Laurel Massé

Dreaming dreams

Yesterday was Pentecost Sunday, and it landed on a bright, breezy early-summer morning. I sang three services at the Cathedral, starting with the 9 AM. So I was there the whole day, from 8:15 to about 6, a day of much sitting on wooden seats, and even more standing. Standing, standing, standing, and no dancing. I have begun to think my body starts to panic when I have to hold still for a long time. First comes discomfort. Then something - neck, shoulders, back - hurts. Then it's hard to breathe. and sometimes I get dizzy, which can make it hard to read those tiny little notes. All for want of a triple step or a swing-your-partner.

To delay rigor, when we are sitting I scrunch my toes, bend my knees a little, lean over once in a while to pop my lower back (though I have concerns that the pop may be audible in the Cathedral's magnificent acoustical bloom), so that I can listen more carefully and "see" the readings as events happening right now, in front of me.

Yesterday, I imagined the disciples pouring out of the upstairs room where they had been staying since Jesus was crucified, hitting the streets on fire with the Holy Spirit that had descended on them in tongues of flame. I can't imagine that they were particularly still. In my mind's eye, they are vibrating, sizzling with excitement, urgency, and the Word in them exploding their silence and breaking them open like hot steaming bread. They are engulfed in languages. Peter - who has not been the greatest speaker in any of the gospels - erupts into eloquence. It's astounding.

In my mind's ear, I hear something wild, almost raucous. My mom tells me that in her little church, Acts 2:1-21 was read by several readers in different languages - Russian, Greek, Spanish, German,English and French - and all were speaking at the same time. That feels so right. Because who can wait? How do you take turns when you have something so life-changing, so momentous roaring inside you? It astounds me that the readers don't levitate when they are speaking this passage, and that we who are hearing it manage to sit in our seats and hold decorously still. Shouldn't we should be bursting with joy and running out the door with our hearts on fire? Even if maybe we didn't on Easter.

It's never too late...

From dust to alleluia, for Kia

To celebrate the life of Kia Ife Grant, and to mourn her death,  the Cathedral community gathered this morning with her family and friends in the Great Choir. It was a hard thing. Kia was only 30. In her two years at the Cathedral as the Arts and Events Coordinator, she had affected many with her positive and joyous spirit. Kia died on Tuesday of Holy Week, suddenly, unexpectedly. Throughout the passage from Maundy Thursday through Good Friday to the Great Vigil and Easter Sunday, we were all conscious of this loss of a co-worker, a great spirit, an artist, a friend. If you're paying attention - and Kia made me pay more attention - Easter is not pretty. It is ferocious.

Funerals, I think, are for the living. We say words we always meant to say but put off to another time that has now escaped from us. We sing songs of consolation. We kneel and rise, pray, cry out loud, sit in silence. We reaffirm our faith when we most desperately need to be reminded of it. When a Kia Grant enters and then leaves your life, it is first impossible to measure the gift of presence, and then impossible to take the measure of the loss. Kia lived intensely; I did not realize how non-stop alive she was until, during the funeral service, people spoke of her many accomplishments. Their words, in describing her, seemed to be a gauntlet thrown down to us all: Wake up. Live now! And do the work you are born to do.

The prayer book bids us rejoice with ferocity: "All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia."

Yes. Even at the grave, we must make our song.

Be Still and Know

I just read an article by Pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life and its many spin-offs, and pastor of Saddleback Church, one of the most successful "seeker-friendly" churches in this country. Pastor Warren is under fire these days for his support of Proposition 8 in California, and President-Elect Obama is under fire for asking Warren to give the prayer invocation at his inaugural a few days from now (Warren. like all of us, is made of both coal and diamonds. I have many disagreements with the pastor, but I admire Obama for making this choice, for continuing to listen to people with whom he does not completely agree).

The article is called How to Make Your Church Guest-Friendly. He lists several points, such as reserving the best parking for the guests, providing refreshment tables, having greeter; all good ideas. He then says this:
Have taped music playing when people enter. In America almost every public building has music playing. Even in the elevator, music is playing. You go into the restroom and music is playing. You go into a restaurant and music is playing. Why? Because people expect to hear music. If you walked into a church right now and everyone was dead silent when you walked in, you’d probably be uncomfortable. On the other hand, if you heard fairly loud praise music playing, you’d feel much more comfortable.

