Following the Star

At our church, we celebrate Epiphany with a gift of stars. Baskets filled to the brim with gold cardboard stars are passed along the pews, every star with a word or phrase written on it's face.   With eager anticipation, each person reaches in, plucks a star, and turns it over to read their word for the year. "Devotion," "Acceptance","Sharing," "Discipline," "Family,"...an excited buzz filters from the front of the church to the back pews as the baskets of stars make their way through the congregation.  Exclamations of wonder or mirth are occasionally heard, for all too often these messages are eerily appropriate to their recipient.

Whatever the word, it represents a new meaning, a new way of looking at the world or your relationships, a reminder to have faith.  It might spark an interest in something new, or rekindle your feelings for someone or something you've lost.  It's a beacon for the new year, a guidepost by which to steer the course of your life.

Each year on Star Sunday, the church is filled to capacity.  This morning, there was nowhere to park, and we were forced to sneak in the parking lot of the Catholic church on the corner.  We crowd into the sanctuary like kids gathering 'round the Christmas tree, as excited to discover the message on our star as if God himself (and not the ladies of the Priscilla Circle) had written it.   Some of us even wait to make our New Year's Resolutions until we see what God  the Star has to say.

When the basket comes to me, I'm always a bit tempted to riffle around among the stars, hoping to get an extra good one.  Even though the stars are face down, and it's impossible to see the word until you've chosen and let the basket go by, I always have this childish idea that the best ones -the one with the most meaning for me - won't be the one on top. 

That if I dig deep enough, I'll get the one with the word that I really want.

But the whole idea depends on letting go and letting God speak to you through the star.  You have to relinquish all expectations, relinquish personal desires, and trust that God will lead you to the word you need.  You must, from the moment your hot little hand reaches into the basket, relinquish control.  Let go of expectations, let go of tight fisted demands about the future, let go of fears.

Yesterday, my hairdresser, a gentle, soft spoken Muslim woman about my age, told me this story about her 21 year old daughter.

"I tried to get pregnant for eight years," she told me.  "I would have done anything in the world to have a baby.  I took all kinds of hormones, which now they say can give you cancer, I gave  myself shots every day for months.  Nothing.   Finally I said to God, okay, for some reason you don't want me to be a mother. I give up."

She smiled. "So guess what? I was pregnant the next month."

Relinquish control.  Let go and let God. 

When the Star basket came by this morning, I decided to simply reach in and take the top-most star...whatever will be, will be, I thought.  No more trying to find the one I think will fit me best.

When I turned it over, the word written on it was MUSIC.

(See what I mean about eerily appropriate?)

So now I'm following a musical star, waiting to see how music manifests itself in my life once again, and what fresh surprises and connections will come of it. 

I'll keep you posted.

Fast Away

Though nominally a "Christmas Carol," there's one verse in Deck the Halls that's appropriate to today...

fast away the old year passes, fa la la la la la la la la

hail the new, ye lads and lasses, fa la la la la la la la la

They pass away faster and faster all the time, those old years, whisking by at warp speed.   We don't go in for big celebrations here on New Years Eve...an evening at home much like any other, perhaps enhanced with a glass of champagne if we happen to have a bottle around (which we did this evening, by the way :)  There were shows queued up on TiVo (Prime Suspect, the final episode, which I'd never managed to watch clear through), and the whistling wind outside lent us a feeling of smugness, curled up as we were with blankets and warm puppies.

Looking back on the long march of days just passed in this year 2008, the memories that stand out are not large ones, but small moments in time that seem quite symbolic of this life in general.  Moments like those we've spent tonight, just being together, moments which go a long ways toward easing some of that fierce discontent I was writing about earlier in the week. 

It's funny, isn't it, how one's perceptions change with age, how a "good time" at 25 can be completely antithetic to ones concept of fun at 50?

As we hail the new year so close upon us, I'm doing my best to sing a cheery "fa la la la la la la la la" in the face of sour thoughts and weary aggravations.  Perhaps I'll make that my mantra for 2009 ~ what d'you think?  My version of Scarlett O'Hara's "fiddle de dee, I'll just think about that tomorrow."

But, oh, those tomorrow's have a way of appearing before we know it, don't they?

joyous now we sing together, fa la la la la la la la la

heedless of the wind and weather, fa la la la la la la la la.

May the winds of the new year be calm, the weather be fair, and may you have much joyous singing.

