Laurel Massé

Love is the answer

Everything I might want to say this morning has already been said. Sometimes I need to listen more than I need to speak.

 

In this vision [our Lord] showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and it was round as a ball. I looked at it with my mind's eye and thought 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might disappear. And the answer in my mind was: "It lasts and will last forever, because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God cares for it.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

 

You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine; it being the most delightful and natural employment of the Soul of Man: without which you are dark and miserable. Consider therefore the extent of Love, its vigour and excellency.  For certainly he that delights not in Love makes vain the universe, and is of necessity to himself the greatest burden. The whole world ministers to you as the theatre of your Love: It sustains you and all objects that you may continue to love them.

Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations, Second Century, Meditation 65

 

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

John 15:9,12 (NRSV)

 

The Lord, your God, is in your midst... he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing...

Zephaniah 3:17 (NRSV)

 

Strange, this love announced by Our Lord turns all of life right. To love others is to fill our own empty spaces.

Thomas à Becket 

 

Love is the answer.

Todd Rundgren

 

You can go home again

Today is Sunday. I am visiting family, near Chicago, in a town that used to be out in the country, but has grown, as Chicago has grown. The line between city and country now lies a few miles further up the road. A cold rain has been falling all day from a grey, weeping sky. With the temperature hovering near 32° F, the rain may shift to sleet or snow. But I am nestled, cozy and warm, in my father's house, a lovely, comfortable dwelling that feels like home -  though I have never lived in it or in this town. But I have visited the area often enough to know how to get around, and have, over the years, been introduced to enough people here to have my own relationships with family friends. That is as close to "home" as anyone in my blood family is ever going to get,. Because we moved - a lot - perhaps twenty times before I left to live on my own, and I have racked up another thirty-odd relocations since then. We are, as a friend of mine has said, a portable people.

Peripatetic, restless, seeking, my family embodied a potent aspect of the American Dream. We lit out for the territories, in buoyant hope that things would be better down the road a piece. This buoyancy came primarily from my father. He is the most profoundly optimistic man I have ever known, and he has a very rare gift: an off-switch for worry. It’s not denial; rather, he knows how to assess what he can change and what he cannot change (which many of us can do) and then - here's his superpower - release the things he can't change.

My dad is neither a Zen master nor a Rinpoche nor a contemplative Carmelite. I don't know what it is in his deepest heart that allows him this freedom and the resulting comfort with wherever he happens to be. I certainly wish I had inherited or learned it in greater measure. For me, it comes only sometimes, in bursts. I suddenly realize that I am in the kingdom of heaven, where everything, everything, is in the hands of the One who creates, sustains, and renews. I'm not transported there, because it's always here, among us. Jesus told us, and countless holy men and women, of countless traditions have told us, in countless ways. But we don’t see it, and we need to be reminded to look. And that's what artists do: point the way and shine as much light as we have in us.

Earth's crammed with heaven, wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes - the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

This place, this earth where the blackberries grow dark and sweet, is the doorway to deep home, the place of all our seeking. What we are looking for is already here. The gift is to know it when we see it, because the knowing is home.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S.Eliot

A second cup, my dears?

Reader Ernest has reminded me of something I left out of yesterday's post about the proppa cuppa tea, something that is is yet another link in the chain that leads to a truly discouraging brew in most restaurants here in this coffee-centric culture. Remember that the water used to make your tea often runs through the coffee machine to be heated. Remember that black tea needs boiling water poured on it. Remember also that coffee machines heat water to below the boiling point, so the hottest that water is ever going to be is not hot enough, and  - what I failed to include - the too-small mug it's poured into is usually a heavy ceramic thing, and has not been warmed. Say bye-bye to a few more degrees of heat. I would have included this, but I was already lying on the floor, whimpering.

However, now that I am writing this postscript, I really should also introduce the microwave issue. When microwave ovens first came into use, it was thought they might be a danger to pregnant women. That seems to have been addressed, and the things are everywhere. I have friends who almost never use their stoves anymore. And I have friends who, on offering me tea, fill a mug with water, plonk in a teabag, and thrust it into the microwave to boil (or not boil, depending on what the thing is set for).

I have noticed that tea thus prepared does not taste the same as it does when steeped in water boiled in a stovetop or electric kettle. It's not quite the same color, either; the rich brown I expect becomes a little greyish. I thought for a while this was because microwaving does something to the tea. So I did an experiment, using several different microwaves (thank you to my tolerant and amused friends!). I heated the water only. Just the water in a clean cup. Here's what happens: put in a teabag, and get greyish-brown tea that does not taste the same, even when I use my beloved Yorkshire Gold as a control.

