Laurel Massé

Love letters and thank-you notes

A singer friend has been making her journey through a major illness that requires her full attention. To heal from the double assault of the disease and the medical response to the disease, she had to step away from her busy and public life for six months. Everything has worked splendidly, and now, almost done with treatments, she'll soon be picking up her juggling pins, and flinging her flaming torches into the air again. It is amazing, and wonderful, and pure gift.

Throughout her ordeal, people she knows and people she has never met have stayed in touch through email and Facebook posts, sending thoughts and wishes, prayers and video clips the way folks used to send chicken soup and homemade jam. I have been happy to witness the public Facebook part of this, because, years ago, such gentle "tapping on the window" helped call me back toward life. Illness and injury are not solely physical events. They have mental dimensions as well. Doubt and dread proliferate as wildly as out-of-control cancer cells. Loneliness crushes one's spirit as effectively as the metal of a car crushes bones. Friends and family may gather close, or they may not; but fear will wrap round you closer than air. So It helps to know that someone somewhere is paying attention.

On the top shelf of my closet rests a small wicker suitcase filled with letters gathered into packets and tied with silk ribbons. I received many of them during the long recovery period following my car accident in 1978, and they helped me recover. In truth, if not for the letters and my puppy Sonya, I would have faded away, so quiet was the phone, so strong the feeling of being left behind by the world I knew. In my rented house in Burbank, California, I was broken and poor and scared, but I could sit at a small table by a sunny window, and read letters from people who loved me. In my hands were pages their hands had written upon, had folded into an envelope and stamped, and sent to me.  My New York friend Linda wrote on creamy paper, my grandma Elsie on white. They both favored fountain pens and blue-black ink. My sister Babette could make me laugh to the point of helplessness (she still can), and the writer Gilean Douglas suggested I might be a writer too, which made me feel very good when I had been told I might not sing again. Though the journals of those years have been lost, these letters are my archives, and when I hold them in my hands again, I am as grateful as I was when I first received them over three decades ago.

So. Thank you, Linda, now living in a small town on a different island. Grandma Elsie, I miss you every day. Thank you, Gilean Douglas, for answering my fan letter, and beginning a conversation. Thank you, Babette, for the sacred sister silliness. You were all my doctors.

Oh yes, and thank you, puppy Sonya, for eating only two or three letters. If, Gentle Reader, you have been thinking of me for years as "that woman who never wrote back", now you know why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mirror, mirror

I recently read something arresting in a blog called The Pagan Princesses. The writer, a pagan, wrote:

...the fact remains that we all of us [pagans] find inspiration in pre-Judeo-Christian gods. We all practice a faith focused on life and not on an afterlife.

The remark weighed on my heart because, though it should not be, that second sentence is too often true. Many who follow Christ seem to  ignore what he actually did and said, and focus instead on blame and punishment, and conversion-or-exclusion, all in his name. Some of these folks are in our government, and this grows more frightening every day.

What are non-Christians to think when Christians act this way? How are they to recognize how off-base that behavior is if the rest of us keep silent? Why do we allow harshness and cruelty to supplant Jesus' teachings as if replacing the pages within a book but keeping its well-worn cover?

You'd think everyone's forgotten how to read.

According to the gospels, Christ was very attuned to nature, relished a good feast, loved his friends, healed the physically and psychically sick, sang hymns, and in every way constantly reminded his followers to care for and help each other in this life. On this earth, in these bodies, with these hands. Love your neighbor, he said, and then showed that everyone is a neighbor. Love, to him, was not a theory or a nice idea, or something to be strained to exclude the unworthy. It was an all-embracing action, and not an action to be delayed until the budget was balanced, either. Love, and the economy of love, will always be in the red in human terms, as red as Jesus' words in many editions of the Bible. But in God's accounting - or the balancing of the Universe, if those words ring more true for you - love overflows all measure and always will. That is the nature of God's love.

