The day after

Last week was "B Minor Mass" week in my world: final rehearsals for and performances of J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor. It's a long sing, to use a technical term. A lot of singing and a lot of thinking. A lot of counterpoint, a lot of Latin, a lot. I applied learned in a yoga class: smile when you do the hard stuff. And be patient with yourself.

But it's glorious music. Glorious in listening. Glorious in live performance. Glorious in hard work, and exhilarating in completion.

Bach, of course, never performed this work (start your background reading here). It's not clear what his intentions were in putting this massive work together in his mid-sixties, eyesight deteriorating and nearing the end of a life spent applying himself to the work of music: playing, teaching and composing music that he understood to be a gift of God to humanity. He chose compositions from his past work, adapted, edited, and reassembled them into the great, over-arching musical form of the mass. The Kyrie, calling on God's mercy. The Gloria of thanks and praise for salvation. A Credo, with newly-composed music for the wonder of incarnation, God becoming human like us. A Sanctus that requires a lot of stamina to imitate angels floating, without effort, in the rafters of prophetic vision. 

We've been rehearsing since January, with three rehearsals in the week before performances. I was tired all week and took naps on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, mostly because it's hard to go home and sleep after singing all this intense music. 

It was a joint effort of Bach Cantata Vespers and Consonance and conducted by Grace Cantor Michael D. Costello. We sang the Mass ten years ago, so the music was not unfamiliar. The vocal lines are beautiful, interweaving in counterpoint that Bach took to its outer limits. Also remembered from ten years ago: the vocal panic engendered by long movements, zippy coloratura, and lots of high As for sopranos. 

But when the music is mastered, there's so much to discover as you listen while you sing. And while you sit (rest!) and listen to vocal soloists and instrumental soloists perform the movements that aren't choruses. 

So what does it all mean? Not that it has to mean anything in words. But still, what was J. S. Bach saying about God? And what is there for us, three centuries detached from the Lutheran dogma of Bach's time and place?

You can read commentary and analysis of the Mass that points to musical symbols -- the three-in-one of the Trinity, the descending notes of the incarnation, chromaticism illustrating all kinds of distressing things. I've read a number of analyses in the last few weeks and while scholars find lots to explain, I have to say that specific figures in the music rarely invoke theological concepts in my brain. I remember reading that something somewhere (in the Gloria?) showed the unity of the Son with the Father. I listened for it in various duets and solos last night, but can't honestly say it jumped out at me. 

Different century, different vocabulary. Instead I found myself thinking about all the different sounds and colors in the movements of the Mass. Flutes here, oboes there, violins high and low, plaintive, busy, and celebratory. A movement for the bass soloist accompanied by horn and two bassoons--who does that, and can keep it going that long? And all the different sounds in the chorus -- suspensions and resolutions, fugal entrances crescendoing one on top of another, step-by-step through a harmonic progression, or up the scale. Sudden unisons. Hushed resolutions. Explosive consonants. Loud cadences, quiet ones. Old-school counterpoint, baroque elaboration.

Yesterday as I listened I thought about Bach trying to show us something of what God sounds like, reaching for perfection beyond words, beyond literal, word-dependent theology. I thought about what it means to be a creator, a part of God's ongoing creation -- or, if you will, a creative person in an ever-evolving world of wonder, glory and terror. 

In that world, the world of Monday-morning headlines, we remain creatures dependent on mercy, received and shared, clashing and resolving. And in our finer moments, our God-honoring, creation-honoring moments we shared in the music of big, big choruses of gratitude (Gratias agimus tibi) and in the same music notes used in hopeful prayers for peace (Dona nobis pacem).

Transcendence. 

 

Anniversary blog 2025

Dishtowels on the loom. 

I went to my regular Friday morning yoga class today. It's "Hatha Yoga for the Core" which means there will be crunches or boat poses and a period of harder work and held poses in between the careful breathing and stretches and final rest pose. I like the instructor of this class because she finds a nice balance between predictable routine and bringing in new movement or new ideas. 

New to me today was a technique for shutting down the senses and moving into meditation that recalled the three monkeys who "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." We shut our eyes and placed our index and middle fingers softly over our eyelids, ring fingers on the nose, and pinkies on the lips. Our thumbs gently pressed our ears closed and we sat for a minute. Resting. 