No, I don't believe I would. In fact, that is the single factor most likely to make me leave before the service has even begun. It's not praise music I object to; my musical tastes run broad and deep. It's the volume, and the imposition. Yes, there is music in every restaurant. Every elevator. Every store. But not because people expect it. It is there to keep us buzzed and buying. Vast sums of marketing dollars have gone into the studies that have resulted in the constant aural assault. I have visited many churches in my travels and I never have returned to one that pummeled me with sound from the moment I entered.

Warren goes on to say:
"Here’s something interesting I’ve found: If you play soft music, people talk softly. But if you play loud music, people talk louder. When non-Christians come into your church, they want it to be noisy. They want to hear what’s going on." 

How exactly does one hear what's going on in a noisy environment? Understand that I am not saying that church should be silent. Far from it. There are times when the church should erupt into wild celebration. Our response to the birth of Jesus - God-among-us! - and to the Resurrection should be so jubilant that neighbors should be drawn to our holy noise - neighbors, and maybe the police!

But when we first enter, something else is needed. When people walk into my church, I hear them sigh. I see them sink into the great quiet space. Their shoulders relax. Some engage in silent prayer. Some crane their necks to look at the stained glass windows. Some chat in whispers to each other. The first big sound is the voices of organ and choir that open the service, to which is added those of the  congregation. The first words spoken are usually these: "Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit", to which we reply, "And blessed be God's kingdom, now and forever." With this we become one people, gathered to hear the stories of our history, and to worship our God with our hearts, minds, and bodies.

It is imperative to make the visitor feel welcome. I agree with Warren on that. My church does have greeters, and ushers, and we do our best to make all feel welcome. The order of worship is printed in the leaflet that is handed to each person who comes in, and it includes everything: hymns, prayers, scripture readings, psalms. This makes it possible for the visitor to participate without feeling mystified by unfamiliar music that everyone else seems to know. We have a hospitality table, too, and a welcome table. But we don't have recorded music playing before the worship service. Most Americans are barraged with relentless recorded sound all the time. We need an occasional, special quiet place, because God speaks to us in many ways, and one of the most profound ways is in silence, as described in 1 Kings 19:11-13:

He [the Lord] said, "Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by. Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him.... (NRSV, emphasis mine).

Sometimes we must be allowed to be still, so as to begin to know.

Seven swans a-swimming

Tell the truth. Do you think Christmas is over? Because, dear one, it's not.

Christmas is not a day. It's a season of twelve days (yes! just like the song!) followed by the Feast of the Epiphany on January (it took those "three kings" a while to get to Bethlehem). On the lovely website, Full Homely Divinity, you can find much about Christmas and Epiphany there to inform, remind, and inspire you.

So we're not done yet, not done with singing  "Christ is born!", not done with angels and alleluias, not done with the scandalous particularity of the Word taking flesh - such frail flesh! - and not anywhere near done with what Advent promised and Christmas has brought.

Blessed Christmas to you all...still!

Scaring myself

What if you could change one single thing about your life? What would it be?

I thought I knew what I would change when I started this post, and here, not quite three sentences in, I already am losing certainty. What single thing? More money? A flexible neck? Younger feet? A beau? A good dog?

A mission.

I want a mission so clear that I can recognize it every morning even without coffee. So compelling that I don't linger with distractions. And so big that I am pulled out of myself into service. Big, and obvious.

Proclamation is scary. I believe, and at the same time I don't. So of course, help! Help thou my unbelief. And if you can do something about my courage, that would be good, too. I want to really want what I want to really want, which I know that, deep inside, I do really want.

I know some of you know exactly what I mean. Talk to me!

Expectancy

Advent. Waiting for something.

We wait for God, who is always with us. to come to be us, to be one of us, to join us in the web of senses through which we experience the world, and with which we try to capture and comprehend God. The language of the body, through the body, is the language we understand, for better and for worse.

We wait for God to come to us, take on our vision, and teach us how to use our eyes. If, in the Incarnation, God's human eyes are like our human eyes, then what is to prevent us from seeing as God sees? Only the hardness of our hearts, which we are promised can be changed. I will take away your hearts of stone and give you hearts of flesh (Ezekial 36:26).

We wait to be shown that what God asks of us can be done by us, in our bodies, in our senses, in our earthbound lives. We can love each other right here. We can hear each other right now. We can touch in comfort and blessing with the hands we have in this life. Jesus comes and shows us the way.

Christmas is an extravagant celebration of the Word made flesh. Come, Lord Jesus.

Here I am... wasn't I?

It's very hot in the city this morning, and has been for a couple of days. I live on the top floor of an older building, right under the roof, where it heats up early and stays hot late. My air conditioner won't be installed till after the weekend. All this to acknowledge that I am not at my best. Now, my grandparents lived on the top floor of a 6-floor walkup in Washington Heights for many years, and they never had air condioning. The hardiness genes must be deteriorating with each succeeding generation. 