To the politicians and pundits who describe themselves as Christian, yet are now insisting on holding back disaster relief because it's "too expensive", I ask this: did our Lord Jesus Christ bill the people he healed? Did he check his funds, polls, or vacation plans before he got on that donkey to ride into Jerusalem?

It's time, and long past time, to take "love your neighbor" seriously. Until we all do, I don't see how we can face what we see in the mirror every day, because if I am indeed created in God's image along with everybody else, then I should be seeing God in the mirror, and in every face I see.

To the woman who wrote the passage I quoted at the beginning of this post, and to all my readers, I am deeply sorry for the havoc wrought in Jesus' name, and for the meanness.

 

 

Medea

A princess, yes, and children, yes, but not in a Disney way...

The performance opens with Hymn to the Muse, an ancient Greek song I recorded in 1999 for my Feather and Bone CD. Though there are older song fragments, this is perhaps the oldest complete piece we have in western musical tradition. I'll be singing it live, and then carrying on as The Nurse (also not in a DIsney way). Bram Lewis has created a powerful adaptation - do come if you can.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down

You know those weeks when everything falls apart? When you seem to be in a cosmic gravity vortex, and one thing after another slips from your fingers, eludes your grasp, and crashes to the floor?

I am having one of those weeks.

Within the past seven days, I had to cancel a concert, I lost my live-in cat care for next week while I'm at Ashokan, and I turned down a future engagement because I was already committed on the date, only to find that the gig I agreed to was moved to a date I can't do, and the one I turned down has already gone to another artist. What else? Let's see. The bluetooth headset for my phone has learned how to shut itself off, and does so blithely, but only on the business calls (and don't tell me it's an inanimate object, because I have news for you: there's no such thing!). A dear friend I'd hoped to see when he came over from England is not coming after all. A play in which I was cast has been postponed. People I urgently need answers from are not responding to my calls, while my mom is annoyed because I don't call her often enough. Little lightnings everywhere.

And tumblings down. None of these things are big. but they are all coming at once. Ouch! It makes me think of the tarot Tower card.

For me, tarot cards are wonderful tools for focused meditation. The cards are works of art that I can lay out on my kitchen table now and then (unlike La Grande Jatte or Michelangelo's Moses), and the archetypal images speak to my dreaming mind.

The card above shows all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and they are hammering on the tower. Blam! Crack! Blow, winds, blow! Kapow! The squiggly symbol on the left side of the tower, just above the falling guy, is my birthsign, Capricorn.

In this simpler card below, the Tower is called La Maison Dieu, the House of God. When things are flowing very smoothly, I feel God's presence, and all places are God's house. Then I stub my toe, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, and I am kicked to the curb. I feel as if I am pelted so hard, with so many little (and round!) problems, that they've knocked me right out of the tower. Clunk! and... well, there I was, and here I am.

One other thing I noticed in this particular card: the tower has three windows. Third century martyr, St. Barbara, was told by her father to watch over the building of a bath house as he was traveling. In his plan, there were two windows; in her cosmology there had to be three, for the Holy Trinity. So, she altered the design, and added the third window. When her father returned, he was so outraged that he drew his sword and attempted to kill her on the spot. Last October, I was privileged to be involved in the world premiere of Holy Women, a cantata by composer Robert Sirota and librettist Rev. Victoria Sirota Robert. St. Barbara's aria, gloriously and madly sung by Abby Fischer, still rings in my mind's ear. Rumor has it that there is to be another performance, this time in New York City. I will post the date as soon as I know more.

And in the meantime, mind the gap.

 

Enough?

A friend posted a YouTube clip on Facebook, and because the friend is a thoughtful and interesting person in real life - as opposed to Facebook life - I watched the clip. It was about living in a tiny apartment. A very tiny apartment, about 100 square feet. Though the tenant had rid herself of a lot of possessions to live there, the space still seemed stuffed with... well, stuff, which made it seem even smaller. But it was intriguing nonetheless. After I saw that video, I did what we so often do: followed the video breadcrumbs farther and longer than I'd intended. Facebook and YouTube are forms of alien abduction. I watched several more films about small-space living, and continued to think about that after I had put the laptop to bed for the night.

