Monday, February 12, 2024

Life. Toilet tanks. All of it.

Last Thursday I noticed that the toilet was running all the time. You could see the water moving in the toilet bowl day and night. I stopped at the hardware store and bought a new flapper -- the easiest of all possible things to change, but this didn't help. It got worse. Over the next few days I half-heartedly Googled how to fix a running toilet, clicked on a couple of links and stopped reading at "replace the filler valve."  Mostly I stayed far enough way from the bathroom (except when necessary) to not hear the water run, the water bill inching upward. 

And all the time I whined. Not out loud, but in my head to myself alone. Someone has to fix the toilet. Why does that someone have to be me? It's too piddling a job to pay a plumber to make a house call. Why me? 

Twenty years ago I'd have sailed right in and done the job, because, well, who else was going to do it? My sainted husband could fix a sentence, but did not have fix-it skills for concrete objects. Back in the day, more than once, I set out to fix something or install something and would get partway through and then have to call my brother-in-law for help. The instructions made sense to me, but there would be a screw I couldn't loosen or something inside the wall that didn't look the picture in the handy home repair book. I probably should not have even tried to set a new toilet in the wax ring on the bathroom floor all by myself. 

But I set my face toward that job this afternoon, because my own whining was getting on my nerves. I emptied the toilet tank of water, unscrewed the plastic nuts underneath that held the filler valve in place, and took the old one to the hardware store to get another one just like it. I came home and installed the new one in a matter of minutes, noting that the directions said to "hand-tighten only" those plastic nuts under the toilet tank. So I'll be able to unscrew them myself again next time. The toilet is now flushing properly, is refilling when it is supposed to, and remains silent the rest of the time.

Way too much time was spent complaining, procrastinating, whining, avoiding. 

Let me rephrase that: I spent way too much time ... etc. Self-inflicted irritation.

I had been thinking over the weekend about "Lucinda Matlock," from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems in which characters from a small rural town in southern Illinois speak from beyond the grave about their lives. The poems make a nice readers' theater piece; I was in such a production at a time in my life when all the youngest women's voices were assigned to me. Lucinda is quite old and this poem was spoken beautifully by an actress who seemed old to me, maybe almost 40. Vocally she imbued it all with memory, recollections of both hardship and joy.

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed —
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you —
It takes life to love Life.

I'm pretty sure that if Lucinda were living my life she would have sucked it up and fixed the toilet days ago and then moved on to the next chore or the next neighborly act of service. She'd be rigging new parts for her loom instead of waiting for the fancy ready-made ones to come in the mail (as I am today). Surely the sick she nursed included those eight children she lost. I imagine her steely and resourceful at the bedside, though bent, perhaps, under the crushing grief at their graves. Were they infants, perhaps? A daughter lost in childbirth? A son who was suddenly, gravely injured in the field, or one who died of cancer far too young?

She knew healing: the medicinal weeds she gathered, the singing that restores the soul. But what did she shout to the wooded hills? Maybe that's what she did with what she didn't understand, shouting questions beyond words, getting them out and not expecting an answer in return. 

"It takes life to love Life." I remind myself of these words when that lowercase life is not going well, when I am weary and angry or overwhelmed. That big mystery of Life is not full up, not fully lived without remembered happiness and the sweet sorrow that is sometimes our lot in the present. 

Also, in the middle of all of life's grandiosity, sometimes you have to get over yourself and do what's yours to do. Fix the toilet. 


An hour or two after fixing the toilet, I went on to extract the hair clog from the bathtub drain. 

I am Woman, watch me plumb.




Monday, February 05, 2024

A little faith

The cantata for last Sunday's Bach Cantata Vespers was BWV 81, Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? (Jesus sleeps, what can I hope for?). It's based on the gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany from Matthew 8 (from the lectionary of Bach's day). The disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with  Jesus asleep in the stern. A storm is brewing, they are frightened -- how can Jesus sleep through this? But then he wakes up to tell the storm to schweigt, hush, be still.  

Arias and recitatives dramatize a journey from despair and fear to eventual peace and reassurance. From Jesus' absent to Jesus present. There's a gorgeous lament at the beginning of the cantata and then a fast and furious storm in the orchestra, with the tenor hanging on by a thread. Then the bass stands up to sing the words of Jesus, heard over the storm. Peace is restored and the choir (possibly the congregation, too, in Bach's day) sings the second stanza of the chorale, "Jesus, Priceless Treasure," with "Jesus will protect me" as the final line, the melody firmly descending the five notes of a C minor scale, from dominant to tonic.

"Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" (Matthew 8:26) were Jesus' words to the disciples, and the homilist, speaking before the cantata performance, turned the words "a little faith" a bit sideways and explored whether "a little faith" was enough. In Matthew's gospel, it is. It is enough to clothe the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:28-29), enough to save Peter as he sank down under the waves after impetuously stepping out of the boat to walk on water in another storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:22-33). Even a little faith -- a diminutive one, which honestly, might be the best we can come up with -- will see you through the storms of life, the preacher said. An effective idea which gave structure to the sermon. I listened all the way through, which I must admit, is rare with sermons. 

But still, it begs the question: What is faith, this unseen thing that, whether large or small, is supposed to be there for us in the darker moments of life? Conviction that will carry us forward? Even when the swirls and anger of the storm are worse than frightening -- when they are meaningless, heartless?

The sermon like the cantata text came to rest on the words "Jesus will protect me." It works out that way in the Bible story. Jesus and his band of disciples arrive safely on the other side, surviving the storm to live another day. But there's trouble ahead for Jesus, and neither he nor his Father works a miracle to save him from trial and execution. Trouble ahead also for the disciples further down the road.

None of us are protected from the wounds of life. Not from petty hurts that conspire with our own worries and fears to distort our outlook. Not from blows so gutting that it's hard to imagine a life beyond them. And not from our own aging, deterioration and death. 

A strong faith is not an insurance policy against danger or suffering or struggle. I thought that way as a child -- that I could conquer all things with God by my side. Now, not so much. Great faith, small faith -- meh. 

"Life is suffering," said the Buddha (though in truth the concept of dukkha is more subtle than that). Awful things happen, whether you have faith or not, and faith won't erase the wounds. After Jesus' resurrection the disciple Thomas declared he would acknowledge the risen Christ only if he could touch the wounds in his hands and feet, put his hand on the place where the spear had slashed Jesus' side. 

It's the wounds that matter, scarred, healed over, but still vibrating with the wounds of the world. It's in the hurt, questioning places that even a "little" faith gasps, breathes, lives. Why? Because Jesus meets me here, wounded, suffering, compassionate. And it's where I meet others, in that boat that's never quite still in BWV 81. 


Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Writing about faith

It is not easy to write about the contradictions in life's spiritual dimensions. They are best held lightly. Don't explain too much: 

        Joy does not equal happiness; it's deeper and different. 

        Hope is not the same as optimism; hope is what carries you when there is no room for optimism. 

        Light shines in darkness, both inside and out. 

        Grace is at work even as we are dying, our whole life long. 

        Somewhere, in some other dimension, there is the peace of God; yet we pray for peace on earth. 

Enough said. Hold these things lightly and don't explain too much. 

Write of paradox in the third person and let readers fill in their own story. It is good exercise to puzzle these things out. 

If you must write "I" and tell your truth, plumb carefully, probe and question. Search for what you truly are and own. Write what will invoke, not what you think will impress. 

Use few words, but strong images. 

Know when to stop.

 


Sunday, December 03, 2023

Plugging in the Advent candles

"Winter sunset" by Irene Grassi (sun sand & sea) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.


Advent is short this year, as short as it can possibly be. Notwithstanding the chocolate Advent calendars, much less all the houses decorated for Christmas during Thanksgiving week, the liturgical season is calculated by Sundays and did not begin until today. There are four Sundays in Advent and every so often that fourth one falls on December 24, as it does this year. 

"Advent: the season of open fifths" I whispered to my choir-mate during this morning's organ prelude. An open fifth is the stark, "pay attention" sound missing the middle note that would allow the harmony to relax into a minor key or brighten it into a major one. It's a fanfare with an ancient, clarion sound. 

I can't say that it broke through the morning's rain and gloom--not in any way that persisted through the day. But it is the first Sunday in Advent, the day in my household when the first box of Christmas stuff comes down from the attic — the box that holds the candles that go in all the street-side windows of the house. I hope they carry a message of hope and anticipation to the outside world. Inside the house they remind me that light can indeed shine in the darkness, that there is continuity from one season of life to the next, that Christmas is coming but it doesn't get here all at once. 

These "candles" run on electricity. Not from batteries. In my house they're plugged into the wall. That stable in Bethlehem may have been lit by a star, more metaphorical than practical, and perhaps an oil lamp. Lighting up my windows in 2023 requires long white electrical cords, a power strip, an extension cord, a "three-fer" that plugs three cords into one outlet, a half-dozen built-in light sensors in some of the candles and a smart plug that controls others. When I put these things away last January, I left the cords tangled up with one another as a roadmap to plugging them in again this year. It's kind of perverse, I thought this afternoon, while crawling around on the floor, that celebrating the True Light coming into the world requires so many cords and plugs.