Whatever the reason, I had a spiritual meltdown yesterday. On a break from working on a friend's recording project, I heard another recording the engineer has been working on. The track was swinging, one of the singers was terrific - great intonation, hip choices, totally in the groove.. The other was not. This other, albeit a very fine theatrical singer, Did Not Swing. Was not in tune, either. I heard all that, and felt envy - envy that that one singer was getting to record in my genre (mine mine mineminemine waaaaah!) while I cannot afford to, frustration that agencies and labels have not been interested in me since I left the Transfer, exhaustion from having to do everything by myself. I was just a mess inside, and probably at that moment had all the emotional and spiritual maturity of a two-year old. The only credit I can claim is that I did not fling myself to the floor and wail. And that I probably would not have done so even if I had been alone.

The sting is this: I actually don't believe in the competition model of the arts, and I don't accept the limitations of genre, either. In fact, I believe that one must offer real support to one's fellow artists, and honest encouragement when they stretch beyond their perceived limits, and generous, genuine rejoicing when they have opportunities and successes. Let's face it - it is easy to find folks in your field who will whine in harmony with you. It is being honestly celebrated by your peers that is scarce. So my inner behavior was completely contrary to my profound convictions.

I have been wondering all night and this morning about this. How can I seem to have come so far, and then step in my own leavings? Conversion is not a single event. That's what I am forced to remember. It is a daily, hourly, every-minute event. Think it's done? and it ain't, and here's proof: my inner Waaaah! Of course that's found throughout scripture, with St. Peter is the all-purpose example. Lived with the Lord, loved the Lord, and the minute he thought his own skin was at risk, he denied ever having met the man.

In dog training (ride with me on this) I learned that mammals under stress revert to earliest learned behavior. And what is our earliest learned behavior, us humans? Crying to get what we want. And being afraid of being neglected, uncared-for, unloved. And that is the territory I visited yesterday. In the studio, no less, which I must add is like a sanctuary to me. A place of shelter.

Well, waiting in the mailbox for me when I got home was a copy of James Alison's On Being LIked, which has been recommended by a friend with whom I have been musing about the Atonement and substitutionary sacrifice. I opened the book briefly to sniff at it (doesn't everyone?) and "happened" to open it to these sentences:
In other words, we are taught to be loving lookers at what is by the One who is calling into being and loving what is. We are taught to see and delight in what is by the One whose delighting is what gives it, and us, to be.

Oh. Lord, I believe with all my heart... and help me in my unbelief. Lord, be my vision.

I am saving the rest of that book for July because of the ongoing One Good Book Experiment. My final word (at least for now)about my envy fit (see? it's not even green anymore) is the Word that knocked me back into a better balance this morning. It is in John's gospel, chapter 3: Now a discussion arose between some of John's [the Baptist's] disciples...so they went to John and said, ""Rabbi, the man who was with you on the far side of the Jordan, the man to whom you bore witness, is baptising now, and everyone is going to him." [Here is where John could have said "Going to him? But I'm the Bapist. Waaah!"]. He replied, "No one can have anything except what is given to him from heaven.... It is the bridegroom who has the bride; and yet the bridegroom's friend, who stands there and  listens to him, is filled with joy at the bridegroom's voice. This is the joy I feel, and it is complete."

uh oh...

I have this evening finished reading what Christians call the first five books of the Old Testament, and what Jews call the Law, or Torah. Steeped as I am in English murder mysteries and books about dogs, I cannot pretend to much knowledge about how this body of work is read and understood from the Jewish traditions. My own Bible's notes call it "the memorial of the beginnings of God's people". They were bloody beginnings. I find this very difficult reading, and it has been slow going. Slow, and riveting, once I stopped my ears to my imaginings of the struggle of animals in the thousands that were being sacrificed. I am hoping that some of you will join in here, and help me understand what I am reading. Am I wrong to see this as a practice of substitutionary sacrifice? You must not deliver your children to be slaughtered for the god Moloch, for I am your God, but I know you have to kill something because you humans are like that, and it takes blood to get your attention, so sacrifice the firstborn and perfect of your herds and flocks for me instead.