I struggle these days to put my phone down or step away from the computer screen and take a break from the awful stuff that continues to rain down from the current presidential administration in Washington DC. So much evil to see! So much to object to! I'm emailing my representatives in Congress regularly, and also sending messages of support to Illinois's governor and attorney general in Springfield. I write mostly about Medicaid, but so many other issues leave me feeling disturbed and depressed: USAID funding, civil servants losing jobs willy-nilly, the betrayal of Ukraine, petty reprisals against political opponents. 

Closing your eyes to it all -- is that a better alternative? Is it even possible? I know people who don't pay much attention to politics, and others who think that the federal government needs a good goosing and choose to ignore the details and possible repercussions of all the upset. 

I can't ignore the issues and actions that I'm upset about. Maybe that's the way I'm wired -- to complain and object and protest. To want things set right. Or maybe it's the type of Christianity I grew up with, the intense discussions we engaged in about race and poverty when I was in eighth grade in a Lutheran school in the spring of 1968. Maybe it's my demographic: college-educated, urban-suburban white woman, voting Democratic most of my life. 

Whatever. 

I do know that I need a rest. It may be time to take up meditation—again. To sit for hours at the loom and listen to a good story instead of political podcasts. To clean closets or choose new colors for the pillows on the couch. To contemplate the smeary blue of today's late-winter sky and start to watch for snowdrops and crocuses. To smile and laugh as the fifth and sixth-graders I'm working with discover the human fun and foibles in their characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." 

Sunday is Transfiguration, the last Sunday before Lent, which is when I mark this blog's anniversary. I have been posting for 19 years here at The Perverse Lutheran, through all kinds of times. I just now took a look back and saw posts I remember and posts I don't. Posts that remind me to look for God's grace, to look for the light, and to remember that hope does not disappoint us.

Here's a previous Transfiguration anniversary post. And the Ash Wednesday 2015 post from a few days later has some fun moments. Reminds me why I'm retired.

Sad

Gwen, Linda, and Karen, June 1961

Presidents Day 2025

I took a walk this afternoon while my daughter was working out with her trainer. It was cold as I walked east on Madison Street, and even colder when I turned back and faced west. But I was dressed for the weather — warm coat, new insulated gloves, wool hat and flannel-lined jeans — and both my mood and my body needed the brisk walk, the cold air on my cheeks, in my nose and my lungs. 

Madison Street in Forest Park and the cross streets to the south are my old neighborhood, where I rode my bike and walked to school. As I headed down Beloit, towards my mom's old house, I thought about being sent to school in this kind of weather, walking four or five blocks with a scarf wrapped over my face and pants on under my skirt. Off we went on cold winter days, and nobody thought much of it. School did get cancelled when the temperatures were consistently below zeros, and we had several days off during the Big Snow of 1967. 

Today my walk took me past the old savings and loan building at Madison and Desplaines. It's empty now and it's for sale. I looked through the front window and down the spiral staircase that led to a community room in the basement. I remembered going there on a Saturday afternoon with my dad and my sisters to get the polio vaccine, probably in 1961 when the oral vaccine became commercially available. It was a community event. We had probably brought a note home from school from the public health department sponsoring the event. We waited our turn and eyed the sugar cubes holding the vaccine  lined up on the table. We picked one, popped it in our mouths and crunched it and came back a few weeks later for a second dose. 

Going to First Savings, the first bank to occupy this building, was not a novelty. We went there happily on Saturdays with my dad when he did his (in-person!) banking. Most days we left with small rolls of LifeSavers, offered to us by the guard or the receptionist. More sugar. 

I imagine this easy-peasy polio protection meant a lot to parents. Of course they took advantage of it! Thinking back, I realize that I knew some children who'd had polio, who walked with a limp, whose parents had probably been very scared when they were sick. It was not something I had to worry about with my kids. 

As I was waking up this morning, head still buried in the pillow, trying to zero in on what day of the week it was, the first full sentence that came to my mind was, "I am sad for my country." This is what comes of doom-scrolling before bed. The ironies inherent in a 2025 celebration of U. S. presidents (I'm looking at you, Abe Lincoln and General Washington) didn't dawn on me until later. 

