Laurel Massé

To the Christians in the House

I once had a manager who thought he was John Galt. Or at least a John Galt. Even though I adored him, I knew he wasn't. And when he went on to embezzle a substantial sum, it bore out my literary instinct.

I knew, though, who he was talking about because I had read Atlas Shrugged as a younger girl. So much younger, in fact, that my mother had taken the book away from me, saying, "You don't need to read that. You're selfish enough already." But I eventually read through to the end.

So when Ayn Rand's writings came back into public notice with the advent of and media attention to the Tea Party and the Libertarians and Paul Ryan's Randian Catholicism (an oxymoron), I did not have to run out to buy the book to understand that there would be trouble ahead for women, immigrants, and the poor from anyone who followed her precepts. Which are horribly, horribly selfish precepts, and idolatrous, and about as far as one can get from the teachings of Jesus.

A group of Christian faith leaders (Faithful Filibuster) gathers every day Congress is in session across the street from the Capitol  building to read scripture out loud, especially the 2000 verses that tell us how to care for the poor. This is both a protest, and a public education service. Obviously there are a few folks in the government who have clean forgotten that the Bible has any use other than as a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

Those same forgetful folks have also forgotten their Ayn Rand. For it is not, in Atlas Shrugged, the heroic capitalists alone who bring down the government, and with it, the entire culture. It is the giddy, greedy, cruel Wesley Mouches, out for themselves.

You have changed the rules in the House so as to prevent any change in direction. You bark about the Constitution. You would edit out the uncomfortable bits of Jesus' words. Show me how you are not a Mouch.

Listen up, House. You dance yourselves into a tunnel of an ever-shrinking width. It is not the narrow path to heaven. It is a death trap. You will soon lose the ability to turn around. You are worshipping power, and money, and individualism. You are throwing other people's children into the fires of Moloch, in the belief that wealth and particular interests will take care of you if you legislate the sacrifice of others. They will not take care of you. They will use you, and devour you, and fail you, and forget you. They are false idols.

Relent. Repent. Come back into the daylight. Help save our country by saving its people. The Lord, which you claim to proclaim, said to love God, and love our neighbor, to heal the sick, and raise the dead. 

It's time to take Him seriously. It is time to turn around. Come back to your senses. We need you. Come back to us.

 

It's the little things

My local PBS station shows Downton Abbey in a most helpful way. Every Sunday, the preceding week's episode runs an hour before the current episode, so I get to see each one twice. This really works for me, because I can watch once for the story, and once for the craft of of how the story is presented (acting, direction, set dressing, costuming, and most of all, the writing). I often notice small details I missed in my first enthralled swoon.

The same thing sometimes happens with books. You may know that I reread Little Women every year in Christmastide. I am too embarassed to tell how many repetitions it took before I noticed all the homeopathic remedies the March family used, or that Marmee was "a born singer".

I miss things all the time in scripture, even though I've read the Bible more than once over the years, and in different translations. I have a strong sense of the arc of the stories, but bits I could swear were not there the last time I looked keep appearing, little word-bomb epiphanies.

(Which is why I don't have a Kindle. With that kind of inattention to detail, when would I notice that They have changed what Jane Austen wrote?)

And hearing the story is so necessary to me that I have taken to solitary reading aloud, coming full circle 'round to the kids to whom I used to feel so superior in elementary school because they moved their lips and whispered when they read. Mrs. Peel stares at me. My comeuppance is here.

It's when I hear it "for the first time" that I notice what I missed.

For instance: on at least three occasions. recorded in the gospels, Jesus is goes away from or ahead of the crowds and of most of the disciples, taking with him only Peter, James, and John. They were the witnesses when he raised Jairus' little girl from the dead, they were the witnesses to his mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah, and they were with him in the garden at Gethsemane, where they gained their reputations as the sleeping guys, because when he said "stay awake," they fell asleep, and not just once.

Last Sunday's gospel reading we Luke's account of the Transfiguration, that meeting of Jesus, Moses and Elijah. I noticed two things. First, the same guys who were later going to sleep through Jesus' deepest despair almost missed his transfiguration because they were "heavy with sleep". I had not caught that before. Second, there is a pretty big difference in translation between the RSV (Revised Standard Version) which is what I read at home, and the NRSV (New RSV), which is used in The Episcopal Church and others.

Here is the RSV: And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Here is what I heard in church: Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Well, then! They got sleepy, and either did or did not fall asleep. I rather think they did. Getting sleepy would not be such a big deal, but falling asleep is worthy of mention. Either way, their heavy-liddedness in the garden was clearly not without precedent. I love Luke for including this detail (even if it didn't happen that way) for what it gives to the story.