It is true that putting the tea on top of the water isn't really the done thing. Pouring the water onto the tea is what I do at home, so I have done that, too, with microwaved boiling H²O. It still brews up grey. It still tastes... funny. I am convinced that microwaving changes the water itself.

Do we find this acceptable? Ermmm, not really, no. We do not.

Of course, if Parliament had not enacted the Tea Act in 1773, things might be different here. One might be able to get good tea in an American restaurant. Instead, it's coffee everywhere. Coffee made its way to Europe and thence to the American colonies from the African and the Middle Eastern countries of Ethiopia, Egypt and Yemen, and is also a very admirable beverage. It had a big popularity surge during the American Revolution because of that Tea Act, and we've been hooked on it ever since... far longer than we've been mainlining oil from roughly the same part of the world.

 

A proppa cuppa - one woman's opinion

When I run for president - in my next life, of course - I will have a very short agenda. If you are serving black tea, use boiling water when you make it. Simple, yes?

Apparently not. Unless I go to a dedicated tea room, like the slice of sassy British heaven that is Tea and Sympathy here in Manhattan, the aromatic, magical potion that results from pouring boiling water into Yorkshire Gold and letting it steep for the proper amount of time is not what I am going to see coming toward me when I order tea at a restaurant.

I have been a drinker of the sacred beverage since I was ten, and I cut my tea-teeth in Solihull, England, at the daily afternoon break at St. Martin's School for Girls. It was a strong black brew, whitened with whole milk, and sweetened, if you liked it that way. "If you are cold, tea will warm you," said William Gladstone. "If you are too heated, it will cool you; if you are depressed, it will cheer you; if you are exhausted, it will calm you."  Tea at St. Martin's did all that, and set the imprint for what I expect from a cuppa: flavour, heat, energy, and something a little more intangible: gentling.

Let me make it clear that I am talking about tea made from the tea plant, camelia sinensis. Herb tea is made with herbs other than real tea. Confused? Not surprising. It's a simple failure of language. In French - and perhaps in other languages, but French is the one I know - thé is made with real tea, and herb teas (infusions made with herbs, not tea) are called tisanes. It makes sense to have two different words, because most of the time the two are not prepared in quite the same way.

Flavour starts with providing a good black tea to begin with. This tea will not say Lipton on the box. Nor will it say Bigelow, Stash, or the name of an American chain supermarket (I am talking about you, Key Foods!). I'm personally not all that fond of Twinings (as sold in the States) either, because it always seems so, oh, trying hard but too weak in the end to get the job done. My current favourite is Yorkshire Gold, a rich, malty blend that helps me sit a little straighter and think a little faster, and restores my optimism. If there is a good tea and coffee purveyor in your town, you'll be able to get beyond brand names into loose teas from all over the world, and will end up knowing more than I do about the stuff.

Now, dry tea tastes like sticks and leaves (a dry tea bag tastes like sticks, leaves, and paper). You need water, boiling water, to unlock the flavours of black tea. What this means, to the weary traveler, is that one can almost never get a good cup of tea in a restaurant south of the Canadian border, because most of the time the water used has been heated by running it through the coffee maker. Coffee makers are set to heat water to just below the boiling point, because coffee is appalled by boiling water. So it's never going to be hot enough. Then the water, hot-ish and smelling faintly of coffee filters, is poured into a too-small mug, and the mug, with a tea bag (Lipton, most likely) next to it, is brought to the table. Let me recap: it wasn't hot enough to begin with, it's less hot now, and the consummation devoutly to be wished, water and tea together in cup, still hasn't happened. 

One drops the tea bag into the cup and waits; the cold, weak brew that results is just plain discouraging. One may drink it, but why? In fact, why bother with anything? It's all so hopeless, really. Nothing matters.

One is hard-pressed to Get Up And Get On With It.

Furthermore, if it is a gentling of the buffeting winds of life that one was hoping for, and that same sense of being cherished that had extended from teacher Miss Waugh as she poured tea for this little newcomer to a school, a community, and a country... well, it just can't happen. None of the necessary ingredients are present: not the good tea, not the boiling water, not the trusting nature of childhood, and not Miss Waugh.

Therefore, I've resolved that henceforth I shall travel with a little electric kettle and a stash of good tea so that, when it's All Too Much, I can fill that kettle, boil the water, and, conjuring a sweet and personal past, brew some smashing tea, knowing that I wlll, no matter where I am, find therein the strength to Carry On.

A taste of honey

There is a grocery store near my apartment, part of a chain of average quality. It's where I go when I am tired, or time is pressing me hard, or the weather is bad. But today, because the sun was shining so as to make glad the heart, I took a longer excursion, and walked down the big hill to a place called Garden Gourmet.  The staff is friendly, the produce is quite fine, there is a pleasing selection of cheeses, and and I am often surprised by finding something for which I didn't know I was searching.