In my lifetime I have seen these United States become a more inclusive place, that arc of the universe bending towards justice. I don't know that I remember the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but I do remember Everett Dirksen, the Republican senator from Illinois who rounded up votes to make it possible. I remember the civil rights struggles, the voting rights act, the gradual changes in the acceptance of the LGBTQ community during my college and graduate school years, and the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). 

When I was a child, my aunt taught a Sunday School class for what we then called "mentally retarded" children and adults. I learned from listening to adult conversations that many of these individuals, who lived with their parents, didn't go to school. Schools for them were far away, or expensive, or unable to take any more students. Decades later, thanks to the IDEA and federal funding for special education, my daughter who has Down syndrome was picked up by a school bus and educated in our local public schools. 

With Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, and SNAP, we've also become a nation that cares for the sick and feeds women, children and families who simply need to eat.

The wrecking ball of the Trump presidency and Elon Musk's DOGE empire are threatening and destroying one thing after another, things government does for the good of all. American media has too many pundits already; I don't need to my bit about rich, narcissistic, foolish white men, their delusions and their resentments. 

But how did we get here? Many Americans go into the voting booth every four years with "throw the bums out" as their decision point. Incumbents lose when people are unhappy about the economy. It's not necessarily a formula for rational governance, although it seems to work well in politics. 

But what's happening in the U. S. right now, what's making me so sad, is the shift in values in our leaders. They don't care, they don't take care, they're not even hypocritical about saying they care. They certainly don't subscribe to the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote that "unless all are free, no one is free." Ever-expanding freedom means freedom from want and fear, along with the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

The world keeps changing. Social media, social isolation, polarization, globalization, changes in how the economy works and who it works for — it's a lot. Our brains were designed for making our own little gardens grow. The show of power, the slashing and burning, are reassuring for some, sticking it to people who might take what they already have, or wish they had. But it makes the world less good for everybody.

It makes me sad.

A Cantata Sunday, late January 2025

Cantata Sunday (kənˈtädə sənˌdā). A Sunday on which a Bach cantata is performed as part of Bach Cantata Vespers. Also known as A Long Day at Church. Often thoughtful, sometimes tearful. 

One of the petitions in the Litany we use in the vespers liturgy is a list of people in need, culminating in "and all who await from the Lord great and abundant mercy." Once upon a time, when I was younger and self-involved (more self-involved than I am now),  I thought this was group of people awaiting mercy was a subgroup of humanity, people with particular, urgent problems who needed God to solve them now. Why did I think this? Because I included myself in that group and could not think much beyond myself. 

Foolish youngster! Who among us, from day-old newborn to gray-haired elder, does not need God's great and abundant mercy? I have long since yielded up my miserable hubris. Other people feel scared and vulnerable, too, and have intractable problems, unsolvable dilemmas. Knowing this makes life easier. I'm not alone. 

And we need God's mercy more than ever now, after a transition in government here in the U. S. You don't need a recap here from me. There's plenty to read everywhere you look. A lot to take in and a lot for the people of God to respond to, a flood of willfulness meant to clog our discernment and slow our response. 

Today at church I heard some particular groups of people named who are feeling dismissed and frightened. They are part of "all who await, etc." In naming some, we should not forget others lest we allow our self-protecting, self-justifying brains to divide the world into People Like Me and People Not So Much Like Me. 

I once thought I was special when we came to that petition in Evening Prayer — I had something I very much wanted a merciful God to grant me. But I was not alone, or part of a select group. All, all await God's mercy. Migrants, yes, the LGBTQ community. But also people who are disabled, people who need Medicaid to provide health care, civil servants, military leaders, lawyers and judges, refugees, and more. Fortunately God's mercy is great and abundant.

What disturbs me more than any single Executive Order of last week is the way our nation's stated values have shifted. "For all" has become "for certain ones," or only for "real Americans." I guess, on a civic level, one could discuss this, even justify the ins and outs, who's alike, who's different.  Earthly kingdoms are not God's kingdom. But we who, trusting in God's mercy, prayed and sang BWV 111 together today, saying "God's will is best" -- it's up to us to be part of the mission of bringing God's good and merciful will to the world. 

