Easter joy

I have a large forsythia bush along the side of my house, under the bay window in the dining room, and another one a few feet away under the kitchen window. The green leaves are appearing, but there are no yellow flowers this year, none at all, except for one odd curved branch, bouncing just above the ground. Six inches of blossoms stand out against the dead leaves on the ground, in conversation with the daffodils straggling nearby.

Most years these two bushes are a fountain of yellow blossoms. They have rarely been pruned and I like them in their natural shape. Other forsythia bushes I see in front yards around town are often clipped into someone else's idea of the right shape for a bush, with no allowances made for branches that want to reach and curve and bend.

I've seen very few forsythia blossoms this spring. Perhaps all these plants could do was stay alive through the cold, cold winter of 2018-19. There was no energy left over to make flowers. (A quick search of "why doesn't my forsythia bloom" confirmed this theory.)

I miss those yellow flowers. The silk ones that decorate the chancel at my church during the Easter season are no substitute. They're lovely, carefully chosen, bundled and tied into artful sprays, integrated into the decor. But they are a performance of Easter joy, not the real thing.

Real joy at Easter?

(I wish I had poetic skills!)

Today I think (and today is only today)
Easter joy is a wild thing.
unkempt, unpruned, exuberant,
but sometimes vanquished,
or hidden, by a hard winter.

Just a few blossoms, close to the earth,
but still dancing in the wind,
are enough to recall the bigger, heavenly thing.
We will all see it someday.

Blogiversary: filters, formulas, modesty and wisdom

Transfiguration Sunday tomorrow. Means it's time to write a Blogiversary post, marking 13 years of The Perverse Lutheran. So I'm huddled at Starbucks while my daughter is at Saturday afternoon bowling. I'm sitting at a high counter under a speaker that's pouring out beats and female vocals that I'm sure are fairly bland, pop-culture-wise, but that I find irritating.  So I've layered Debussy piano music through my headphones onto the general aural ambience at Starbucks. The volume on my computer is turned as high as it goes and it's still not much of a solution to the problem. Unless the pianist is digging into the keys, banging out a big and percussive sound, the pop music leaks through.

My own thoughts? Can't seem to hear them.

One reasons is that there are so many more voices that I follow in the public media these days. So many pundits, so many echoing and self-referential Twitter accounts, so many ads and silly videos on Facebook. So many books on library shelves, so many next to my chair in the living room. So many books piled up in my Audible account, waiting for me to string together bits and pieces of listening time until I've heard the whole 8-hour, or 18-hour, story.

Why keep keep adding to the cosmic word count?

In the past 13 years I've immortalized (well, written about) fledgling cardinals in my back yard, conversations in Bible study groups, various communities of which I'm a part, my sons, my daughter,  ALS, Alzheimer's, funerals, knitting, grey days in February and beautiful days in May and June. (Perhaps I'll go back and add links for all those examples. Perhaps not.)

I do, I confess, go back and read old blog posts from time to time, in hopes of finding something that  I'm not embarrassed to read later. Sometimes the writing works, if I have looked and listened with openness and humility and haven't given up too soon.

Are these things helpful or interesting to others? Edifying? (I use that word without irony. I like that word.) I do apply that filter before I'm too many paragraphs into a post. That's one reason why the back side of this blog has so many abandoned drafts, especially in the last year or two. I think again before I hit the Publish button. I am not only a Perverse Lutheran but also what some call a Modest Lutheran. Despite all my inner and outer arrogance, a voice from childhood -- the same tone used to recite questions and answers from the catechism -- reminds me of how little my inner life matters to the rest of the world.

My best blog post formula starts with an image, seen, heard, or even imagined. There's a description, some sense of movement or change, questions and wondering, and perhaps a glance toward wisdom or a surprise.

Wisdom gives me an image for the end of this post: the wisdom tooth that I had pulled yesterday. It was ugly to look at, rocked out of my jaw and then held up before my eyes by the oral surgeon.

And yet.

I've had it a long time. It's decayed, no longer used for chewing and not worth the cost of a crown. So, it's gone. All the wisdom left in me must be in my head or my heart, perhaps in my breath and body (because I'm back at yoga). Does any of it date from the years when those wisdom teeth first came in? Is any of it worth sharing (though surely much of it is shared already)?

Thank you, dear readers, for reading. Time to hit the road and leave that Starbucks speaker behind!

Seven random bits on a Wednesday in February

1. There's a Eugene (Debs) Porter from Chicago's Revolution Brewery at my left hand, a Hershey's Chocolate with Almonds, King-Size, that I've been saving for weeks, at my right hand. This is how I'm closing out Wednesday. The Hershey's is nothing but a wrapper by now.

2. I've posted two "What made me smile today" posts on Facebook recently, thinking perhaps this could be a continuing series. But alas, the ironies and fantasies that made me smile today cannot shared on Facebook.

