen but also in Charlene. Today my apartment was a more hospitable place for me because it was filled with the music that I too often forget to play. And when I stepped outside in the larger world, the harried Metro bus driver received, instead of my usual distracted acknowledgment, my smile and kind words.

I believe Saint B would be pleased.

My first encounter with Saint B

The Rule of Benedict begins with the words, “Listen carefully, my son …” Already you can see my problem. Apparently this isn’t meant for me.

When I first heard of Saint Benedict and his Rule six years ago in a seminary church history class, the whole idea repulsed me. But as someone who has had an almost lifelong love/hate relationship with organized religion, at the same time I was enchanted.

Benedict formed his community as an antidote against the decadence around him, according to Benedictine nun and scholar, Joan Chittister. Institution-weary as I was when I entered seminary, that was something I could somewhat relate to. In that class I also found out that Benedict had a sister, Scholastica, whom he seemed to treat as a full partner. That made me a little more kindly inclined toward Saint B, as I have come to call him.

But still I had to get through what appeared to me to be the kow-towing to abbots and priors, apparent monk-abuse (beatings were allowed), and the monastery fashion police who allowed monks only two garments (however these garments were supposed to be “fitted to the wearers”—that was a plus), described in the Rule.