Reconciliation

I've probably had about eight interesting ideas yesterday, things that could be written about and examined and manipulated into meaning something. I remember none of them.

Except anger. I remember the one about anger.

I'm holding onto that one. It's the one where I identify the stuff I'm swimming in as anger. Others might identify the mess around them as the chaos of a messy world. Someone else, blessed with a happier temperament, might recognize love in the air and water that give life. But my default position is I'm mad. I'm mad that the world is the way it is, that people die and leave me, that there are constant struggles for power and ascendancy among the people I live with.

No news here, really. Everyone dies, we all know people who die. Some of those deaths are more outrageous and meaningless than others, but each one is a surprise to someone. Things fall apart despite how hard we work at holding them together, no matter how successful or unsuccessful are at asserting our own power. We must go on living.

I saw "Tree of Life" the other night. The opening voiceover is a meditation on Nature and Grace. I see a contradiction; my son says they're both God. Whatever they are, they were the ether of the movie, there in the damp green suburban grass, in the flames and water of creation. When they brush up against each other, Nature and Grace, there are flares of energy. What nature will do, grace will forgive.

Many years ago someone older and wiser introduced me to the idea of righteous anger, anger fully justified by the circumstances, anger that should not be hidden or extinguished, but put to use, because God is present in that anger. Up to that point the words that attached themselves to anger in my head were in sentences like "Anger gets you nowhere" or "Anger never did any good for anybody."

That would be faithless thinking, in the face of anger over deep and existential contradictions between death and life, brokenness and righteousness. God is at the dividing line between these things, reconciling them, making them one.

Silence

I went to see "The Artist" early this evening. I had heard it was a good movie, not to be missed. So I went by myself, so that I wouldn't be kicking myself later about missing it. Once upon a time I saw lots of movies every year and saw almost every movie nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. My sainted husband made sure of that. Sometimes he cared more that I saw all these films than I did, but I miss that now. "The Artist" is a silent movie about a silent movie star, with a score to manipulate your emotions, but no spoken dialogue. The lead character is stuck. He will not talk, he will not change what he does, even as his career falls into ruins, though a perky young starlet tries to help him. If you're having a quiet day, as I was, with no one around much to talk to, this is not going to be the movie that picks you up. At least not if you're me. Not if you go by yourself with no one to talk to. I like talking. The lack of it in this movie made the cold walk back to my car seem all the quieter. One can talk to oneself, if necessary. One can mug for the camera if you need to communicate in a performance without talking. But you can't mug for yourself, except in the bathroom. Got in my car, sneaked out of my parking place and went home to my knitting.

Blog Anniversary

Today more or less marks the sixth anniversary of The Perverse Lutheran. The first post is dated February 28, 2006, but it was Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday in the Epiphany season, the last Sunday before Lent. Easter is a bit earlier this year than in 2006, so Transfiguration is a bit earlier. It's today.

Here's how I began:

"Damn. I meant to start this blog with something clever and incisive. Something fun. Something smart.

"Instead, the pressing question of the day is visceral. Why do I weep when that darned Alleluia banner is carried out of church at the end of Transfiguration Sunday worship?"

Six years of blogging have shown me that blog posts that begin with a strong visceral image are easier to put together than ones that begin with the break in the image of things that prompts wit or humor. Those breaks flash by quickly, like buildings seen from a moving CTA train. The figurative punch in the gut or the tears and the lump in the throat last longer. They may color the rest of the day or even the rest of the week.

A look at the blog archive shows more posts in the ten months of blogging in 2006 than in any year since then. I came close in 2011, thanks to taking a stab at posting every day last November. My original goal was to post two or three times a week and to write quickly, without a lot of painful revision. In practice, this has meant no more than one round of painful revision. I sometimes suspect I am a better editor than writer. My writing is pretty ordinary, or yes, sloppy, until I go back and rework it.

Knowing that there are people who read my blog posts inhibits my blogging. I wish this were not so, because then I think I would write more often. But there it is. I don't come here to spill my frustrations, chronicle my depressions, or write about people who bug me. That would be self-indulgent, and I would hate to be described as self-indulgent. Also, the psalmist's prayer, "Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips" is one I take personally, but the guards set before my mouth are usually castigating me for remarks that have already escaped, rather than preventing them from getting out.

The fingers on the keyboard and the super-executive editor in my brain work more slowly, so they do keep watch. They are stern and they wield a six-foot spear that would pierce my heart if people thought I wasn't very nice. It's lot of work to please them, or to make friends with them so that the words can slide out easily.

Today again there was that catch in my chest during "Alleluia, Song of Gladness." It struck somewhere around the image of the new Jerusalem. It invokes memories of the dead, of those who have gone before, including, this weekend, a young man who died on Thursday who was a classmate of my daughter's. But what I am more interested in today is a stanza from another Transfiguration hymn, "How Good, Lord, to Be Here!":

"Before we taste of death, We see your kingdom come; We long to hold the vision bright And make this hill our home."