3. Knit these socks for three reasons:

1) to give to my son who likes hand knit socks; 2) to keep on using up yarn, so that soon I can buy more, and 3) to keep me awake while I read a long book: "Fatal Discord" about Erasmus and Luther and the Reformation. The socks are finished, the book is not. Having yarn and needles in hand made it a lot easier to get through the Peasants War, a part of Reformation history not taught in Lutheran grade schools (for good reason).

4. Erasmus seems to be coming out ahead in "Fatal Discord." Snippish, occasionally deceptive, even passive aggressive, but less exhausting than the constant churn of Martin Luther, his Anfechtung and his insistence that Christ came with a sword.

5. The sun was out today, thank the Lord. Snow and ice and frozen slush underfoot still impose on freedom to move about. But when I drove to work this morning, the front of the church building, its flat surface facing east, was coated with a thin glaze of ice, glinting in the morning sunshine. What ever does this mean?

6. Not much, I say. Because the best moments of the day were not about sun, ice, beautiful images, wool, or books. They were about people. (Too bad about not being able to share those smiles, she said quizzically.)

7.  I wore four hand-knit items today: a wool sweater, wool socks, wool scarf, and my Yak Hat, knit from gorgeously soft yak fiber. It took all of that to stay warm. Time to cast on for another project.

Saturday shopping

I spent a half hour in a thrift store this morning and another half hour in Home Goods this afternoon. In the morning I was spending time with my sister. Bought two books for less than $2. In the afternoon I was rewarding myself for the long walk through Super Target to do the grocery shopping.

You can look at a lot of consumer goods in a short period of time at Home Goods. And in a thrift store you see how all those glasses and bowls and sofas and end tables age. Big square oak end tables -- soooo 80's. Vintage dining room sets, on the other hand--kind of a bargain, if you're willing to reupholster the chair seats and have a big traditional dining room to put them in. Sets of matching glasses? They're down to two-of-a-kind at best at the thrift store. 

I go into Home Goods looking for something that will, and I say this seriously, change my life. Might just be the convenience of having another set of sheets. Might be a color upgrade: a new flowered pillow for the living room couch. Might be a good new pot at a good price. Or a large and friendly coffee mug to add to the morning rotation.

Note that "change my life" is not the same as "spark joy," but it is close. Good tools change my life -- that's why I have so many different kinds of knitting needles. My favorite non-book purchase of the past six months is a heavy sheet pan from Pampered Chef. Sturdy, practical Lutheran that I am, utility is a door to joy. 

The clearance shelf is a path to life-changing purchases. Luxuries are better when they're surprising and cheap. I found a bright blue wood snapshot frame there today. I will soon have a picture for me framed by me, rather than gifted to me. (I treasure the gifts but choosing is also to be treasured.)

Home Goods is aspirational--so much wall art with script-y slogans, so many make-a-statement decorator pieces, so many things to be looked at. I picked up a glass swan,  a graceful necking curving around a feathered bowl. It would have awed me as a six- or seven-year-old child, when swans in fairy tales were the epitome of beauty. The piece was $29.99, too expensive for small-time nostalgia. Also, it failed the "where will I put it" and "will it stack" text. (I am tempted to Google "stacking swans," just to see what's out there.)

So many things in stores are sold to hold other things we buy: fancy hangers, cloth bins, shelves of all shapes and materials, tables with drawers under them, organizers. It's crazy. 

I browse, sucked into thinking, at least for a while, that life can be changed with just a couple of good purchases. 

Birdsong

I opened the front door this morning to check for Amazon packages. I wasn't looking for anything specific, but in 2018 you never know what you may have ordered 3 or 4 days ago and forgotten about.

Anyway.

I opened the front door about 7:15 this morning, felt the cold air on my face, saw the eastern sky still streaked with bright clouds from rising sun. And heard birds singing. I thought of the carol--the Catalonian "Carol of the Birds"--my little choir sang in the Christmas concert on Sunday:

En veure despuntar El major illuminar En la nit mes joiosa;
Els ocellettes cantant a festejarlo van, Amb sa veu melindrosa. 

In midst of darkest night a lovely star shines bright And sends the darkness fleeing.
The birds awake in song and singing all night long They voice our hearts rejoicing.

It's a minor-key carol with an exotic sound (exotic, at least, in a neo-gothic Lutheran church). The language is Catalan, French-inflected Spanish. The setting by Joan Varner has a few parallel fourths in the harmony and a flute, fluttering and singing above and around the treble choir and piano.

It was the hardest of the set of three carols we sang, with a slow, sustained melody, strange words, odd vowels. So it was late in the rehearsal process before I gave much thought to the words in the English text. Even now, I don't really have the images straight in my mind. Logically, it's the star that sends the darkness fleeing, but the unarticulated image linked to the music in my brain is the birdsong breaking through the darkness, as light chasing the darkness away. In a painting the star would shine over everything, revealing the birds awake in the trees on the night of Jesus' birth. But in music, in this carol--it's the sound of the flute, the bird bouncing from branch to branch, that tells of the rejoicing.