The lights attached to the smart plug timer will shut off at midnight, as I've programmed them to do. One candle in the kitchen has to be switched off manually when I go to bed. (Or should I order another smart plug from Amazon?) The others, the wise bridesmaids with the light sensors, stay on through the night and blink off, one by one, when the morning light reaches them through the overgrown evergreens in front of my house. There will be a couple mornings in December when I, awake too early or sleepless for too long, will sit here in the bay window and watch that happen. Those mornings seem especially promising. 

There will also be some afternoons in December when the western sky bleeds pink and purple from the setting sun, as if angels had dipped their brushes into the paint box and washed the heavens with color. Gaudy and equally promising.

In between in these closing days of 2023? Terrible conflict in the Mideast, ongoing war in Ukraine, a warming earth with big question marks in its future, and people everywhere tangled up in selfish, senseless division. 

"O that you would tear open the heavens and come down," rang the lament in this morning's Old Testament lesson from Isaiah 64, "so that the mountains would quake at your presence, as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil." 

We would be awed by such signs, and more than a little frightened. But there will be other signs of God at work in the world. I see one such on my television, currently running a slideshow of my daughter's photos of friends and family. We'll show it at her birthday party next week -- celebrating with the people she loves and who love her. 

What else? Look for the helpers, says Mr. Rogers. Look for those who persist in seeking change, bit by bit. Those who toil, those who sing, and all those who await from the Lord great and abundant mercy. 

Keep your lamps trimmed and burning, says the spiritual.  Plug in those electric candles. Wait and watch. Christ is coming soon -- indeed, is already among us. 






Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Making more

How much is enough? And what do with it all?

Last Sunday's gospel reading was a parable about talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Given five or two or one talent, should a servant invest to make more or bury the talent and keep it safe? (A talent was a large unit of money in the New Testament.) Make more, says Jesus. "For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away (v.29)."

When this lesson from Lectionary Cycle A came up in 2020 I wrote a blog post titled "Knit from Stash," which is where my mind went again this year. My yarn stash has grown since then, with beautiful, special skeins I've purchased and haven't knit yet, and more substantially, with five bins of yarn left over after a yard sale by the family of someone who had died. It's good yarn — wool, not synthetic, in many beautiful colors, some of it handspun.  

There was a lot of Koigu, a springy, fingering weight commercial wool in multicolors of pink, gold, coral and brown. I love to knit with this stuff. It has energy, it's interesting — and it's not cheap. There was a lot of it, some wound into balls, some in a half-knit blanket, a type of modular knitting that I had no interest in finishing.

All of it smelled of mothballs, and not just faintly — more like instant toxic headache. This was a sign of someone taking care to preserve it, but also a big problem for me. After several internet searches and a Facebook post seeking tips on getting rid of the smell, I ripped out the blanket, unwound the balls, rewound them into skeins, and soaked it all in a vinegar solution and then in laundry detergent. I rinsed the skeins and then hung them to dry in the summer sunshine, strung on a yardstick balanced on the backs of the patio chairs. Back in my dining room, I wound the skeins again into balls, after spending hours working on the tangles created in the soaking and washing. 

I was newly retired and had all the time in the world. Over the next several weeks I knit the yarn into a shawl for a dear, faraway  friend who was going through breast cancer treatment. 

I wish I could ask the original owner of this yarn about her stash, why she bought the skeins of Mountain Colors, who was the intended recipient of that Koigu blanket. Did she spin those skeins of red and pink herself, or did she purchase them? They're irregular — thin in places, lumpy in others, destined for my loom, perhaps, and not my knitting needles. 

Some day after I'm gone someone will have to reckon with my stash of yarn (and also of quilting fabric). Will they wonder about the random skeins of bright sock yarn or the thousand-yard ball of fuzzy Icelandic laceweight that I've had for fifteen years already? Will someone appreciate all the balls of Shetland wool in twenty or thirty heathered shades of the rainbow from Jamiesons and Jamieson and Smith? (Do click on the links if your eyes are craving color on this gray day in late November.) Should my designate a special executor for my stash?

For me, there's a danger point in every project, when it's almost finished and I begin to look ahead to what I will make next. With the feeling of accomplishment come wild ambitions -- many more ideas than I can realistically make happen. These weeks before Christmas are another such time. I want to knit socks, mittens, hats for everyone! I dig through a big basket of random yarn, skeins left over from other projects, skeins bought earlier this year that hold plans yet to be executed. The gift-knitting often continues well into January.