I have moved many times, m-a-a-a-a-a-ny times, and have sampled a lot of different styles of dwellings. They've included a 32-room mansion in Connecticut and a 12x60 1970s mobile home in upstate NY, a duplex apartment in a 1920s Spanish-style building in the Hollywood hills, and an art-deco apartment near Paris's Bois de Boulogne. And a tent, oh boy, I never forget the tent. And there have been so many more that I almost feel a little immoral. Each space has taught me something, usually about light. Some were too bright, some too dark, only two or three just right. Apparently, I am a very Goldilocks of photosensitivity. And to each space, I have brought my most-loved stuff, whether it was a favorite plastic horsie (then) or a wicker chair (now).

I currently live in a studio apartment that, ever since I've watched those videos, seems enormous. It's a little on the dim side on the light scale, and I will have to remember to avoid lower-floor apartments in courtyard buildings in the future, because even on the brightest blue-sky days, the sunlight is all up there and out there but never in here. However, it is bright enough for full-shade plants, and the ones I have are doing well. I have some decent furniture, and artwork and books and objects that I like to look at, and it is a peaceful and spacious living space. But if I had less space, it would be too much stuff, just like in that first video I watched.

Which had me wondering: does one measure the too-muchness of the stuff by the available space, or by the life lived? Does a bigger life need more things, or more room? And if it is more room, does that imply more space, or less stuff?

I once lived with a man who continually insisted there was too much stuff in our home, but he always meant my stuff, and never his own. Eventually I discarded his particular sense of the scale (but not soon enough. I still miss my amber bracelet. Squawk! Flap! Wait..let me smooth my feathers back down.... There. That's better. Sorry.).

How much is too much?

This is - or should be - the great American question, because, as Americans, most of us have a quite a lot, and some very few of us have almost all of that. But perhaps we can't tell what's too much till we know how much is enough.

When I compare what I have with what my neighbors have, I can feel hungry for more. That assumes neighbor means the folks next door, or in the corner office, or perhaps other performers with busier schedules.

What happens when I define neighbor as everybody? As the person down the street whose pension disappeared, and can now buy food or heating fuel, but not both. And the woman who is working in a clandestine sweat shop. Or the kid with Irlen syndrome who, for lack of a diagnosis and a piece of colored plastic film might not learn to read. Those folks living in New Orleans who saw their moment of national attention pass by, and are living in a city still struggling to rebuild. The exhausted teacher whose job is on the line. The exhausted Iraq veteran who can't find a job at all. The banker who is mourning her lost integrity. The lottery winner who is contemplating suicide.

Now it's starting to look like I have a lot. How much do I have? becomes How much do I need?  

 

 

But there is a scarier question, yes? Oh yes.

 

 

 

How much can I give?

 

 

 

Target practice

There is a word heard more often in churches in the season of Lent than in the rest of the year: sin. It's in the prayers, it's in the sermons, it's in the hymns, and it's an uncomfortable, squirm-in-your-seat word. It makes me think of the scene in Evelyn Waugh's novel, Brideshead Revisited, when Julia (Catholic, and married), says to Charles, with whom she is having an affair:

Living in sin, with sin, by sin, for sin, every hour, every day, year in, year out. Waking up with sin in the morning, seeing the curtains drawn on sin, bathing it, dressing it, clipping diamonds to it, feeding it, showing it round, giving it a good time, putting it to sleep at night.... 'Poor Julia,' they say, 'she can't go out. She's got to take care of her little sin. A pity it ever lived,' they say, 'but it's so strong.'

It's like picking at a wound, like holding on to a viper. It hurts, but still one can't let go. "Oh Lord," prayed Augustine, "make me chaste, but not yet."