Putting belief aside, as a writer I am often taken by the stylistic differences between the four gospels. Matthew is almost professorial, Mark is immediately-suddenly-at-once breathless, Luke inserts little details the way Madeleine L'Engle puts the making of peanut butter sandwiches into her stories of interdimensional travel, and John is swept away by light. In fact, one of the reasons I prefer the RSV at the moment is that these differences seem less smoothed-out in translation.

And translation is always the rub, isn't it? Events translated into memory, memory into words, words into different languages, languages altered by time. Add cultural differences and editorial slant, and wow, it's amazing any two people sitting next to each other on a church pew can agree on anything about scripture. We don't even need non-believers in order to get into arguments and have schisms. I once lived in a small country town that had a First Baptist Church on the main drag, and an Independent Baptist Church up the hill.

It doesn't take a historian to figure out what happened. Some little thing, I'm sure, that hadn't been noticed before.

 

 

 

 

Epiphany

Manifestation.

Three great kings upon a journey going,

 

... some more slowly than others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some already on their way back...

                                                                                           ... by a different route.

Circling, circling

No matter how many wings we have, if and when one breaks, we circle.  My own broken wing, my arm in a sling, has reminded me that Advent is neither a journey from here to there, nor a path from this day back to then. It's a spiral, toward the center. Now is then, there is also here. And here is everywhere.

All we, in the darkness, circle what light we can find. That's where we tell stories, and listen to stories, big ones, because each of us needs a bigger story than the story of self.

A lion roars creation into being, a rat looks on a god, a hobbit saves the world, the boy who lived defeats that which could not live. All of these draw from deep myth, and so do many elements of the story of the birth of Christ. As people feel they must remind me, every year. As if myth means untruth.

Any writer, mystic, or mathematician will tell you that what is true sometimes does not fit into what is known to be factual. We must not forget that music was being made long before there was music theory to dictate how one could or could not make it. Languages were spoken long before there were systems of grammar, and I am pretty confident that theos preceded theology. We start so big, and then, in the process of categorizing things, we get small.

I remember being taught, in primary school, that we humans were different and special because we used tools. But as it turns out, so do ravens. Or because we made songs. So do whales. Or have dreams. Ha! Ever had a sleeping, twitching cat on your lap? Or because we just knew stuff. Homo sapiens. Please. We don't even know how to be polite half the time, much less be fully human.

But all is not lost, because we still tell stories. Perhaps someday, if we ever learn to be still and listen, we will hear all the stories around us. Day to day pours forth speech, says the Psalmist, and night to night declares knowledge. Trees might talk to us about community, rocks might teach us to take the long view. Cats have things to say about attention; ravens, about rollicking. Then, maybe, when something impossible and unfactual is nevertheless true, we won't need angels scaring us half to death by shrieking "FEAR NOT!" just to get our attention.

 

Jesus and the woman

I had a chance to give a talk based on scripture a few days ago. Here is the gist of it, minus the vocal inflections and occasional waving about of hands (not to be confused with laying on of hands).

Jesus and the Woman: John 7:53, 8:1 - 11                  

One more week, and one more day, and the election ads will cease, the polls will trail off, the pundits will... well, they’ll keep spouting, I guess, but the volume level might come down a bit. for as long as 10 minutes. I hope so. I am tired of being yelled at, especially tired of hearing about myself and other women as a specific slice of female torso, with no other body, no mind, no life, and not even a wallet to consider. And most especially tired of being told (mostly by men) what God’s will is for me, my sister, and my nieces.

Telling me about contraception. Abortion. And rape. Legitimate rape, forcible rape, emergency rape, false rape, God-intended rape and easy rape, with never any comment on the responsibility of the man, and, in the case of rape, the rapist (the actual criminal).

“There is nothing new under the sun”, says The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

When the Pharisees haul a woman over to Jesus - one woman, no man - claiming “she was caught in adultery and Moses said we should stone her, and what do you say?”, something’s a little suspect. a little off.

The gospel writer says the scribes and Pharisees were testing Jesus, and hoping to be able to bring charges against him should he say the wrong thing. “Moses said to stone her. What do you say?” Since under Roman law, they had no power to execute anyone for anything, they must have thought they had him, coming or going. Yes to Moses equals no to Rome, Yes to Rome, no to Moses. Either way, that trap is sprung.