Fierce Discontent

"Now is the winter of our discontent..." begins Shakespeare's play Richard III,  a drama that depicts this 16th century monarch as a malevolent, deformed schemer.  And while I wouldn't go so far as to describe myself as malevolent, and certainly not deformed, I admit wholeheartedly to a firece discontent with this particular season of my life. It's not the weather, vile as that has been here of late.  Nope, it's a feeling that everything in my life is out of whack, unbalanced, out of control, like the wind that's been wreaking havoc on trees and power lines all over this state.

My work life is a prime example, for while the general economy has downturned, my particular business seems to be booming, with the result that I'm always behind the eight ball in terms of getting work completed.  My boss has come to rely on me for more and more large and complicated projects, and for 98% of the work I do I have no one to back me up.  Combine this with my general control freakishness, my perfectionism, and my unwillingness to disappoint anyone, my work suddenly seems to have taken over my life.  I worked all day on Christmas Eve day, which meant I didn't have time to go to my friend Pat's house for dinner with her family before church, a very gracious invitation on her part. 

"Couldn't you leave some of that work undone?" she asked.

"Would you have liked me to leave my work undone when I was working for you?" I inquired.  "What if I just didn't practice those songs before a concert?  What if I just didn't come to rehearsal because I had somewhere else to be?  You wouldn't like me so much if I was the kind of person who left things undone."

My notoriously right and slightly scatter brained friend chuckled.  "Well, you like me, and I leave stuff undone all the time!" she retorted.

Hmm.  I wondered for about the millionth time how people get away with that.

Largely because of this work situation, I simply couldn't figure out how to make our annual driving trip to Florida with the dogs this year.  All the things that needed to be done in preparation, not to mention figuring out a way to get the work done in my absence, were simply overwhelming.  My husband is none too happy about this ~ for his department at work is on hiatus so he's sitting home all these days twiddling his thumbs and listening to winter winds blow.

So, I add guilt to the discontent.

Of course, there are other factors  which contribute to the fierceness of this discontent.  My family feels really fragile to me, stretched very thin and pulled in lots of different directions, with health issues to be concerned about.  Plus, I have no music in my life  -not that I know where I'd find time for it.  But I've noticed before when I'm not actively engaged in making music, particularly in working with high school kids, there's a certain lack of energy and excitement, a missing piece to the puzzle that's me.

There's no good reason to write about this, other than to flagellate myself in public once again for the inability to balance my life in any reasonable way.  And perhaps hope that some other poor beleaguered soul out there will chime in with their own sad tale, thus making me feel less adrift.  I know by most accounts I live a charmed existence - after all, how dare I complain about having too much work, when so many people in my state have none?  And not enough time to spend in your "vacation home in Florida?"  Cry me a river, right?

Alas, there is a malevolence in my feelings about life in general these days, and especially about my own in particular.

A fierce discontent.

Hermit-ic

Maybe it's all the snow and ice, the biting winds and slippery roads.  Perhaps it's the crowded stores, bombardment of retail sales, and  prevalence of "going out of business" signs.

It could even be fear of the colds and flu that seem to be making the rounds.

Whatever the reason, I'm having a hard time convincing myself to leave the house these days. 

After all, I have everything at home I could possibly need ~ easy chairs to curl up in, plenty of books to read, music to listen to and play, and my dogs for company.  I have a multitude of options for communicating with friends - phone, Internet, email.  I can make my own coffee drinks, so there's no need to hit Starbucks or Caribou.  I can walk 2 or 3 miles with Leslie Sansone and my old Walk Away the Pounds videotapes, or practice a cat stretch and sun salute with Yoga Zone dvd's.   And why schlep through the frosty night to a crowded theater, when I can watch a movie on our 47 inch high def tv, wearing my jammies and drinking wine?

Truthfully, I love being home.  I enjoy my own company, my own space, and my own time to practice all the homey things I like to do.  I'm lucky enough to have married a man who feels pretty much the same way, so we happily co-exist with plenty of space in our own little privacy zones.   We're rarely restless or bored being at home, and now that we have a home in Florida, even our "vacations"  really involve just trading spaces, the pleasure of one home for the other.  We lik e hanging out at home, where a "big night" might involve back to back episodes of Dancing With the Stars and American Idol, prefaced by a round of tug-of-war or bouncy-ball with the dogs. 

But while I've always loved being home, have never been one to be constantly on the go (like my friend Pat, who is often out for the entire day and evening, six or seven days a week, even now that she's retired from teaching), I wonder if  I'm dangerously close to crossing the line between homebody and hermit.  It would be quite easy for me to stay home forever, I think, to become one of those people who find it simply too hard to leave the safety and security of an environment over which I have nearly total control.