Beyond this, though, lies a story of a people being chosen. Wanted. Desired. It also is a story of screwing up a relationship over and over, of being repeatedly unfaithful and untrustworthy, and being taken back, but with ever more conditions. "OK, but now you have to do this and that". Hence Leviticus and much of Deuteronomy. The Israelites are told over and over that God will take care of them, cherish them, put them above all other peoples if they are faithful to him, and castigate them, punish them, kill a generation of them, and keep some of them forever out of the land flowing with milk and honey if they are not faithful. And they keep wandering off.

While I have been reading this, my church has moved through Easter season, and I am also reading and hearing the New Testament. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and now we are in a waiting time before he sends the Comforter, the Holy Spirit that he promised to us, promised to send to us because he loves us. Loves. Loves. Us. This also is hard reading, because it is initiating a gnawing, a restlessness, a radical discomfort. I am not sleeping very well, actually. How does one respond to this extravagant love? Of course, I don't really mean some abstract theoretical "one". I mean me.

In the most recent edition of her brilliant radio program Speaking of Faith , Krista Tippett interviews 'new monastic"  Shane Claiborne, who quotes the Danish philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard as saying: "The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly."

a very good book?

I don't know about The Bible. Is it THE good book? Is it so good that one would want to - or be able to - read no other book for a set period of time? I wonder.

I have met evangelists of various stamps who read nothing but the Bible. Novels are sinful, science is errant, only the Good Book is a...well, a good book. In a less-than-spiritually-evolved way, I have thought they were idiots. Dear idiots, though - anyone willing to pray that a complete stranger will come to see the light has to be held as dear. But they seemed ill-informed and of course poorly-read.

It is rather too late for me to have read only the Bible in my life. Anyone who has ever helped me move knows that. Household effects, 10 boxes. Books, 50 boxes. And I have a pile of books to get to on my bedside table. And I am living in Manhattan. We have lots of books here in Manhattan. Is it possible, would it be possible for me, compulsively hyper-literate me, to read only the BIble for, say 6 months? No, no, I meant 2 months (I scared myself). Starting after I finish what is on the bedside table and the books I ordered from the library?

There are complications - what about the newspaper? That's OK. It's not a book! And it may be irresponsible to be ignorant of current events. And The New Yorker. That's OK too. Probably. And Country Living's fine, because I only look at the pictures. And what about biblical commentary? And what if I get a cold for which the cure is reading English murder mysteries? Ooh. This is like peeling very fresh hard-boiled eggs. Little tiny pieces of shell that do not want to let go.

It's just an idea. I was reading David Plotz's Slate.com series, "Blogging the Bible" several months ago. Mr. Plotz is reading the Old Testament through for the first time, as an adult, and posting his responses to that book. It's fascinating. This week I am reading Julie Powell's book, Julie & Julia. She had an idea... and rose to the challenge of cooking through every recipe in Julia Childs' masterpiece, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in one year. She kept a running blog, and since has published a sharp-as-Romano-cheese book of her experience, subtitled "365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen". It, too, is fascinating, though I am not likely to duplicate the feat. My tiny kitchen measures 4' x 5' empty. Add appliances, and I am left with 2' x 5' set up pretty well for a right-handed person. I am left-handed.

What I bring to my reading that David Plotz and Julie Powell did not have is prior experience. I have already read the Bible, even Leviticus (!) a couple of times in a different translations, and from different points of view (Congregationalist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Catholic, Goddess, panentheist, Joseph Campbell devotée). I have read the writings of many a wild saint, and the more copious writings of many a covertly-wild scholar. So I am not exactly innocent and fresh. But I have lived a span of days since those readings, and the Good Book was never the Only Book. What if I take on the task of reading this work that has influenced our western culture more than any other book AS IF it was the only book in town? Would it expand my understanding of the universe?

OK. Perhaps you have decided "she's mad, I tell you, quite mad", or you are thinking, 'well, you own the books on the bedstand, so you can read them later, after, if you still want to", or "do you really think we want to know this about you, or want to read about it?" or something I have not imagined yet. But as a performer, it is part of my job to presume you are thinking about me. And I am thinking about reading a book.

a tear in the fabric

My dear friends, there is shocking and confusing news from Blacksburg, VA, where 33 people died today at Virginia Tech.
I taught there a few years ago, invited by Professor Daniel Schneck to lead a workshop in improvisation for his engineering students.They were shy at first, and then they sang, and danced, and were so inspiring. The university was lovely, idyllic. We were in Norris Hall, the engineering building, the same building that is and forever will be the scene of today's tragedy. Haunted.
I ask you to offer whatever rituals are yours everyone involved: the victims, their families, and the community of Virginia Tech, and Blacksburg. And for the police, and the shooter. Everyone.
We don't know, we don't understand.