Forgiveness Among the Ashes

The bell rings, and I deliver my standard line: “Anything to pray for this morning?” There are sisters, friends, neighbors, and the ubiquitous “this weekend,” even though it’s only Wednesday.

When they have spoken and the air is empty of hands, I take a deep breath. “I have something to say.  Today you begin Lent.  In my church it begins this Sunday, and on that day it’s traditional to ask forgiveness of everyone in the community.  So I want to ask your forgiveness.  It’s my job, first, to love you with the love of Christ, and second, to support and educate you.  I know I have fallen short, and I am sorry if I have neglected you, hurt your feelings or failed you in any way.  And if there is something specific I have done to offend you, please let me know so that I can apologize for that, too.  I want to begin the Fast with a clean slate.  Please forgive me.”

It is eerily quiet, and I am surprised to feel my own heart pounding.  A few shy smiles from the back of the room. A lot of shocked expressions.  Before awkwardness descends, I bow my head and stretch out my hands: “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name … “

The next class is after Mass, and their foreheads bear the ashy crosses of the day.  I repeat my speech, a little less nervously.  There is a quiet chorus of muffled, sympathetic whimpers, and one student cannot keep silent, whispering “That is SO sweet!”  I am a little taken aback by these expressions of emotion, and I repeat an adamant summary: “I really mean it.  Please let me know if I need to apologize to you.”  My cheeks burn through the prayer: “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

My last group is after lunch and a little wild: their teenage brains are finally awake and alert, and their questions reflect it.  As the bell rings, they’re wanting to know whether Shakespeare told his friends about the plays he was writing.  “Like, did he give them sneak previews or anything?”  

I settle them and hear their requests for prayer: traveling, tryouts and one very sweet “for anyone who needs a prayer.”  That includes me, I realize: she is praying for me.

Again, I ask forgiveness, and this time their surprise is much more vocal. Squeals, murmurs of assent.  “Mrs. Lowe, I have a problem: you are WAY too nice.”  Another is moved to agree with me: “Me too — forgive me if I did anything to you.”  She extends her arms out.  “To any of you guys!”

The chatter ends as we say the Lord’s prayer again, and finally it occurs to me that the framework for this moment has been laid at every single class of the year, when we pray together: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass against us.”  Together, we take a step toward unity, toward true understanding of each other.  Toward the Cross and eternity.

Dinner for Eight

Recently, Rod posted an interesting conundrum about a fantasy dinner party for you, your spouse, and six other well-known people (living or dead, but in separate groups.)  Here is my list, which took me a couple of days of hemming and hawing to complete and a couple of weeks to write about:

Rod noted that your list wouldn’t necessarily be the people you’d most like to meet or even the people you most admire; they should be people you really think would make good dinner guests.  I like diversity, so I tried for an even mix of occupations, religions and gender (classic dinner-party etiquette mandates boy-girl seating, anyway.)

The Living:

1. Bono (Musician and Activist) He can make me weak-kneed with one soaring descant, and his occupation as a rock musician would certainly make for some interesting stories, but I’m actually most interested in his take on African politics and hearing about what it was like growing up under the specter of the IRA.
2. Carla Bruni (Model and Musician) No fantasy dinner party is complete without a French presence. She’s stylish, talented and completely classy, and the fact that she’s married to the President of France helps lend an air of political importance to the gathering.  (The air is the important thing; actual politicians couldn’t possibly be interesting dinner companions.)
3. Atom Egoyan (Filmmaker) I want to know where his ideas come from (I wrote my senior thesis on The Sweet Hereafter) and I want to hear about Armenia — what it means to him and what he thinks its future will be like.
4. Peter Eisenman (Architect) Believe it or not, this pompous philosopher was one of the first on my list. Back in my undergraduate days, we’d all drag ourselves to Tuesday crit, sleep-deprived and nearly suicidal, only to hear about his latest dinner party. They included the most unusual guests (German philosophers and rock musicians) and he always had something interesting to say about the zeitgeist that inspired them. So I guess I’m taking a gamble that he’s more fun over a bottle of wine than in front of a wall full of blood, sweat and Rapidographs.
5. Sharon Astyk (Writer, Activist, Mother) I respect Sharon more than almost any person I know [of.] Her deep faith, commitment to traditional ideals, and desire to create a better world for her children are amazing.  I also think she could hold her own against Eisenman in a debate (and could certainly make him feel like a bad Jew.)
6. Mother Aemeliane (Scholar, Nun) I couldn’t feel right hosting a dinner party without at least one Orthodox Christian guest, and I can’t think of anyone else who would be a better addition to this one. You may have heard the story of her miraculous rescue from a collapsed building, but unless you have been in her presence you can’t understand the tremendous force of spirit, combined with an even greater humility, that enables her to guide so many people with such grace.