The birds sing every morning. I have heard them at 4 a.m., when I'm awake and fretting. They're still singing outside my window now, as I'm finishing up here and turning my mind towards the day's work.

Rejoicing in the Lord. At Christmas. Always.

Wounded hearts

I’ve seen two mothers, two families lose children—daughters—this month. One daughter died after years of ALS, leaving behind a husband and her own daughter. The other, a daughter with a developmental disability, died today at the age of 15. 

“You’re in my prayers,” I say, I type on Facebook, I write in a note card. But really what it is, is —“You’re in my heart.” In my wounded and broken heart. 

Driving home from work today, listening to the news, I heard more grief: parents of the two women killed at Chicago’s Mercy Hospital yesterday, talking about their daughters and about their loss. I keep thinking it’s a dream and I’ll wake up, said the mother. She knew God, she was a praying woman, said the parents. 

Things fall apart. We share the broken pieces and fall apart together, as much as we dare, and keep going, doing what needs to be done. 

There is anger, grief, struggle, and an ache inside that we hope won’t be there in the morning, but it’s still there in the dark night, still there at dawn. Even very old wounds break open when hearts around us are breaking. It’s a kind of sympathetic vibration, like music, but in beats and pulses unique to human hearts.  

Monday of Thanksgiving week (not a meditation on gratitude)

Working backwards from Thursday:

Wednesday is for pies, apple in the late afternoon, pumpkin after choir rehearsal in the evening, as well as for putting leaves in tables, patting down the wrinkles in tablecloths, counting heads and counting chairs and chopping onions and celery for stuffing. 

Tuesday is for shopping, unless I get it done today, in which case Tuesday is for cleaning, which I really don't need to do much of since I cleaned for guests last weekend and that's good enough, thank you, especially for family. Though now that I check the weather I see that Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be bright and sunny which means dust will show on the bookshelves in the back room, as will streaks on the refrigerator in the kitchen because both rooms face west. 

Monday is for menu planning, which I seem to be avoiding by writing this post, but the turkey's thawing in the refrigerator and I've done this all before, like, for more than twenty years and beyond the turkey and the gravy (which I've got down, the secret is browning the turkey neck and the giblets before you turn them into broth, the broth being an excuse to open a bottle of Merlot) — beyond that nothing matters too much except the ten pounds of mashed potatoes, which my niece will peel (hope you're reading this, Gerianne), and of course the stuffing or the dressing, which is what Grandma Masch called it and into which you can throw just about anything -- at least it seemed like that's what she did. 

Thanksgiving Dinner is logistics as much as it is cooking. Two decades of experience hosting family members at my house on this day means that everyone knows their part and they're all increasingly capable of helping out. Nieces know where to stand at the counter. When Uncle Joe was not there to carve the turkey his daughter Lauren took over. Kurt finds chairs; this year he may have to bring some back from his house, because he took them there last summer when he moved in. 

Questions to be settled today: what vegetable dish will I make to serve beside the traditional carrots brought by my sister? Will I made something everyone likes--green beans with something or another (NOT mushroom soup)? Or something the picky eaters won't touch: butternut squash and roasted onions, Brussel sprouts (which even I am ambivalent about), cauliflower au gratin, so rich there's nothing not too like because it's all butter and cheese. And will I make sweet potatoes? Probably I will, because they're cheap and I like them a lot. 

As usual, I thought briefly that I would skip the cranberry sauce this year, because only my mother really likes it and the leftovers eventually have to be extracted from the back of my refrigerator and thrown out in January. But there they were, the cranberries, at the grocery store on Saturday, two bags for $4 and so I plopped them into my cart. The second bag will get used for cranberry bread in December and hey, I really can't imagine my personal Thanksgiving plate without that glob of red next to the mashed potatoes, turning everything on my plate just a little pink.

There will be cornbread. Actually, corn sticks, baked at the last minute in the cast iron molds that came from Aunt Clara, heated in the oven, brushed with butter, sizzling hot, with the timer set to make sure we don't forget the second batch as we settle down for dinner. There are never any leftover corn sticks. 

Sometime today I need to draw the mental picture of the oven, with the turkey in it and the picture of where everything goes in that last half hour when the turkey is out and the kitchen is one giant scramble of last-minute cooking. What can we reheat in the microwave? What garnishes what" (What bits of chopped parsley or orange zest get left behind?) When can we eat?

This, my friends, is Thanksgiving Day. Dinner is at 1:00. (Church is at 10--which makes dinner at 1:00 quite the trick.) 

I'd better get started. 

Thankfulness? My full heart moves me forward.