Today I came around a corner, and found myself standing in front of a shelf of Greek imported foods.

There were tall bottles of green olive oil, bags of dried fava beans, jars of dark-gold honey, cans labeled with pictures of the Acropolis and Greek lettering in blue that for all I know said "Temple-in-a Tin". On a whim, I put a jar of the honey in my basket.

 When I'd hiked back up the hill to my apartment, I brewed a pot of tea, and while letting it steep, put the groceries away. Then I opened the honey and dipped a silver spoon into the liquid amber. It tasted sweet on my tongue. All of a sudden (as Mark says so often in his gospel), I was in a small hotel dining room in Athens. I had risen at dawn, and slipped downstairs alone to breakfast. Coffee, pungent and grainy, was served in a small cup. In a white bowl before me was unsweetened yogurt, thick from having been strained, and creamy with all the butterfat of the good milk it was made from, and a fresh fig, halved. A little pot of honey was set before me; I drizzled a spoonful atop the yogurt, and took a bite.  Now, I'd tasted exquisite yogurts in my life, and lovely honeys, but nothing quite like this. I could smell flowers, and thyme, and pine trees. I could almost hear the bees. I finished my meal in a trance of sensual pleasure and contentment, in a dream of a summer day, in the making of a memory so potent that thirty years later, in the snow-covered Bronx, it could take me back to that morning in one sweet taste.

That was just my breakfast in Greece. I haven't even begun to talk about...

     



... the light!

Color my world

Snow fell through the night here in New York, and lays "round about, deep and crisp and even" this morning, except where folks have been shoveling. There is no wind; tree branches are limned in white. Cars parked along the street have been half-buried by the combined efforts of the heavens and the plows. The light, in a still-cloudy sky, is a chilly white that reminds me of my first winter in Chicago, and of photographs of Le Corbusier's Maison LaRoche-Jeanneret.

I moved to Chicago in 1981, to escape an increasingly difficult New York life. I'd had two long hospital stays after my car accident in Los Angeles, and was so discouraged by the difficulties of building a post-Manhattan Transfer life there that I had moved back east. The difficulties were not eased, however. As the leaving-the-group legal agreement dragged on, as lawyers batted at each other, I was broke and waitressing in a restaurant that had my records on the jukebox. I did not have the emotional or spiritual wherewithal to handle it. So, when I visited my dad in Chicago, and people were nice to me there, I packed and moved. My first apartment in that city had pretty leaded-glass windows that faced east toward Lake Michigan. I could see a tiny sliver of the lake between buildings, and it was beautiful, constantly changing with the light. If I shortened my gaze and looked down rather than out, I could see the windows of a small flower shop that had a red neon sign: "Flowers".

That winter was so very cold, and lead mullions so far from effective at keeping out the wind, that the water in my toilet bowl grew a glaze of ice. When the super came up to tape plastic sheeting over my windows, the plastic billowed like sails. Snow fell often, turning the world white - except for that red neon sign. "Flowers" would not be daunted, not even when the shop window completely frosted over. I clung to a hope of spring.

Almost a decade later, I had a gig in Paris, and made, with my architect then-husband, a pilgrimage to Le Corbusier's Maison La Roche. I had seen it, and virtually all of Le Corbu's work, in a set of books my ex treasured beyond all his other possessions. The photographs in the books were in black and white, and so that is how I thought of the designs, black and white, mostly white. A pure white, not tinted with anything that would warm it up. And when we came to it and entered, the house looked as I expected. White exterior. White foyer with a black and white tile floor.

Then we climbed a flight of stairs to the second floor, came around a corner to the landing, and were suddenly confronted by a blue wall. It was so unexpected, and such a merry blue, that I started to laugh out loud. As we continued through the house, almost nothing was as I had imagined it would be. In the little kitchen, there was a well-worn comfy chair. In the gallery room there was a pinkish brown sweep of a wall defining a staircase. Everywhere I looked, I saw swashes of color, and the house's merriment continuing to bubble. It is now twenty years later, and I am laughing as I write. Oh, such a blue can never be forgotten!

Still, sometimes I have to remember to remember that, on this cold white day (and any cold white day in my heart), there is, right now, peeking through a keyhole in the clouds, a laughing blue. And under the snow, "Flowers".

 

Doctor, my eyes

I was looking at clips on Youtube a few moments ago, and misread a label, or was misled by one, and saw something that upset me profoundly. It doesn't matter what it was. The clip made my temperature soar, my heart rate speed up, and my breathing become quick and shallow. Then I felt nauseated, and a little faint.

Something I saw for just a moment on my small screen, and heard, tiny and tinny through my laptop's speakers, affected my body that much, and that fast, even though I knew it to be just a manipulated image on a screen. My fine mind knew that very well. But my body and spirit were far more perceptive, and knew it was something to get away from, fast.

