Attachments

I watch myself weed books from my shelves. Sehr komisch, I think. Very funny. 

It is my belief that I should hang on to no more books than I have shelves to keep them on. And by shelves to keep them on, I don't mean stacked on the washstand next to my bed or stacked on top of and under the library table in the living room. Definitely not on the ironing board. 

I do not have room for more book shelves. Yet new books are being published all the time. Local independent bookstores need my support. And yes, I do use the public library. 

So last week it was time to weed, to make some decisions about all those books on the shelves. I began with the books closest to the back door, the ones on the shelves that rest on brackets hooked into supports that I screwed into the studs 30-odd years ago during Kris's nap. Surprisingly, they've held up, despite occasional landslides.

Two of these shelves hold fiction, horizontally stacked, a mix of read-a-long-time-ago, want-to-read-someday, ought-to-read-someday, given-to-me-by-a-friend, and picked-up-for-free-or-for-cheap. When I need something to read, like when I've finished a book at 10 p.m. and need something to fall asleep with, I look here. And then go look somewhere else. Clearly some of these books can and must go. 

I stand on the kitchen step stool and pick up a book from the shelf. What is this? Where did it come from? What sort of intellectual pretension or passing fancy made me think I would read it? Is it diverting historical fiction, or the predictable kind I have no patience with? Sherwood Anderson—really? I read the first chapter of that little piece of Americana a couple years ago on vacation and could not make myself read more. Time to get rid of it. Jonathan Franzen's "Crossroads"? That big book stays on the shelf for now, if only so that I can continue to congratulate myself for getting through it. 

I notice that after a dozen or so books I'm completely confused. Why do I return some to the shelves? Why do I  drop others into the brown paper bag on the floor--the bag that will surely split when I take it out the back door? 

There is no logic here, no rational basis for holding on to some books and not to others. It's comical, quizzical, completely subjective. Are there hidden rules for keeping or discarding books? Why am I so attached to some and so finished with others? I seldom get rid of gifts from friends and family. Books that opened my mind about something tend to stay on the shelf. (I may need to pry open that crack again someday.) Books I dearly want others to read stay, too. But the ones I give up on? A crooked smile is often the only reason I've got.

Kept on the shelf: a Faulkner (seriously, I ought to read some Faulkner); "Hamlet" (recently reread, but I dumped the book of criticism I read alongside it); "Cloud Cuckoo Land" (well-woven story, bright shiny book from last Christmas); an Elena Ferrente novel (50 cent purchase, likely to be engrossing). 

What to do with fiction read long ago? There are two or three books each from Anne Tyler, Jane Smiley, Alice McDermott, Louise Erdrich -- books I collected and read as they were published, some of them decades ago. Many of these went into the bag for the library book sale.

There was a pile of novels by Sue Miller, and I happened to flip open the cover of one, wondering about the copyright date. Inside, on the fly leaf, I found an inscription, because the book had been a Mother's Day gift to me in 1990. The message, written by my husband in my three-year-old son's voice. It began "To the ultimate Good Mother," a reference to Miller's previous book—the one that led me to mention this title to Lon. It went on, "Me and my baby sister/brother [I was pregnant at the time] know you really like to read lots and lots. So we got you this book because we want you to be happy on Mother's Day and all the time, not just a couple while."

"A couple while." I'd forgotten how Kris said that as a preschooler. 

The inscription. Lon gave me many books through the years. I should look for more of these. 

Both Lon and Kris are gone now — Lon died in 2006, Kris in 2017, five years ago this month. 

The book was titled "Family Pictures." 

I kept it. 

Fiber management

I now own a loom. Not one big as a pantry, like you'd see at Colonial Williamsburg. Not even a floor loom like you'd see in a college art department. Just a tabletop loom, with a weaving width of 15 inches. Bigger than a toy, it has all the working parts of larger looms — warp beam, fabric beam, beater, reed. harnesses, heddles. The central frame that holds the harnesses (four of them) is called a castle, a term which is easy to remember because of the way it stands above all the activity of the moving parts below. 

It's all very pretty; the wood is beautiful. I bought it secondhand from someone whose deceased wife was a weaver.  I kinda know what to do with it. I took a two-day class last fall and made a small sample of plain weave, rib and twill on this type of loom. There are more classes in my future. I've bought the book that teachers recommend and yesterday morning reviewed the section on warping the loom, step one in any project. 