Pick your issue. What are you concerned about? Who can you speak for? Where can you do the most good? And join the ensemble. Many members, one body. 

Seems almost heretical to add this after Bach -- but I keep hearing that "High School Musical" refrain in my head. "We're all in this together." 

Time rolls on

Generations: the compote belonged to my Great-Grandma Sieving, the music cabinet to Grandma Gotsch, and the mirror to my parents. The placemat was woven by me in 2024; the smart thermostat was installed in 2023. 

I started this post on the morning of January 1, 2025T. Think of it as The Day After 2024. Rolling up a digit at the far side of the date didn't make the day feel much different; time didn't move faster or more slowly in the previous evening's climb toward midnight. Nor did it move any faster on the downhill slide into the early hours of the new year. 

Time, it is reported, was different before people had clocks and watches and computers and phones to synchronize and measure it. Before the railroads had to run on time. "There was evening and there was morning, the first day," says the creation story in Genesis 1, with no numbers pinning down the exact time of sunrise and sunset. The new day began, as the Jewish sabbath still does, in the evening, at the end of a day's work. Long hours of daylight in summer were for planting and harvesting; long, cold winter nights were a test of endurance, or a time to seek comfort in one another. 

Measured or not, time rolls on in cycles of day and night, tides, seasons, patterns of growth and decay. The year 2025 CE looked like a faraway number when I was a child in school in the 1960s, but the intervening decades are like nothing in the context of geologic time or the existence of the universe. (The number 2025 is, however, kind of cool when you factor it -- it's the product of squares: 5 x 5 x 9 x 9.)

One of the books I read in 2024 was "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals," by Oliver Burkeman. A podcast or newspaper article prompted me to search for the book in the online catalog of my local library. It was a worthwhile read. It leaned into philosophy, reflections on what time is and how we perceive it. Burkeman, someone who writes about productivity, found that this understanding of time and its limits helped him let go of the need to corral and optimize it. There's a healthy dose of Stoicism in the book, Stoicism being a different thing as a philosophical practice of virtue and acceptance than it is in lowercase where the word suggests enduring pain or hardship with gritted teeth and no outward complaining. 

The 4,000 weeks in Burkeman's title are the span of an average lifetime. Do the math and it works out to approximately 77 years. Life has limits imposed by time and mortality. I liked the part where Burkeman quoted the Buddhist scholar Geshe Shawapa: "Do not rule over imaginary kingdoms of endlessly proliferating possibilities." I'll keep this in mind in the future when weeding out my collection of books, yarn, and quilting fabric, my personal accumulations of possibilities. 

Burkeman is a popular podcast guest with a website and a new book. One podcast description says that "Four Thousand Weeks" subverts the self-help genre. It's also an antidote to New Year's resolutions. So is this Calvin and Hobbes panel that my sister posted on her Facebook page. 

See those footsteps in the snow? They're a measure of time passing by. 

The year that just ended held many time-inflected marks in our national life: a once-in-every-four-years presidential election; a U. S. president realizing (albeit slowly) he was too old to hold the office for another four years; another U. S. president, Jimmy Carter, dying after reaching 100 years of age, an allotment of far more than 4,000 weeks which he used to accomplish a prodigious amount of good things.

In my life and my family's life, 2024 included the death of my mother, Marilyn Gotsch, at age 92, the last of her generation on her side of the family and my father's. At her funeral we filled a table with memories of her life which included a partially used ration book from World War II, wedding photos from the early 1950s, and pictures of her with that awful perm she had somewhere in the 1970s or 1980s. In writing her obituary I broke her long life down into chapters — childhood, marriage and children, working, widowhood, grandchildren, old age. Each had its time and tasks.

Her passing has left me, the dutiful eldest daughter, conscious that I am now the oldest person at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. But I'm not sitting in a rocking chair letting people come to me for  hugs or nuggets of wisdom. Nope. I'm still cooking, clearing, putting away leftovers, and helping with the dishes. But also, at age 70, feeling the effects of time. 

