Laurel Massé

Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!

 Brid agus Muire dhuit!

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, to whom I have a special devotion. Patron saint of poets and brewers, of healers and midwives (and, along with Patrick and Columba, of Ireland itself), she was strong and gentle, prayerful and practical. St. Brigid worked miracles: my favorite is the healing of a blind Sister so that she could see the beauty of a sunset. To ease the thirst of lepers, she once turned a tub of bathwater into a tub of excellent beer. She was called Mary's Nurse, meaning that she helped Mary with the infant Jesus (a Time Lord!). Like so many of the great saints, she was as earthy and real as soil and water, and as wild as fire and air.

The following 10th century poem has been attributed to her:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I'd give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake.
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

 

In my mind's ear, I can hear this woman laughing, and singing, her voice husky, her eyes shining. How could I keep from loving her?

For my solo album, Feather and Bone, I adapted traditional prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael in Scotland in the 1800s and composed Radiant Flame of Gold, a prayer to Brigid. Here is the track, with the sorely-missed Layne Redmond, and Tommy B on frame drums. I pray it in my times of trouble, and for others in theirs: Download 09 Radiant Flame of Gold

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each day,

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each night.

I am under the keeping of the nurse of Mary

Each early and late, every dawn, every light.

 

To learn more about St. Brigid, start here. To purchase Feather and Bone, send me a Facebook message here.

 

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.

 

A song in my heart, and a cold in my nose

Gustave Doré, Angelic Host (because, sometimes, singing with a choir feels like this).

One might think that, living in a more isolated area as I do, and staying in a lot while my arm heals, as I have done, that I might not catch (or be caught by) any of the foul cold contagion that has been swooping through grocery stores and malls. But alas, whatever little I did out there in the populated world was the wrong thing to do, and I have spent this day with chills and sniffles and sneezes. Tired of hearing all that, I have been listening to music of all kinds. Here is today's favorite.

In February two years ago, I flew to Chicago to be part of one of the most deeply moving projects of my career, a live recording session for Roman Hurko's choral Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This Ukranian Catholic work is the first in that tradition to be written in English (rather than translated into English). The work was premiered in New York two months later, and again I was privileged to be in the choir.

I cried a lot over this music, and still do, though not because of its complexity. In fact, it is disarmingly simple to sing. Any congregation with the habit of singing in parts could manage the choral pieces. But it touches something very profound in me, deep in the bright dark place from which I say, "Lord, I believe!" and then right after that, "and... help my unbelief." The rising, swirling Alleluia is particularly beautiful. The whole liturgy is sung without accompaniment, and, as one reviewer said, "From the very first “Amen,” one knows that the Kingdom has come in power (see Mark 9: 1)."  

This is one of several recordings I turn to when I need to feel stronger, more hale, hearty, and human; even when the music soars,  it has the unique earthy quality of mortal voices, and it reminds me I am not alone.

You can read more about this music and the rest of Roman's work, listen to some tracks, and order the CD, here.

While you do that, I'm going to make tea.

 

A different epidemiology

On December 16th, two days after the horror of the Sandy Hook shooting, I took a fall while away from home. Some very kind folks picked me up from the pavement, and the good monks at the monastery put me up for the night. I drove back north the following day, jaw set in determination against the pain of what turned out to be a broken arm.

In the following days of forced inactivity, I noticed on Facebook that a friend had broken her collarbone. Another, his ankle. Another, her wrists. Suddenly there seem to be gravity vortices everywhere.  A bronchial thing is going around, too, a virulent strain that lasts for weeks. Many of the people I know are sick, coughing, sniffling, wheezing. Others have been felled by a stomach bug. And I read last night that there are already a record number of flu cases reported.

I am not a doctor, and I'm not a scientist and I can't prove what I am about to say. But I have a feeling about all this. I believe that, because of that happened to those children, our collective heart broke, is broken, and with God-given wisdom, our bodies have refused to continue with "business as usual".

Sometimes the show cannot, must not, go on.

Many religious and cultural traditions allow (or even require) the mourner to step away from chronological time for a set period. The Jewish custom of sitting shiva comes to mind, as does the true Irish wake. Both practices - and I know there are countless others - surround the mourners with community, helping hands, and memory keepers.

I pray that those who lost their loved ones, their precious jewels, the light of their lives, had such rituals and help. I am sure they did, at least in the immediate days and weeks. But the rest of us, gut-punched yet not killed, may not have taken full stock of the personal damage. Loosed from traditions of faith or ethnic origin, as many now are, we try to go on as if, like Shane, we can handle everything on our own. I think the lone hero is a particularly American vision and ideal. We feel empathy with and sympathy for the parents, the teachers, the children of those who were killed, without recognizing the magnitude of our own wounding. Falling down or being taken ill can be explained by ice on a step, germs in the air. And yet, I am certain there is more: the contagion of grief, inhaled. The heart so heavy that trying to lift it alone makes you stumble.

There have been several shootings and other large tragedies since then, and small ones beyond counting, as there always are. "Blows upon a bruise", as Evelyn Waugh once wrote. There is nothing we can do to prevent all such events. But we need to consider, thoughtfully, prayerfully (if we are of that mind) what we can do. And to truly accept the notion that no one of us can carry these burdens alone.

Wing in a sling

 

I fell and broke my right arm on the 16th, and the degree of difficulty of everything has been temporarily increased. Typing is difficult. Driving is difficult. Can't walk through a door carrying anything, because I can't turn doorknobs - doorknobs I never really noticed until they became barriers. I managed a blog post a few days ago, but it will be a little while before the next one moves from heart through head and hands to hyperlink.

Being quiet is good. With Mrs. Peel on my lap, it's very good indeed. I love to read, she loves to purr, and we both stare, and think. Something's bound to come of it. In the meantime, if you would please pray for a speedy restoration to health (and some breaking up of a bureaucratic logjam), I would be very grateful. And fewer doorknobs.

And remember, it's still Christmas. The 12 days don't end on the 25th. They start there, and we're in them. Rejoice!

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?