Suddenly, there is new meaning for me in the practice of "custody of the eyes". I always thought it meant not allowing the eyes to dwell on what might be "occasions of sin" (such an efficient, all-encompassing little phrase). Ladies, be not immodest with your glances. That kind of thing.

But today, in the wake of this incident, I am thinking more deeply about the word custody, which is defined as guardianship and protective care. The eyes are the windows of the soul, it's said. Light and dark travel through windows in both directions. I should take greater care of these windows.

I don't mean I can shut my eyes to what is going on in the world. That would be irresponsible. I do not choose to bow out of our shared troubles and joys. Nor am I certain that what I saw would upset everybody (though I think it should). But I am going to exercise a little more protective care when choosing to be entertained by Youtube, films, with what I read, and what I dwell on. I want to keep the glass in my windows clear of crud, so that I can see true light and true dark.

And always know the difference.

 

 

The scent of snow

A few days ago, I stepped out of my apartment building, and was stopped in my tracks by a flood of sensory memory. Something in the color of the light, or the scent of the air, transported me to Paris, and for a moment, an all-too-brief moment, that's where I was, in all but body. Or maybe physically, too. Maybe I flickered. Who knows? I was in Paris, it was 1965, on a wintry day, on Avenue Suffren, on the sidewalk in front of the patisserie, and I guess if I had gone there physically, I would have arrived back in the Bronx with a pastry in my hand.

This happens often to me. I think it's a natural trait in artists. In my specific case, it is also partly a result of having lived in so many different locations, and partly an attribute of New York City itself. It's called "The Big Apple", but to me it is "The Great Gate". Never has any one place allowed me to slip so often through space and time to other places. From Central Park I have been flung to the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. From W. 89th St in December, to Connecticut, Easter 1959. From the road limning the bluff overlooking the Hudson to the Hollywood Hills. From W. 94th St. to Devon. Light and scent are the passkeys every time.

Here's another thing that happens: I catch a trace of Calèche on the breeze, and my mother is suddenly at my side. Not Mom as she presently is - elderly, but healthy, and happily residing in Florida - but rather Mom as she was, in Brussels, in 1967, because that's when and where she wore that perfume. Then the breeze shifts, and she evaporates. But I don't go back to her, she comes forward to me.

Scientist Luca Turin suggests that scent is a vibration akin to light and sound. I think all three are keys, to tesser points, or portals, or thin places - whatever the heck you want to call them - where we can slip through, if we can let ourselves be slippery.

As I said in an earlier post, saints and shamans and artists are this kind of slippery, and we probably all can be if we stop being so... so... velcro-y and sticky. We don't receive much training here in the art and practice of letting go, or holding lightly, or dreaming, and we get the equivalent of doctorates in hanging on tight. That definitely makes us sticky, so sticky in this culture that the arts have become product rather than sets of travel instructions.

But I believe we come into this world knowing how to slip, and to fly. We just don't remember how.

One fair day

Epiphany.

The manifestation of a god, that's what the Greek word means. It also means the sudden realization of a great truth. It seems to me that the two would pretty much go together.

In the Western church, that manifestation is celebrated with the story of three wise men (or magi, or kings. Important folks!) from a different country and tribe, making a long and perilous journey to see the manifestation of the Divine.

Now, we don't often hop up on the nearest camel to follow a star, but that longing for the divine is deep-seated. My favorite description of an epiphany lies in Kenneth Grahame's classic book, The Wind in the Willows, in the chapter called "The Piper at the gates of Dawn".

Rat and Mole have been all night on the river in their boat, searching for a lost baby otter. Rat hears snatches of a music so entrancing that he is compelled to follow the sound to its source. Just before dawn, they land their boat, and walk into a wood to ...

...a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature's own orchard-trees - crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.

'This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,' whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. 'Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him.'

Then suddenly Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror - indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy - but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

Perhaps he would never had dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the immanent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked into the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the sterm, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease ont eh sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in utter peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

'Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'

'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never. And yet - and yet - O, Mole,  I am afraid!'

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.

Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden rim showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.

Rat and Mole are then caressed by a breeze that carries a gift of forgetfulness. It is not easy to see a god and carry on in every-day life. So they forget what happened, and gather up the sleeping otter. But they are left with the sense that Something happened.

That's us, too. Even after a great revelation, sometimes all we know is that Something happened. Perhaps everyone has this experience. I know from reading that saints do, and I know from life that artists do. It's in the vision we pursue, it's in the song we seek. We don't all call it by the same name, but that there is Something we have no doubt, and to tell about it is our calling.

 

 

Wired for joy

We are wired for joy. When the conditions are right, we remember that we are.