I don't mean achy hips or gimpy knees -- my joints, thankfully, are doing okay. But I do find myself wondering at all that a lifetime -- 3,663 weeks to date -- contains. I see some of this just by looking around my home. Photos taken 60 years ago and scanned into my computer in 2020 appear as a screen saver on my living room TV any time I hit pause and go to the bathroom. Other memories from the past emanate from lamps, dishes, furniture, framed pictures that were once part of my parents' household and have emigrated to mine. They come with stories: the prints that hang above my sofa were purchased by my father on the day I was born. The red glass bowl currently holding red and green Hershey Kisses was my mother's. There's a teapot from one great-grandmother and a crystal compote from another; Aunt Clara told me once that her mother served fruit from this not-very-generous vessel. I knit and sew in the same rooms my kids once littered with Legos and Matchbox cars. The Christmas tree stands in the bay window where Christmas trees have stood for all of the 38 years I've celebrated Christmas in this house. I'm pretty Christmas trees stood there long before I came into the picture; the house was built in 1940. 

Looking back also measures the sorrows of a lifetime. Failings and failures, disappointments and losses from every era. Grief persists. And it's not unwelcome. 

Still, at the beginning of a new year, one tries to look at the bright side, though counter-balancing sadness with joy is not easy these days. Time's ever-rolling stream carried a lot of detritus from 2024 into 2025: war, political polarization, lies, disinformation, uncertainty. Some kinds of changes are filled with hope, others not so much. 

The Stoics would say that hard times are to be expected in life and accepting this is the key to contentment. It's a way to keep on living, and not a bad one as January days lengthen and the work of 2025 begins. 

Waiting, in the cold, cold ground

I was going to begin this post with the quote from Martin Luther about planting an apple tree today, even if he knew the world was going to end tomorrow. I went on an internet search for the exact quote and found, as one does with these sorts of things, that there's no evidence Luther ever said or wrote this. It can't be found in his writings. Instead, according to the first page or two of Google hits, the first evidence of the saying comes from 1944 and the German Confessing Church, an expression of hope in the face of the Nazi regime. 

I thought of this saying yesterday while digging holes for tulip bulbs, 40 of them, plus some more holes for a scattering of hyacinths and snowdrops. The bulbs arrived at my house by mail two or three weeks ago. I ordered them last spring after receiving a series of emails with photos of brightly colored spring flowers and all manner of tulip colors and variations. They're no fools these marketing folk. You drive around town and see stands of tulips in people's front yards and dream of sprucing up your own landscape. Beyond the PayPal payment, there's no cost to ordering freely from what you see. Bulbs are properly planted in the fall. They're not shipped until the ground is growing cold, and then, if you want the flowers in the spring, you have to spend some time outside grubbing in the dirt. Or be embarrassed for your failure to get them in the ground. 

The box of tulips, hyacinths and snowdrop (very early tiny white flowers) sat in my kitchen for a week or more, along with another box of Dutch iris also ordered on impulse last spring. They were supposed to be kept in a cool place until planting, so I moved them to the table by the back door, a temperature drop of five degrees or so. I planted the dozen irises and half the hyacinths and snowdrops in the backyard ten days ago, tucked in and amongst the herbs and perennials by the patio and the fence. This is dirt that gets worked in the spring, so it's not terribly hard to dig holes four to six inches deep. I mostly remember what went where, some of them near patches of daffodils planted last year, or longer ago than that. 

But the tulips were destined for the street side of my house, in the open spaces around the forsythia bushes, in an area thoroughly overgrown with tall weeds. I paid landscapers to clear it out for me, an acknowledgment that it was a) a big job and b) something that despite a summer of good intentions I was never going to do myself. Yesterday, after a look at my phone said that the weather was about to get much chillier, I got the shovel and the trowel and the bulb planter out of the garage and went at it. The dirt was wet and there were roots everywhere, but I got it done. There's no immediate reward, other than no longer having that task hanging over my head. Nothing left to do but look for the shoots next April. 