But that’s not the whole of it.  The law of Moses says both parties are to be put to death, adulteress and adulterer. Not only that, it says so twice, once in Leviticus, and once in Deuteronomy. It’s very clear. So why are the Pharisees showing up with only the woman? Was she really caught in adultery? Perhaps she was innocent. Perhaps she was an “easy rape”. They wait for Jesus to say something in response.

But he doesn’t. He doesn't say anything. They didn’t see that coming. He leans over and writes in the dirt. When they fuss at him, he says “Let whichever one of you who is without sin throw the first stone,” and writes again. They obviously didn’t expect that, either, and to give them credit, they knew they did not meet that standard. Or they knew their colleagues knew they didn’t, and one by one, they slip away. With them gone, she has no accusers. There is only Jesus,  only love, only forgiveness; there is only Jesus and the woman.

How many times in the gospels do we see this same picture, Jesus and a woman, speaking as equals? At the well in Samaria, in the nard-scented dining room of a house in Bethany, in the crush of a crowd near Capernaum, outside Lazarus’ tomb, and certainly in the garden on Easter morning - even though there may be men around, they often recede into the background as Jesus speaks directly to women, and women answer him with equal directness in speech and gesture. It is not to his female followers that Jesus has to explain and explain and explain himself. They get it. First to proclaim the gospel - the Samaritan woman at the well, first to see and proclaim the risen Lord - the Magdalene - the women get it. There is no gender inequality when the man in the room is Jesus.  When Jesus is present, there is no inequality of any kind.

If, as Christians, we reach back to Leviticus for our guiding principles, forswearing haircuts, wearing only one type of fabric at a time, insisting that women submit to their fathers, their husbands, because the Bible tells us so.... Well, yes, it does, because before Jesus, that’s how things were. Women did not own property, they were property, and breeding stock. And centuries later, when the Church took some parts of Paul’s letters as the absolute last word on how women should behave - be quiet in church, and do not teach, for instance - women again had to submit, submit, submit.

But that’s not the only thing Paul said.  In his letter to community at Galatia, he wrote:

... for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female [social structure]; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26-28).

Throughout Jesus’ brief and intense three-year ministry, and for a while after the resurrection, the poor, the sick, the grieving, and yes, the women, were seen, and heard, and honored, and equal, just as we were in the first chapter of Genesis, in the Garden, made in God’s image.

Nowadays, when people talk about “biblical womanhood”, that’s the part they leave out. When I hear them use the words “biblical womanhood”, I wonder why they omit the good news of the gospel? Who edited out all the red words?  Some very vocal Christians seem to believe and proclaim a lot of wacky things about women, things that include some very bad science, and none of the words and actions of Jesus. You’d think Jesus never lived.

But he did, oh yes, he did. And he does. And in him we are one, and we are free.

Amen. Alleluia.

Skandalon

My title is a Greek word that turns up fairly often - 44 times - in New Testament. As you can guess, it is the source of the words scandal and scandalize, and it means stumbling block, something one trips over, something that causes one to fall. These things happen in life, but no one should be placing the stones so as to cause a fall, as Jesus said. "Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!" (Matthew 18:7). Paul wrote, in his letter to the Romans, "Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another... Let us then pursue what makes for peace and mutual edification." (Romans 14:13,19)

When two women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were tried and sentenced for an activist action in a church (or committing sacrilege in a church, depending on one's point of view), I became involved in an online discussion led by a member of a Christian religious order. I felt that person's position against the women of the band, even in light of the pain and anger the action had caused, was extremely harsh, and I posted a comment questioning that stance. We back and forthed a little bit, chapter-and-versing, but in the end, I was smacked down by Thomas Aquinas. Oof! Serves me right, perhaps, for messing with [a person of unnamed gender who is a member of an unnamed religious order of an unnamed denomination].

About a month has passed, and now a conflagration triggered by insults to the founder of Islam and his followers has caused riots, and killed our ambassador to Libya, along with several members of the embassy staff. These deaths are not justifiable in any way. They are heartbreaking. Information currently suggests that the protests were used by outside agents to cover the murders of the ambassador and embassy personnel. I am trying to separate the killings done by a few from the anger displayed by so many, across several countries.

If Pussy Riot's action was sacrilegious, it seems to me that the film Innocence of Muslims is, too. If we are to accept that churchgoers were hurt and scandalized when the punk band disrupted the sacred service, how can we not see that devout Muslims would be outraged by this film?

Someone - I think it may have been Fran Lebowitz - once wrote, "Your freedom to wear a lime-green polyester pantsuit ends where it meets my eye." There are limits, even for we Americans. I have heard people say that though the film is regrettable, we have freedom of speech. Yes, we do. Here. If we stay within our own borders. But elsewhere, where American law does not apply, we have to abide by the laws and customs of the country we are in. Even at home, we have to be prepared to accept the consequences of that free speech. In Muslim cultures, one does not make a picture of or a joke about the Prophet. I am sorry to have to say this, but really, if a five-year old can figure out that it's unwise to pull the kitty's tail, can't alleged adults predict that riots and violence will be the result of such "free speech"? That may someday change, but we are not the ones to force that change.

There is another definition of skandalon: the movable stick that triggers a trap, the stick that has to be carefully and deliberately set in order for the trap to function.

Someone made a movie defaming the prophet Muhammed. I have read it was intended to be a Christian evangelization tool. Most people smart enough to make a movie are probably too smart to have made such a colossal misjudgement, but it didn't matter much, because only about ten people ever saw the film prior to now. So who really decided it would be a good idea to release such a film, and to post a trailer on YouTube at this particular time? And who funded it? $5,000,000 went into that film. Instead of criticizing the quality of the production, why are we not asking who put up the money? Because it's not that easy to find that kind of money. If five million dollars grew on every tree, I would have planted an orchard, and be having a very different life right now.

Most Christians agree that it is, at the very least, bad manners to show blatant disrespect to Jesus Christ. Responses vary from person to person. Grief. Rage. A shrug. A prayer. But there is always a reaction. So what, then, makes it OK to similarly disrespect Muhammed?

Nothing. It is not OK. And we misrepresent the God of love we profess to follow when we allow it to happen in His name.

I don't know what the religious I conversed with last month might say about what happened and is happening in Libya, Tunisia, Sudan. And Aquinas? I have not studied his work much, so I don't know that, either. But I do know this: three months before his death, Aquinas, while serving at Mass, had a mystical experience that led him to say, "All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has been revealed to me."

 

Baby, who do you love?

Now that presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan as his running mate, people are talking more intensely about the religious aspects of the race. We are starting to hear not-Christian/ too-Christian accusations, and they are being met with a lot of "it's nobody's business", which, to a certain extent, is true. It is very difficult to live an always-conscious life of faith. Everyone who is trying to do it is stumbles, falls, and gets back up again on a daily basis. Nobody gets it right all the time. And yet, I believe there is good reason to consider Mr. Ryan's religion when weighing his merits or lack thereof (he is Catholic); he is the one who brings it into the conversation, as he has also done with his admiration of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

As I understand it, Catholic teaching stresses the importance of caring for the sick, the poor, tthe hungry, he immigrant, the prisoner, the oppressed, and the aged as a primary way one expresses one's love of God. Ayn Rand's philosophy says that the poor are poor by their own doing, and do not deserve assistance or care, that we are all on our own, and that the successful business person has more intrinsic value that the less successful one. Mr. Ryan is guided by Rand, yet claims his religion, too. Can one follow both these ways of thinking and being? Jesus said no: "No one can serve two masters... you cannot serve God and wealth". And so did Rand: "Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society". Jesus said "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself." Ayn Rand wrote, "This God, this one word: I."

I picture Mr. Ryan, with The Bible in one hand and Atlas Shrugged in the other, as a matter/anti-matter event about to happen.

Which is his deeper allegiance? I would say, discerning from his recent statements, his political history, and the budget that bears his name, that he is more Randian in every issue except abortion (which she supported). So, it matters to me that he professes to be Catholic while seeming to not honor most of the tenets of the faith. That dissonance is important.

Same with Mr. Romney. I don't care that he is a Mormon. But, since he has brought it into the discussion, is he a good Mormon? Mormons place a very high value on community and on compassionate service. Does he personally serve in the network of mutual support and assistance that is a defining feature of that church, and that helps the community to prosper? Or does he simply have his accountant send a check? Do his proposals square with what he professes to believe, not one day, but every day?

Asking this kind of question does not constitute faith-bashing. It is looking for a standard upheld, a target at least aimed at, for more rather than less harmony between words and actions. Yes, one's religion is no one else's business. But if it's offered up as a reason one is the the better candidate for high office, it merits investigation. Ya gotta walk it like ya talk it, especially when you decide to walk in front of cameras, and talk into the microphone.

Greene County ramble

A friend's small house in Greene County, NY has been my temporary home since last Friday afternoon. It has rained here nearly every day. I am surrounded by late-summer lush green foliage, though the Catskill Creek is running very low, and most of the country suffers drought. I read the news about India's massive power failure with sorrow. Eventually, if those who favor decrease in infrastructure spending seize the day, we will probably be experiencing the same sort of thing here. I wonder whether we are mentally equipped to handle it.

I know about the American can-do spirit, and I know most people are generous when there is trouble (yes, even some of those whose wealth affords them the ability to simply go elsewhere). But over time can-do gets diluted by can't-bear-to and don't-care-to. We need look no further than our own New Orleans to see that sometimes people and projects get abandoned.

I lived a year in this same town back in 2000, and in some ways there has been very little change. In a gorgeous part of the state, it was  then lovely, but economically depressed, and it is still lovely and, judging by the number of vacant storefronts and "For Sale" signs, depressed now. We all know that, for most, incomes have not risen. But prices have, by a lot. I remember what I used to pay at the grocery store for the same items I want to buy now. The change is frightening. Of course, that's been going on all along, everywhere I have been, but short-duration stays can capture precise memories. I know where I lived, for instance, when I got my first contact lenses, because we didn't live there long. For the same reason, I know how old I was: ten. Whereas a friend who has always lived in the same town and whose deep roots fill me with longing, often bemoans the lack of sharp markings of time.

Even those who can pinpoint events in the past can't always see the future. I don't know what's going to happen here in Greene County, or in New York State, or in America. But for good things to happen for all, I think we have to junk the idea that one can be utterly self-made and self-sustaining. The idea of "making it" completely on one's own is neither factual enough to be reality nor true enough to be myth. Even when I was driving to and from my acapella dates in the 1990s, I was using roads built by an earlier generation, and performing in spaces constructed by the generation before that. So yeah, I was booking myself, promoting myself, driving myself, and singing all by myself, but it still took a village to get me to the gig. I would like to know that, years down the line, another traveling singer could do what she does and get where she is going because my generation built good roads, strong bridges, a sustainable power grid, a national wireless network. I would like to trust that she could breathe easy because industrial polluting of the air was a thing of the past. That she could eat a dinner of non-toxic food, and drink water that is clean and pure. That, if she suffered from poor health, she could be assured of proper care even through the ups and downs of an artist's income.

I have auto insurance for anything bad that might happen to my trusty Toyota. Tree limbs, trucks, theft, all covered. But currently, I might not be covered if bad things happen to me (unless they happen as a result of being in the car when they happen).

Were I in Israel, though, I would be, because Israel has had universal health care since 1995. I didn't know that till this week, and neither did Mr. Romney, apparently. My Netherlands-born grandfather would have been covered in his homeland starting in 1966 had he not emigrated as a child to the States. Had he been born in Norway, and stayed there, he would have been covered starting in 1912. Many Americans will not be covered for another two years, and then only if the Affordable Care Act is not dismantled.

Since we are wont to assure the world that, in America, "We're #1!", and since Jesus told us repeatedly to take care of even our very "Other" neighbors (Luke 10:29-37), those of us who are waving the American flag in one hand and the Bible in the other have some serious "splennin" to do about why we are not living up to either ideal.

Many sincere folks say "God helps those who help themselves" as they argue for programs cuts that will hurt millions of Americans. They think, when they say it, that they are quoting scripture. But they are not. It's in a fable Aesop wrote, and Benjamin Franklin used it in his Poor Richard's Almanac. It is not in the Bible. In fact, God is pretty much on record in scripture as promising to be with us, helping the helpless, using our hands to do it. So, perhaps our hands need to be more open, and empty, and ready.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Follow the leader, or rename the game

Anyone who grows up in the church has heard the stories. Jesus says "Be well!", and behold, someone is well. Jesus mixes up a poultice from some dirt and spit and applies it. He touches someone and says, "Your sins are forgiven,"  and they are forgiven. And that person is made well. Can see. Can speak. Can hear. Stops bleeding. Stops mutilating himself. Walks. Runs. Is not dead anymore, but living, and whole.

Only once are we told of a "stolen" healing. A woman who has been bleeding for 12 years, works her way through a crowd of people around him, and touches his robe, hoping that will be enough. And it is. She is healed. When he feels it happening, and asks, "Who touched me?", she comes forward in fear, and identifies herself. But he simply says "Your faith has healed you." It is nowhere recorded that he ever said, "You were not authorized."

Or, "No. Sorry. You've had enough relief from your sins, your pain, your grief. That's all you get this quarter."

Today, a dear dear friend, who suffers from chronic debilitating back pain needs to have a prescription fior pain meds refilled. She has injured her fragile back, and is in terrible pain. It should be simple. But it's not. She is told by a receptionist at the medical practice where she is a patient that, because of insurance and state rules, she can't get a refill without seeing the doctor, and the first available time is at the end of the month.

The month of August.

She asks to speak to her physician. "Doctor X is too busy to come to the phone." I am looking at her. She can hardly stand up straight. Pain is carving her face like granite.

I know this woman well, and you know what? She is a warrior. She pushes herself. She keeps going. She endures. She does not complain, or exaggerate, and she is not looking for a high. In fact, she doesn't particularly like how the drugs make her feel, except... they make the pain recede just enough.

She has health insurance, for which she pays a lot. The insurance company will cover a major and costly surgical procedure that has already been shown to be ineffective and sometimes dangerous in cases like hers, with a long recover time including physical therapy the insurance will not fully cover. My friend does not want this surgery. She just wants enough relief for the pain to be manageable.  This is why one sees a pain management doctor in the first place, yes? But her medications are rationed by cost analysis, as are her allowable office visits. There is no thought given to her actual condition, to which I am witness. Nothing I experience in the lasting effects of my car accident comes close to what she deals with almost every day.

So. I think about this week's House vote (the 33rd such vote) to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I think about all the proposed cuts to or elimination of WIC, the Food Stamp program, Medicaid/Medicare. And about the man whom so many of our elected officials on both sides of the aisle claim to follow.

If we are so all-fired Christian, how do we dare to draw lines he never drew? I know things can be complicated, and that I am not aware of every problematic issue involved. But really. Once you develop the habit of calling yourself by his name, don't you also have to be going about the business of doing what he said to do?

Or are we just wearing lapel pins, and calling it a day?

 

Must-haves

We are born into wanting. The breast, the cuddle, the warm and dry and safe. As we grow up, and older, the wants multiply and become confusing. "Give me what I want!" morphs into "what do I really want? what should I want?  what do I think I can get?"

The answers are elusive; even when captured, they change.

Grow up and old enough, though, and things start to simplify again. Some desires go away because they are no longer possible. I will never write the great American novel before I am twenty, for instance. I will not have the children I dreamed. 

Other wishes withdraw because one has had a taste of them, and it was enough. Working in a stable caring for 22 horses taught me that I didn't really want the 250 horses I wished for as a child. Traveling with a band all the time suggested to me that I might not want to travel with a band all the time.

I'm a Capricorn, and we can be both socially conscious - a fine attribute -  and socially self-conscious, which is not fine at all. Some of us tend to ignore our magnetic-north certainty, and to follow other people's directions instead. I have taken a lot of advice in my career, and striven to do what it seemed other experienced folks felt was the right thing for me to do: go here, do that, climb this mountain, not the other one, sing this genre above all others, all good, sensible things. It is taking me a very long time to recover from all that advice.

I sang my first unaccompanied vocal program in 1993. It was the first time I set foot onstage unplugged and unframed, the second state far more important than the first. Unplugged's easy, at least in my family. Open your mouth, and sing. But unframed? No one else up there shaping the onstage me? No arrangements, no staging? Nothing but made-up songs, some poems, and a story or two? I was advised that it would be too weird. When I was about to record Feather and Bone, I was told I wasn't ready, that I needed to plan out the music more. And, of course, I was foolish to move to the Adirondacks, mad to stay there so long, and first wasting my time by going back to college, and then nuts to leave graduate school. All true. But not the only true, as it turned out, and each of those things worked out beyond my imaginings. Though I will admit that it was a little... hmmm... curious to live in a tent for six months in the Adirondacks; still, even that was a priceless learning experience.

To the extent that I know who I am, I know it because of the stories my experiences have given me. Opposable thumbs are nice, but stories are better. So it should be no surprise that, when wondering what to take should I ever have to evacuate, the answer came quickly. Mrs. Peel, of course, above all else (though she is not a what but a who). And after her, if there's time? My Bible, my Riverside Shakespeare, my tarot deck, and my charm bracelet. What are they? Stories. Collections of stories. Which, among other things, is what we all are.

What do I want? A really good story, someone to share it with (a cat, for instance), and unending curiosity about the next chapter.

(The art above is by Mary Engelbreit, whose paintings and sense of humor have delighted me for years. You can see - and buy - more of her work at www.maryengelbreit.com)