Not "pie in the sky by and by" but seeing the kingdom now. The hymn, of course, ends with leaving the mount and asking Christ to "come with us to the plain." I'm going to think for a while on that kingdom coming along to the plain, about the light and glory of the image of God we carry as God's creatures. It might burn away the gloom and cruddy questioning that flows over me when I think about writing and wanting to write something original, true, and perhaps edifying or enjoyable for others.

Blogging on. Thanks for reading!

In God is my salvation

I am sleeping on a dairy farm tonight. It's a farmhouse graciously given to us for the night. My aunt's friend has left a note about food in the kitchen for breakfast, where to find towels, and the password for the wi-fi. We're staying here on the night before my uncle's funeral.

It's a wonderful home, full of things that must have come into the house with stories. A collection of cruets in the dining room and another of flat irons on the landing, baskets and crocks and heavy wood furniture, new and old. Things here feel like they are loved not for what they say about their owner but because of themselves. These things had working lives once. They have their own dignity and stand tall with pride at being well used.

My uncle, Edward Pankow, was a pastor in this community, a farm community originally, but now one where there is a variety of economic activity beyond dairy farms and soybeans. Some things are different from the suburbs where I come from. There are no black people here, for one thing ("less diverse" would be the proper way to say this). People seem to know more about each other. Maybe this is just an effect of there being fewer people to know--same amount of news but fewer characters in the cast.

As people here remember Ed's ministry they speak of a gentle and unassuming leader, positive and encouraging. His own faith was an example to others. I know from stories I've heard that he walked through some sad times with the members of his flock, times when people must surely have asked him why things happen. I think his answer would have been a gentle one, a reminder to trust in God, to have faith. But I can hear him adding in inflections learned from his German immigrant parents, "Yah, yah, but it is hard sometimes."

We've just had the "Do I lock it?" debate about the front door. We are city people and don't feel safe unless the door is locked. But here on a country road, locking the front door is silly. Who would you be trying to keep out?

The funeral is tomorrow. The word of God will be preached, Christ's death and resurrection proclaimed, the cosmic struggle and the eternal victory. But there will also be my uncle's life and example, an earthly life of earthly struggle, following Jesus' example of praying to Abba, Father, following Jesus' example of trusting and finding salvation in God. In his later years, Ed was bent over because of back problems. He often walked with a cane, and he lived with pain. But now in heaven with the God he trusted he stands tall and well-loved, redeemed.

Sleepless

Can't get back to sleep, too early to get out of bed. Yesterday was long and stressful, the kind of day that leaves you twisting and turning when you wake up at 3:00 a.m. My brain, which needs to rest, dear God, instead was locked into search mode, the little wheel spinning and spinning and coming up with the kind of reference list that does not differentiate between good and bad, trashy and useful.

If I breathe, can I sleep? And return to the thinking later?

All my heart

There are ornaments and bric a brac to commemorate "Baby's First Christmas" or a "Just Married" Christmas and other such happy occasions. But I suspect it is the sad Christmases we remember best, the Christmas celebrations that come in hard times or when times are changing.

Tonight was one such Christmas, as the news slipped through the people gathered at church that someone, elderly and well-loved, had suffered a massive stroke and was not expected to live. It came to me between the two children's services that are the focus of my energy for much of November and December. And in the second service, the same words I had heard only 90 minutes earlier became more pungent, more clear, more true as I thought about this woman's life and her husband's loss.

Our lives on earth end, though God made us for eternity. This God incarnate we sing of tonight, this infant, died too, but leads us through death to life eternal. This God knows and understands our suffering, our grief, our loss.

Generation after generation sings of this, tells of this at Christmastime, and despite death, despite sadness, rejoices.

All my heart this night rejoices,
As I hear, far and near, sweetest angel voices;
“Christ is born,” their choirs are singing,
Till the air, everywhere, now their joy is ringing.

Hark! a voice from yonder manger,
Soft and sweet, doth entreat, “Flee from woe and danger;
Brethren, come; from all that grieves you
You are freed; all you need I will surely give you.”

Come, then, let us hasten yonder;
Here let all, great and small, kneel in awe and wonder,
Love Him Who with love is yearning;
Hail the star that from far bright with hope is burning.
(Paul Gerhardt, 1656)

To whom we belong

Today was my father's birthday. He died 28 years ago, which is almost half my lifetime ago. He died when he was my age. Yet I still have a vivid picture of him in my mind, one brought to life today by much Bach and Handel. I stood in front of my children's choir, listening to the introduction to "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion." I marked the beat and bounced slightly on my left foot and knew at once it was my father in me, it was what he would have done, the way he would have done it. Amazing. Last week this same choir sang this same piece at for a chapel service at the college next door. One of the students who was there told her friend, who is my son's girlfriend, that someone who looked an awful lot like Kris conducted the choir--his mother? Amazing what we carry with us, what we pass on. Amazing how we can recognize these marks of who we are and to whom we belong.