Warping means putting on the thread or yarn that runs lengthwise in the cloth. It's a process where a beginner relies on the experience of teachers, not because the basic concept is complicated, but because you're working with maybe 240 pieces of yarn, each one 4-6 feet long. You can imagine what a sorry mess you'd have on your hands without a method for measuring and moving, anchoring and finally threading each end through the slots of the reed and the holes in the heddles. You do all of this with care and thoughtfulness, checking frequently for twists and mis-counting. Mistakes can be fixed, but it's easier not to have to.  

I am itching to put a warp on my loom, but unsure if I any of the yarns I already have will make a good first project. Unfortunately I am never averse to ordering more yarn, especially if that's what's needed to assure a successful project. I shopped online last night at three large yarn and weaving suppliers and ended up completely frustrated. I found a beautiful cherry-red yarn at my favorite vendor's site, but the warping pegs I wanted to buy were out of stock. The vendor with two kinds of warping pegs to choose from, both in stock, did not have yarn that inspired me. And when I found both yarn and pegs at the third vendor's site, I could not place the order because I already had an account that I couldn't log into. 

After a brief respite on Twitter, I picked up my knitting.

I spent a couple hours yesterday afternoon on another fiber project: reclaiming yarn from moths and mothballs. Last fall I was gifted with several tubs full of yarn left after a house sale. Some of it -- 29 balls of Koigu (nice stuff) -- smells nauseatingly of mothballs. I spent a couple hours unwinding the balls back into skeins that I could hang in the sun. Brought them in overnight, thinking the smell was gone. Stuck my nose in them this morning -- they're back out on the patio. Tomorrow, maybe, they'll get a soaking in vinegar and more sun.

Deliberate tasks, determined reclaiming of old stuff. Two days into retirement and I remind me of my grandmother. And yes, she'll laugh and approve when I finally end up tossing that yarn in the garbage. I'll feel younger and more extravagant when the new yarn -- yes, the website worked for me today -- arrives in the mail later this week. 

Good morning world

There's a heat advisory today from the National Weather Service. The weather app on my phone says 99 degrees by mid-afternoon. It's 7am and I'm sitting outside. It's not hot yet, but it's oppressively humid and the ground is wet after a big storm last night. More little bugs than usual are floating around my chair. I'll be scratching the mosquito bites later. 

But the birds are chirping almost continuously, a canopy of invisible sound woven into the bright green of the maple overhead, answered from the darker green of the maple down the street. The cardinal is calling from somewhere behind me. Things are growing: basil in the pot, dill in the ground, grass and weeds and hidden molds that will aggravate my allergies for the rest of the week. It feels like the midwest version of a tropical rain forest. 

I'm lucky to have this view on the world: substantial trees planted in the parkway, land around my house that hosts lush weedy greenery, urban birds for company. It's not the natural world. There's too much concrete. There are cars. But it's enough like it to be comforting and renewing, even as I hear the garbage truck working its way down the alley. 

Good morning world.

From the bulletin board of a perverse Lutheran

On June 30, my last day as a Grace Staff member, I will be cleaning out my office, which lies in a far corner of the building, two flights of stairs above the church library. I’ll be sorting out books and music, cleaning out files both physical and digital, deciding which personal items to take home and which ones to take to the dumpster

I will also take down the ephemera from my bulletin board. Ephemera may not be the right word for the postcards, newspaper clippings and odd bits of this and that on my bulletin board; ephemera means “transitory creations not meant to be retained or preserved.” The things on my bulletin board are there to help me remember things. Some are there for obvious reasons. Others — I am still puzzling about some of them.

There are postcards from places I’ve visited — places that have fueled both curiosity and contentment. There’s a photo I took of the four young women who sang in my Joyful Voices choir: they’re standing up tall, hands clasped in “Sound of Music” singing position and peering into the camera over their glasses, as I so often peered at them from the piano. There’s a comical drawing of J. S. Bach on a postcard from the Bach House in Eisenach, Germany. The scowl on the great man’s face is frightfully serious yet somehow reminds me of all the delight to be found in the great man’s music. There’s a page from a daily calendar with a quote from Ella Fitzgerald: “The only thing better than singing is more singing.” There’s a notecard with Romans 8:38 in calligraphy (“I am persuaded that neither life nor death…”) There are mementos of my children and of shows I’ve directed and a bracelet that came to me from a former colleague who passed away in 2014. She still reminds me to take the time to do it right.

There’s also a column of quotes typed out on plain white paper in my choice of fonts. Not surprisingly, one is about misogyny. Many are about writing:

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” Thomas Jefferson

“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” John Maynard Keynes as quoted by Paul Krugman

“Keep typing until it turns into writing.” David Carr

More pretentiously:

“Tell the truth. Don’t decorate. Remember death.”