Your spiritual tradition may use different language, but we all have some term that means "messing up in a big way". The Greeks had a word for it: hamartia (ἁμαρτία),which is borrowed, I have been told, from archery. It means "missing the mark". That is the term Paul used when he wrote, in his letter to the Christians in Rome, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God".

When I take my eye off the ball, I miss it. When my mind wanders from the bullseye, so does my shot. Oh boy, do I know it! Time after time, I pick up my bow, aim at the target, and then, between my intention and my action, or as T.S. Eliot wrote, between the idea and the reality / Between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow... or the bright distracting thing. My mind says "ooh, sparkly!". My arrow of desire wobbles and goes off-course. I hit neither target nor distraction; even worse, that arrow may injure some innocent thing that was in the way of my careening.

I want to learn how to draw the bow, and be still in my mind and, keeping my eyes on the target, hit the mark. "Purity of mind," said Kierkegaard, "is to will one thing". There is work to do here; sometimes the best I can do is to will one thing at a time.

And that's my Lent so far.

 

Guide thou the song I shall sing of thee: set prayers

Sometimes, when folks find out I am a jazz singer, they think that means I make up everything I sing. Over the years, students have told me, in various ways, that they want to sing jazz so as to be relieved of having to learn the melody of a song. We place a high value on personal expression in this culture; we don't like being told what to say, and we tend to think that something spontaneous is more "real". Witness the popularity of so-called reality shows, and radio call-in programs on almost any topic. But there is a power in shape and limits.

I belong to what some people think of as a cold and formal church. As an Episcopalian, I take part in a liturgy that is scripted and choreographed. Some say it is impersonal, and I acknowledge that I have on occasion sat in some pretty chilly churches as prayers were read in monotones or sung so elegantly that they became concert pieces. Annie DIllard wrote:

 I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked.                                                                                                                

"Come Holy Spirit," we pray, "but not too close. Thanks so much." 

And yet.

There is another side to the issue, and I have become reacquainted with it this week. The events unfolding in Japan while all the usual catastrophes continue their appointed rounds in the rest of the world (New Orleans is still suffering, Haitians are still starving, Qaddafi is still killing his people, and American schoolchildren still can't read very well) are so profoundly overwhelming that I don't know what to say. I can't say anything, I can't contain my grief, and I am all over the place like sheep without a Border Collie. I need form.

So I have been deeply grateful for the set prayers like the Lord's Prayer and the collects, the words that have been used for centuries. They hum in my memory like songs, and like songs, they help me groan and cry, and bring me back to trust and to the calm focus that births action.

Strengthen your servants, O God.

 

 

 

Many waters cannot quench love

My mind cannot hold the magnitude of what has happened in Japan. Earthquake. Tsunami. Radiation leak. Each of these is a tragedy difficult to imagine. Taken together, they are horror beyond imagining.

There is so little most of us can do. But we can contribute money; Episcopal Relief and Development and Doctors Without Borders are just two of the many wonderful organizations already on the ground in Japan. I lift my hands in prayer for those who are lost, for those who are hurt, for those who are afraid, for those who are alone, and for those who are on their way to help. 

More than 2500 years ago, the psalmist cried:

Save me, O God,

for the waters have risen up to my neck.

I am sinking in deep mire,

and there is no firm ground for my feet.

I have come into deep waters,

and the torrent washes over me.

I have grown weary with my crying;

my throat is inflamed;

my eyes have failed from looking for my God.

In your great mercy, O God,

answer me with your unfailing help.

Save me from the mire; do not let me sink;

let me be rescued from those who hate me

and out of the seep waters.

Let not the torrent of waters wash over me,

neither let the deep swallow me up;

do not let the Pit shut its mouth upon me.

Answer me, O Lord, for your love is kind;

in your great compassion, turn to me.

Ps. 69:1-4, 15-18

 

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer