Laurel Massé

Just before Christmas

It has been a long time since I last wrote here. I have been thinking, and contemplating, and busily writing things on paper. That, coupled with the temporary inconvenience of not having internet access, kept me relatively quiet. ME! Can you imagine?

And now it's the day before before Christmas. I am at home waiting for the UPS driver and a package, and for the U.S. Post Office delivery person who does not always put my mail in the correct mailbox, while Mrs. Peel sleeps blissfully and elegantly on the radiator.

All day yesterday, rain tapped at the windows. It was like Christmas in Los Angeles, as I remember it: yuletide rains, warm temperatures, aqua and coral decorations on trees sprayed with fake snow. My friend Howard took me to see a huge poinsettia tree and I suddenly understood why I had never been able to keep my Christmas poinsettia alive: mine was just bunch of twigs stuffed into a beribboned pot. Christmas in L.A. was an experience not of Christmas Past or Christmas Present, but of Christmas Other because it looked so different from what I had grown up with. Christmas under palm trees! How odd it seemed!

And yet, how much more like the first Christmas than our nordic pines and our Dickensian feasts, and Clement Clarke Moore's poem, which does not even mention Jesus (though Moore was a religious scholar, and so how odd that seems, too).

We have not evolved a whole lot since Mary bore that baby. We still wage war and are victims of war, we still oppress and are oppressed. We still have major vision problems - can't see the poor until they are troublesome, for instance, can't see the person behind the skin. And heavens, we are easily distracted by ducks and mileys and penguin santas.

But underneath that, at the same time, we love. The heart is made for love. We are called to love every year, every day, every moment. The media may spin the season, commerce may manipulate our guilt and our desire to please, fellow Christians may tell us we're doing Christmas all wrong, atheists may accuse us of stupidity for doing it at all, and all of that noise distracts us from the not-always-easy but actually quite short to-do list we were given by Jesus: love God, love your neighbor.

Yes, we're flawed. Yes, we mess up. Yes, we don't always do it right. But we return to it, to the task at hand, and there are moments, moments, and shining, and sudden onsets of joy. This Love has no expiry date. And that is good news.

May your days be merry and bright.

 

 

 

 

Mark you this...

Writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) had read more than enough of the critical adulation accorded to James Fenimore Cooper, one of America's most revered early novelists (including The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans). Accordingly, in 1895, he published his review of Cooper's works. Listening to the national news this morning, hearing about politicians' maneuvers and the confusions some are having about the mysterious connection between cause and effect, and about the difference between a law and a bill and such, I was reminded of that review. I found it and reread it, and here is the passage that had come to mind.

If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation."

(Anyone in Washington, DC remember this passage? Apparently not.)

Twain then goes on to give an example of such a disadvantage:

...The ark [a houseboat that is about to be attacked] is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety-foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judge, he let go and dropped. And missed the boat! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in he stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did -- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as observer.

Do treat yourself to the whole essay. It's been making me laugh - loudly! - since I was in high school.

 

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."

 

Gabby's gold

Gabby Douglas just added to Olympics - and American - history. At sixteen years of age, competing in the Olympic Games for the first time, she has won two gold medals in women's gymnastics, one as a member of the American team in the team championship event, and one for individual all-round best. She is the first African-American gymnast to win the individual gold.

When interviewed by the news media, she said this about her win:

“You just have to not be afraid and go out there and just dominate,” Douglas said afterward, a stuffed Olympic mascot under one arm, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and an Olympic gold medal around her neck. “You have to go out there and be a beast. Because if you don’t, you’re not going to be on the top." (as reported in The Washington Post)

The article was posted online, and there were many comments. As usual, some were thoughtful, some were hateful, some congratulatory. Many were political. This one, though, caught my attention:

"The press really ought to avoid quoting athletes when their comments are dumb. 'You just have to not be afraid and go out there and just dominate.' Really, is that all it takes? Who expects wisdom from a short young naive gymnast with no life experience outside of training and competition. The girl's a great gymnast, but she's not a top notch thinker, and really she's not an inspiration to anyone."  

Really? She inspires me. Not just because she defies gravity - for her, gravity seems to be more of a suggestion than the law - but because, at sixteen, she already knows something it took me years to finally master. She is not afraid to excel. She does not seem to fret about the consequences of being great. WIth that foundation, she will probably never worry, while receiving a standing ovation, about how she will have to pay for having been singled out for extra attention and praise. I do not envy the excellence of others. I celebrate it. I wish I had not learned (and had to unlearn) to be afraid of my own.

So congratulations, Gabby. May you savor your every triumph. And may there be many more of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird on a wire

A few mornings after I returned from this year's wonderful session of The International Cabaret Conference at Yale, I had a little dizzy spell. Walking down a narrow hallway, I bounced off the walls a bit, like a pinball. Nothing serious. But when I opened my eyes the following morning and started to sit up in bed, the room took a sickening lurch. It was a brief sensation, very uncomfortable, but familiar. Years ago, shortly after I moved from Chicago to the Adirondack Mountains of upstate NY, I experienced a long siege of bronchial infections. When I had to fly back to Chicago several days before a series of engagements, I was still husky-voiced and very tired, but I knew I could do the gigs. My wonderful voice teacher has instilled technique that usually carries me through such things. If I can stand, I can sing.

A few days before the opening night, I had a brief, odd sensation of dizziness. It passed. A couple of days later, when I turned my head on waking, and tried to rise, I was violently nauseated. The room rocked. The only thing that gave any relief was to be utterly still, with my eyes partly closed. I felt even worse the next day. Every time I moved my head, I had to vomit. I tried to shower and wash my hair to get ready for the gig. I couldn't stand, so I crawled from the bathroom to the room I was sleeping in, and, lying on the floor, began putting on my makeup. It just slid down my cold perspiring face.  My accompanist, Dean, knocked on the door, and took a look.

"Laurel," he said, "no one's going to pay money to see this. You have to cancel."

I did. The cancellation cost me about $1500. But with the help of a phone consultation with an ear, nose and throat doctor who prescribed an anti-nausea drug, I was at least able to fulfill the latter half of the engagement. But the doc didn't tell me what I might have, and not knowing was frightening.

It was not until I returned to the mountains that a PA (physician's assistant) in the local health clinic told me what was going on.

"You have a textbook case of labyrinthitis," he said. "Probably a secondary infection resulting from your long bronchial crud." He gave me Antivert to counteract the vertigo, and told me to get some rest, so that time could heal me. Which, eventually, it did. He also suggested I stay out of smoke-filled rooms, but as that was almost a synonym for jazz clubs, I didn't have a way of doing it.

That was probably in 1989 or '90, a long time ago in human years. Three dogs and a cat ago. A divorce ago. Fourteen house moves ago. Several hairdos. A lot of anti-smoking legislation (which saved my career). A lot of books read, a lot of water flowing under the bridge. Yet this past summer, when I tilted into the wall, I remembered.

I'd had bronchitis earlier in the season, which I could have picked up anywhere. I had just about recovered when I left for Yale. The schedule of the Cabaret program is very full, and the air in the dorm this year was damp and silted with construction dust. When I returned home and started reeling like a drunken ballerina, I cancelled everything, and went straight to bed for a week.

Because I did, the labyrinthitis was not as bad this time. I was up again far sooner, though I could not look down without feeling nauseated. I developed a very erect carriage, sailing through rooms like a tall ship, and if I dropped something, it pretty much stayed dropped. Sang some gigs, did some recording, was in a play, all without looking down.

The doc I saw this time told me that, although they know what labyrinthitis is - an inflammation in the the labyrinth, the part of the inner ear that control's the body's balance - they don't know for sure why it develops, though there seems to be some correlation with bronchial infections, stress, allergies, and head injuries. Nor is there a medication that cures it, other than time. Months, in fact. He prescribed rest and patience, and also suggested I look down from time to time, to help my brain rework the balance issue.

I've been doing that. I am much improved, but I do still have it. When I get very tired, I get dizzy. Not about-to-faint dizzy. It's more like boat-deck dizzy. But this time, I recognize something that was hidden all those years ago.

When I moved from Chicago to the Adirondacks, almost every aspect of my life was assaulted by change. Moving from big city to deep country. From having lots of friends to knowing no one. From a church community I loved to one that made me feel very unwelcome (another time for that story). From trusted musical colleagues to no colleagues at all. From an established local and national career to an empty calendar. From proximity to my family to proximity to my then-husband's family, who were very, very different. Though I had moved all my life, no move was as big a shaking as this one. Looking back, I can connect the dots: I was flung utterly off-balance, and my body didn't know what to do. So it got sick. And what was affected? My ability to communicate (bronchitis) and my equilibrium (labyrinthitis). Perfectly perfect, as my step-niece would say.

Twenty-two years later, this summer, too, has been for me a time of waking up to intense discomfort and rebalancing. What is really important? What do I need to do and to have? Of what can I let go? And this shaking up is not happening just in my heart and home, but in those of many friends and relatives, and of communicators - writers, speakers, artists, people of spirit -  whom I follow but have never met. I think the ground is shaking all over the world, for millions of people. A global shift is taking place, and we are struggling to keep our balance, trying to find our way through a labyrinth we helped create, or allowed to be created, until we realized we'd been trapped. A whole lotta shakin's going on.

 

Deep listening

I don’t have internet in my apartment at the moment. Nor do I have any magazine-in-the-mailbox subscriptions.  These two conditions are related, and there are a couple of reasons for them. The first, the “presenting complaint”, in med-speak, is the expense. When I first came back to NY and arranged for Verizon to be my provider, the lovely introductory rate was $17.99 each month. Sign me up!  When that rate expired, the new rate was $10 more per month, and now it's $44.99 per month before taxes. Just for internet.

Magazines are the same. A sweet bargain for the first year or two, to catch you, and then a much higher rate when your subscription renews automatically, as a “convenience” to you. More important, magazines, even the best ones, are either repetitive (sorry, Oprah), or relentless (New Yorker, I’m talking to you).  Or both. Who has the time to read them all? And who, in this apartment, has the time to read them all when there is a cat to admire, Shakespeare on the shelf, music in my head, and friends to talk to? Real life, compassionate, aware, loving, curious friends?

Which brings me to another concern: The Vortex. Our minds are wired to look  at the newest information. This can keep us both alive - Look out! There’s a snake! Move fast! A tree is falling! - and breeding - wow! now THERE”S a man!. This also makes us the perfect targets for Facebook and Twitter addiction, because the feeds keep updating. I find I am reading about someone I barely know doing something I don’t care about (so glad you’re having coffee for your hangover, my fb friend). It’s the latest, so it’s the loudest. Though it is easy to decide to stay away, actually doing that requires overriding millions of years of evolutionary development. But just as I am trying to do that, here comes another update, and it sucks me back in, on the off-chance that I need to know this new bit of information.

The Vortex substitutes the watching of life for living of life. It affected me years ago, through television, and so I got rid of my TV. Since then I have been encouraged (often!) to re-engage the box, and I haven’t yet done so. Perhaps when a cable company allows me to choose and pay for only the stations I want (I want my BBC, period). The result of this mode of living is that I am an alien. Those who watch a lot of telly probably don’t realize that they talk more about that than about anything else. They talk more about the characters on shows than about the people they actually know. I notice it because, when I have to ask who they are talking about, they are astounded by my ignorance.

But I watched a lot of TV in my past. Many friends have been made to endure my recall of theme songs and  jingles from the 60s. In 1978, when I had the car accident that forced me out of the music business for a couple of years, I had extremely good medical care from Dr. Alvin Mulne, and all the superb staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank, CA. I also had Jamie Sommers, The Bionic Woman, on daily reruns, and that show played an important part in my healing, too. I had been surprised to find that, thanks to bad management, I was rather spectacularly underinsured, and the daily “meditation” and visualization of her speed and strength and acute hearing was almost the only post-op therapy I had. We really do have the technnology, built-in, in mind and spirit.

Today I am living in a cable-free, magazine-free, internet-free apartment. Some of this may may well change. It's inconvenient. To publish this post, I have to walk down the hill to the library with my laptop on my back, and then walk back up. It's raining. But once I am home again, the mental silence - because I can't check Facebook - is deep and fruitful. The payoff's been really big. Clearer ideas. Sharper awareness when I am out, quieter thoughts when I stay in. Intuition's more insistent. Prolific dreaming. Prayer. I feel more present to Presence.

So far, so good.

 

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.