Three nights ago I took a little detour from Christmas knitting to cast on for a baby sweater, a tiny, hopeful garment for a much-anticipated, much worried-over little one. It's made from yarn in my stash, yarn given to me by someone sorting through her deceased mother's belongings. The baby arrived early this morning, a couple weeks ahead of time. I'll finish the sweater by the end of the week, though it will not fit this child until early spring, after a winter of feeding and growing, held in her parents' loving arms.

Investments mature under our fingers. Stash reaches into the future. Hope abounds.






Monday, October 23, 2023

October faith


My frequency of posting here at The Perverse Lutheran has gone down from twice a week in the early days of the blog, many long years ago, to twice a month and lately to once a month. It's nearing the end of October -- gotta put something up here, especially since the weather is warm, the sky is blue and the maple tree over my head here in my backyard is green, gold and orange everywhere all at once. It's good day for sitting outside. There won't be many more.

I've just finished writing program notes for a Bach cantata (BWV 109, Ich glaube, lieber Herr; hilf meinem Unglauben!) that's about faith and doubt -- or better said, doubt and faith, since that's the direction everything is going in the cantata text: an opening chorus, a recitative and an area about unbelief, followed by reassurance.  It's the opposite of the man in the Bible story in Mark 9, the source of the text -- "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" He confesses his faith first before acknowledging his doubts. 

Bach's text, by an unknown librettist, takes Luther's approach to doubt: the solution is to get closer to Christ and trust that God's promises are sure and certain. Luther also said that doubt and the struggles of his Anfechtung (look it up, or read this) were an important way in which God brought him to faith. The struggle strengthens.

I don't disagree with any of this exactly, but I am someone who was born in the 20th century and who lives in the 21st, a time where we doubt the existence not only of God but of absolute truth, where physics includes an Uncertainty Principle, but we as political tribes behave as if our way is the only way and denounce other ideas not just as wrong but as morally reprehensible. Working together to solve problems involves giving up some treasured beliefs here and there, or at least allowing for other ideas to come and out play too. But it's hard to do, worn down as we are by unsolvable conflicts, social media craziness, and everyday complexity. 

The red-orange leaves of the sugar maple against the blue sky remind me of a jigsaw puzzle photo: crisply delineated but made up of so many tiny irregular pieces. Birds are flying in and out of the canopy of the mature tree across the street, participating, perhaps, in some secret bird activity, perhaps a confab about migration. A robin directly overhead just now caught my attention by dropping a liquid gift, splat, on the cement next to my chair. Meanwhile a Monarch butterfly is enjoying the overgrown but miraculously still-blooming zinnias in the flower pot by the stairs. 

Two or three weeks from now the leaves will be on the ground, the flowers will be dead and headed for the  the compost bin. The Monarch might be in Mexico -- I'll never know if she makes it, and it will be time to move the patio furniture to the basement (after scrubbing off the bird poop). 

But spring will come again. I have that much faith. 


Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Hearts Are Breaking



Shattered. Heartbroken. These words appeared in my Twitter, er, X, feed this afternoon. 

Kelsie Snow posted that her husband Chris, who has ALS, suffered cardiac arrest yesterday with a subsequent catastrophic brain injury from lack of oxygen. He is not expected to wake up. 

Kelsie, who describes herself as a writer, podcaster and storyteller, blogs at https://kelsiesnowwrites.com/ and has a podcast called Sorry I'm Sad. She and her husband have two school-age children. He's an executive with an NHL club in Canada and was diagnosed with familial ALS three years ago (that means other people in his family, including his father, have died of the disease). But his progression was slowed significantly in a drug trial. The story of all this, with the accompanying emotional roller coaster, is told in Kelsie's blog which I have followed, as I follow other ALS stories, in the years since my son Kris died of ALS.

It is hard to watch others go through this, even over the distance of social media. I'm not just watching, I'm feeling and remembering. And imagining. There's the loss to Chris's family, Kelsie and their children now living through what they've long feared. There's the loss to others in the ALS community -- families with fathers and mothers and school-age children, people with ALS who are looking for morsels of hope and find them in accounts of a treatment that worked for someone, even in a small way, even for a short time. 

Instead today, a day when an FDA advisory committee is meeting to review the potential benefits of a new therapy, they are having to think about their own death or their loved one's death, even as they grieve for a fellow warrior. I remember Kris telling me, or maybe Michelle told me, how hard it hit him when one of his friends with ALS died. Loss. Over and over again. I'm sitting with that today. 

But I just spent time glancing through Kris's blog. I thought I remembered reading about that friend who died and I wanted to link to that post, but if it indeed was a blog post, I couldn't find it.

But I did get a lively taste of Kris's voice and spirit. A few more tears, yes, and sadness -- so much hard stuff that he and Michelle went through, and the rest of us, too. 

But also love and grace.

Blessed are those who mourn.