I think that I am wired for hope, for optimism. This isn't necessarily a good thing -- it would be more realistic to be, well, more realistic. People will be hurt by the upcoming changes in Washington, people who don't have the resources that I do. And, I believe, abstract but important concepts such as truth and compassion have already taken a big hit. 

But where are the bulbs buried? The ones that will blossom pink and yellow in the spring? 

While digging holes yesterday, I occasionally encountered bulbs planted in previous years. It looks like I go back to the same spots, the same bare, cold places from one fall to the next. I took care to get those guys back in the ground, proven winners that they are. And now, before I eat breakfast, I'm going to check the Christmas cactus for new buds. 

November 2024

It's been quiet for the past couple months here at the Perverse Lutheran. There have been so many words out there that I've felt it's gratuitous to add any more. I've begun one or two posts that have been left behind as three-paragraph drafts. More often, thoughts or images have crossed my mind, literally, from right to left and then floated away. 

So here we are, well into November, a month that usually holds plenty of fuel for Perverse Lutheran blogging. All Saints Day, Election Day, Veterans' Day, then on to Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the First Sunday in Advent. Past, present and future -- they're all here in November. 

The saints remembered in worship at my church on the first Sunday of the November 2024 included my 92-year-old mother, Marilyn Gotsch, who died on September 23. This past week I've been part of the so-called Democratic "elite" depressed and bewildered by the outcome of the election. Outside, the weather become autumn's crisp and cold, but inside, we're back on Central Standard Time. It's 4:45-ish as I write this and it's quite dark. Saturday's trip to big box stores for pots and potting soil confirmed showed shelves filling up with Christmas merchandise; the advancing army of velvety Santas that confronted me yesterday as I walked in the door at Home Goods (a "home decor" store) was enough to set off a panic attack.

Better to be quiet and stay home. I've counteracted anxiety by weaving at my loom. I'm still a relative beginner, executing a treadling sequence 30 picks long takes concentration. If I mess up, I have to be very deliberate about finding and correcting the mistake; I am not wired for this. I've had to fuss over this project. I discovered crossed threads and threading mishaps only after weaving six inches of fabric. I cut it off, re-tied, and began again. Today, as I sat down to weave my way to the end of the warp, I noticed what I thought was a major mistake four inches back. So I backtracked.

Un-weaving unfortunately reminds me of a poem from when I first learned to read called "Eletelephony." I was today years old when I learned that it was written by Laura Elizabeth Richards, the daughter of Julia Ward Howe who wrote words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." 

Once there was an elephant,

Who tried to use the telephant—

No! No! I mean an elephone

Who tried to use the telephone—

(Dear me! I am not certain quite

That even now I’ve got it right.)

Howe’er it was, he got his trunk

Entangled in the telephunk;

The more he tried to get it free,

The louder buzzed the telephee—

(I fear I’d better drop the song

Of elephop and telephong!)

When I unweave, the more I try to set the threads free, the more the weft and warp get wound around each other in ever more elaborate ways. The shuttle catches on threads that are up when they should be down, and the more I manipulate the threads, the more unruly they become. 

And isn't that a lot like life? 

Craft as metaphor for the trials and triumphs of life. It's a cliche, but maybe it's also what powers projects on to completion, and sometimes even perfection. 

Today's hour of unweaving ended in a Sisyphean discovery. When I finally got back to the place where I thought I'd made an error, a closer look showed that I had not made a mistake after all. All the backpedaling was unnecessary. But it was time to step away from the loom. 

This past week has become a time to be quiet. There will be time soon to stir things up, to protest, to untangle and fix and change. In the past weeks, I've sometimes paused for a moment and thought, my mother died. That happened. Wow.  

The choir anthem yesterday morning had a rhyming text based on Psalm 139 in a setting by Alice B. Parker. 

Lord, thou hast searched me, and dost know

where'er I rest, where'er I go;

Thou knowest all that I have planned,

and all my ways are in thy hands.

The last stanza is more hidden and more vivid: 

If deepest darkness cover me,

the darkness hideth not from thee;

to thee both night and day are bright,

the darkness shineth as the light. 

It will be Advent soon. I'll have finished the project on my loom -- placemats for Christmas. I'll be rested and ready to stand up as a real, created and creating person among all the commercial Santas.