In fact, we have people like that in our family.  My grandmother was one - her sister is another.  And my own mother - she, too, has leanings in that direction.  Home is the ultimate safe haven, where you can control what you do and when, where you needn't feel pressured to interact appropriately or perform adequately.   Home is where you're protected from people who might harm you, where you're (mostly) safe from the weather,  and where you can be as comfortable as you wish.  

But while I'm aware that a tendency toward agoraphobia exists in my genetic makeup, I'm not really worried about developing this pathological malady.  My feelings about being at home are rooted more in pursuit of pleasure than avoidance of society.  I involve myself in so many things at home - in writing and reading, in playing piano, in being outside with the dogs.  There's more a sense of accomplishment in the time I spend at home than a sense of escape from the "real world."  I'm not afraid of society, I just eschew it more often in favor of my own company, and in having time to spend in my favorite occupations.

One of my favorite writers, Caroline Knapp, refers to herself as a "Merry Recluse."  In a collection of essays which bear this title, she says she "has always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of relief in its self generated pace and rhythms."   But she admits that "the most pressing challenge involves  negotiating the line between solitude and isolation, which can be very thin indeed.  Solitude is often most comforting, most sustaining, when its enjoyed in relation to other humans; fail to strike the right balance, and life gets a little surreal."

Ah yes, "striking the right balance," is once again what it's all about.   One of my co-workers, a single mom in her mid thirties, is constantly on the go, filling her calendar, and her son's, with as many activities as she can find.  Their life seems frenzied to me, hectic and crazy.  She seems to harbor a pathological fear of "down time," of simply being home alone with her little boy.  While for me, that time at home is golden, it's the prize at the end of a long workday or a weekend full of concerts.  It's the reward, not the punishment. 

And for this homebody at heart, it probably always will be.

How about you?  Are you a homebody too?  Or are you happiest when you're out and about?

And So This is Christmas...

Here it is, friends, the culmination of all the hurrying, worrying, hustling and bustling.  The end of shopping and cooking and practicing, of knitting and building and wrapping.   Time to reveal all the secrets, tear off every bow, fling wide the cupboard doors where presents have been hiding.  Time to eat, drink, laugh, and be merry. This is Christmas.

I always breath a sigh of relief on Christmas morning - it's finally here, and soon it will be done, and life will return to normal (whatever that is, in this crazy mixed up world we're living in).   This morning I woke early enough to watch the sunrise - yes Virginia, there really is a sun, though we haven't seen it here in the midwest for many, many days.  Drinking my coffee, I revel in the stillness that has settled palpably over the earth, nary a car barreling down the snow covered road.  Brief thoughts of all the things left undone flash through my mind, but I dispel them, choosing instead to contemplate the delighted expression on my mother's face when she came home yesterday and found the new 37" flat screened tv we bought her, all set up and playing General Hospital.

Last night I sat in the darkened church, holding my candle and singing Silent Night with about 200 of my friends.  The choir candles are always first lit, and we stand along the sides of the church and start the process of lighting candles within each pew.  Gradually, the sanctuary fills with light, each face perfectly aglow within the warm firelight.  It's my favorite part of the service, and last night felt especially meaningful after listening to our minister's Christmas Eve meditation, which focused on the power of light in our lives.

"I know many of your lives are filled with darkness," he said.  "Perhaps you've lost a job, or your health is failing.  You're mourning a loved one, or a cherished relationship is ending.  The birth of Christ is the light shining in the darkness of our world and our lives,"  he continued.  "If you can remember that light is always there for you, always illuminating your way, then you'll be able to keep hope alive."

The days leading up to Christmas are shrouded in darkness for me...I'm not sure exactly why, and I've given up trying to figure it out.  But somehow when Christmas morning rolls around, I feel at peace with all those anxiety ridden thoughts and feelings which have plagued me throughout the month of December.   It's as if a beam of light shines in and for a moment all doubts and fears are eradicated.  Christmas gives me a day to just be...to stop worrying and expecting and dithering.  I relinquish it all in one deep, cleansing breath.

The real gift would be in maintaining that feeling for the remaining 364 days of the year, in being able to remember that "the light is always there, always illuminating the way."  In being able to hope.

"And so this is Christmas" ~ (that Beatles classic keeps replaying in my head)~ "and what have you done?  Another year over, and a new one just begun."

My wish for you (and for me!) is for days filled with light, illuminated by bright, shining hope for the future, for a new year that's "a good one, without any fears."  

That is Christmas.