I don’t know where this one came from some dozen or more years ago. It seemed like something to try to live into, if only in a modest way as a church communicator.

Several years later I posted another darkish quote, this one a bit of a puzzle:

“I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.” Stephen Colbert

It’s from an interview published in GQ, August 15, 2015. Colbert, host of “The Late Show” on CBS, is the youngest of 11 children. His father and the two brothers closest to him in age were killed in a plane crash when he was 10. The statement comes from his attempts to explain how his mother, a devout Catholic, and he himself managed to survive this tragedy.

It is a paradoxical statement and it was stapled to my bulletin board because I wondered how it could possibly be true. It was something I tested in my own life as I watched my son Kris fight the good fight of dying from ALS. Before and after his death in July of 2017, I would stare at this statement and say, no, I’m not there, not there yet.

But maybe I am there now. This is hard to explain. It’s something about the largeness of love, and how that love originates in God and grows as we love others through good times and bad. Something about love living larger and longer than anger. Something centered in a cross.

From my office I can hear the organ played in church — musicians practicing, tuners tuning, organists playing hymns as the congregation sings. From the computer on my desk I’ve sent both death notices and festive Easter and Christmas worship schedules to the people of Grace. I’ve churned out 80 or 90 issues of Grace Notes and many more email newsletters, each one full of details about lives shared, life treasured, as we live and love one another, together in Christ.

Congrats

 

Tomorrow is a big day in our family. My younger son, Kurt, graduates from medical school, after four years of hard work and years of working hard just to get there. I am not just full of love and pride — I am in awe. 

It's Kurt's day tomorrow, but inevitably this morning, I have been thinking about what tomorrow would be like if Kris could be there. Kris, my older son, died of ALS in 2017, a year before Kurt was admitted to med school. If he were still alive, if he had never had ALS, he would be with us tomorrow, bursting with pride, grinning, five feet, four inches of social energy clearing the way for a taller, blonder but equally blue-eyed younger brother.

There were six years between them. When we found out mid-pregnancy that Kurt would be a boy, I did not think they would end up being such close companions. But in our smallish three-bedroom house they shared a room and bunk beds, close quarters with elbow-to-elbow seats in front of the TV screen, video game controllers at close hand. Kurt abandoned me from the age of three-and-a-half to tag after Kris, through a "club" under the pine trees on vacation, over the tall piles of dirt on our street when the sewers were replaced, at auto shows, in church pews, on Cub Scout field trips, in the backyard and at the park. Kurt's ambitions reached beyond imitating Kris: at baseball games, as Kris played in the outfield and stole bases, Kurt aspired to be the pitcher and brought his ball and glove to games so that he could practice on the sidelines. When Kurt became that big-kid pitcher, pitching the 5th and 6th grade team out of bases-loaded-and-no-outs jams, teenage Kris paced nervously behind the backstop, conferred with the coaches and tried to keep his cool. He had taken over for their dad, as Lon descended into dementia. 

Kurt has his own stories of time spent with Kris in the years before his death. I'm only the mom, so it's best to acknowledge that there are things I don't — and wouldn't want to know. "Worth it" is the refrain. When Kurt was admitted to med school the person he most wanted to share the news with was Kris, who had died the previous summer. 

There are new people in Kurt's life, including a girlfriend who is present in all his future plans. There is an abundance of old friends who will help him celebrate tomorrow. 

There will also be a space, not empty, that I will hold — in my heart, always in my gut. Kris. 

Fox, watching

 1. Drove to church early this morning and saw a fox., standing on the sidewalk watching the cars go by. Slowed down, looked back. Definitely a fox. 

2. Movie recommendation (or not, you decide): I watched "Drive My Car" on Friday night. A meditation on seeing and being seen, grieving and failing to grieve, telling stories, telling lies, telling truth, talking about suffering, all of it infused with Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." It's a few minutes short of three hours, in Japanese with subtitles, so it's a commitment. I had to rewind one important part because I nodded off. But I am still thinking about it.

3. Because one of the truths in "Drive My Car" was that humans are terrifyingly vulnerable, a truth echoed in a depressing quote from James Agee in a sermon given this afternoon at a Bach Cantata Vespers service. 

4. Yes, we had lots of Easter trumpets this afternoon and the confident assertion that the Shepherd of the Sheep has arisen ("Surrexit pastor bonus"). And in the cantata (BWV 67, Hold in Remembrance Jesus Christ) a graying baritone calming the anxious orchestra as the Vox Christi: "Peace be with you." 

5. I don't know. This might be all. That's it. That's the blog. It's a hard and lonely world.

6. And yet, a question in the sermon: When did you become you? One answer (maybe it was the answer) was in baptism, and maybe in every subsequent baptism you've witnessed, or subsequent trips to the communion table, opportunities to claim an identity, to be seen. I'm not sure how that works exactly -- something about being present in the presence of God. And being present affirms the presence of God.

7. Side note, Part of me was recalled to a younger me today by the opportunity to do some story-telling in the Sunday School hour, during a traveling retelling of the Passion Story. I was assigned the Garden of Gethsemane part of the script. I had words to read, but told the story rather than read it. Takes me back to 2nd grade where we acted out Bible stories all the time. Except I seldom got a chance to act.  I was invariably the narrator—through the ten plagues and the Exodus and the forty years in the wilderness, through the entire Passion story. 

8. Probably should have picked up a pen and the notebook/journal I keep and written this all out there, in wandering, questioning fashion. And then closed the cover on the questions, so I wouldn't have to come up with an ending.

9. Thankfully, today is ending. The sun has broken through the clouds in the west after a day of rain. The prayers have been said for Ukraine, for peace, for those who are sick, for those who mourn. We've given thanks with an "Alleluia" for those who've gone before us in Christ. We're getting ready for Monday. In Chekhovian fashion, we prepare to go on ... This, too, would be something about who we are, what we share. It's hard to be human, but it's a grand project. Imagine that fox, watching. 

In the beginning

Easter Eve, post-Easter Vigil. The smell of wood-smoke lingers in my hair. The chants ring in my ears. The post-Vigil Prosecco sparkles in my veins from palate to collarbone, to knees and elbows. 

Christ is risen--the full moon is bright, though it's dark outside. We await the Easter morning sunrise. (And may I still be asleep when that happens!)

For several years now, I have read the first of the Old Testament readings at the Easter Vigil service at my church: Genesis 1 and a couple verses of Genesis 2, the Creation story. I love it deeply, the way it anchors the Easter story. I love its long phrases that sing what God has made, all that vegetation and fruit with seeds in it, creeping and crawling creatures, cattle, winged birds and sea monsters. I love the short phrases that stand out — "and the stars!" — and the  repetitive, liturgical language: "And God said" "And it was so" "And the evening and the morning were the first, the second, the sixth, the seventh day." Most of all, I love the way it all stops and hovers and holds it breath at the creation of humankind in God's image. 

Read it here.

This afternoon I reread Walter Brueggemann's commentary on this section of Genesis. I own this book not because I have an extensive library of biblical commentary (I don't!) but because of an ambitious Bible study group that I participated in many years ago. Not that we read much of the commentary then, even as we took many months to work our way through Genesis. We had our own lives and faith to sort through, But the book is there on my shelf, and this world of Genesis, of ancient theologians, requires a reliable guide -- or at least, is much enriched by one. 

This Creation narrative comes from the time of the Exile, when the people of Israel were in despair and feared there were about to perish as a people. The formless void, the darkness that covered the face of the earth were everyday life to them. Not unlike waking up every morning and doom-scrolling through the headlines in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Awful stuff is happening, and more of it is revealed every single day. 

But in Genesis there's a promising wind from God, a God who creates, who allows the world to come into being, into freedom: "Let there be." It is good. God sees it, declares it good, blesses it. And then God puts God's own image into creation, in humankind. 

Brueggemann points out how different this is, that when those ancient theologians went looking for God in creation, they located God's image not in nature, not in the cosmos, not in a bunch of gods more capricious and more powerful than humans, and certainly not in statues or images "set up" by kings. 

God's image was in humankind, in individual humans and in humans in relationship with one another. In us. 

God did this already having grace for us, already in the tension that all these things God created -- Sky and Earth and Sea, creatures of water and air and land, and human beings most of all -- would never be perfect like God, but they would be good, called good by the same grace that said "let there be." The same grace that was revealed in Jesus Christ, which is to say, the same grace that gave up power, riches, kingship, domination, even though that led to a cross. Because on that cross, all that was left was love, God's gracious love, which restored the world. 

The headlines won't be great tomorrow morning. The horrors in Ukraine will continue, along with horrible stuff in parts of the world we too easily forget. The environment teeters on the edge of destruction. Fools are everywhere. 

Yet the Creation story reminds me every year (more often than that!) that God is good. And I am created for good, in God's image, restored in the waters of Baptism, restored daily to praise, to be joyful, and to join in God's gracious restorative project here on earth.  

Let there be Easter.