The Eternal:

1. C. S. Lewis (Writer) He should be a required guest for any Christian taking part in this exercise. Brilliant, creative, thoughtful, funny, likes to smoke after dinner.  Yes, please!
2. St. Brigid of Kildare (Nun) She’s my patron saint, a disciple of St. Patrick.  And she once turned an entire bathtub of water into beer, so she’d be a handy person to have around!
3. Frederic Chopin (Musician) The token Frenchman: he lived a short life, filled with suffering, but bequeathed oceans of beauty to the generations that followed.
4. Anne Frank (Martyr) Another short, painful life, but one which inspired many. I worried about her young age at first but then remembered: teenage girls always have plenty to say.
5. e. e. cummings (Writer) Many poets are accused of being artists with words, but he really was one. The way he saw the world was truly unique.
6. Hester Prynne (Seamstress, Outcast) I was really stuck on this last one until I remembered there had been no injunction against fictional characters.  Considering how thoughtful and introspective this group is, I think she would have a lot to add to the conversation.

Your lists, please!  Answer or link below.

Leading, Gently

Today, on my way out of his office, I realized how much my vice-principal has taught me about how to lead:

• Openness: he is always available.  If he’s out of his office, he returns phone calls or e-mails right away and works around my schedule to find a time to talk.  And once we are talking, I never feel a bit rushed or foolish for bringing up my concerns: he really listens and wants to help.
• Trust: when I recently asked his advice about a situation with a student, he first responded, “What’s your feeling about this?” I told him, and he said, “That’s what I was thinking, too.” There are no words to describe the gift of a principal who trusts his teachers.  I know that he will defend me and my actions.
• Joy: he has a wonderful sense of humor. I frequently leave his office laughing, with a healthy distance between myself and my problems.  His quick wit helps me realize how utterly unoriginal my situation is: others have endured this before me, and I too will endure it, with God’s help and his support.
• Love: he helps remind me of why I am a teacher.  At the close of our conversation today (which centered around three separate incidents of parent communication) we both ruefully acknowledged that this was the season for such flare-ups.  People are overcome by the pressure and stress of the holiday season, and this causes them to get angry or hurt by situations that are really not so bad.  And then he took one more step: “We need to pray for peace,” he said.  “Peace for the whole world,” I remembered, as we pray at each Liturgy.  “Yes, for the whole world,” he said, “and for ourselves, too.”

Two Sides of Social Justice

Yesterday I read an action research project by an inner-city Chicago teacher.  In a unit about social justice, she encouraged her class of twenty-five first and second-graders to think about fairness and compassion, and they responded accordingly:

If I were President I would tell the builders who build houses for rich people to build the homeless houses and I would give them food and a car.

If I were President I would take care of lots of people. People would have 3 day weekends. There would be no school for a week.

If I were President I would give money to school and help all the people in the world improve their schools.

If I were President I would make things good.  I would love the world and I would buy anything for kids and I would get people homes.

Part of me read these sentiments with a great deal of cynicism.  How sad that these children view government as a benevolent, even indulgent caretaker – that rather than giving people freedom to live their lives, they wanted the President to bestow material comfort upon them. 

The Occupy Wall Street seems, at its core, to have a similar idea: they want to stop the most successful people in society from continuing to be successful by spending their money on the foolish and hapless masses who have financially gotten in over their heads.  This (besides the pretentions of activism and the lack of hygiene and decorum) keeps me from being too enthusiastic about their mission and the press that’s glued to it.

So I was pretty shocked, later that evening, to read the following in the Psalms:

Why dost thou stand afar off, O Lord?
Why dost thou hide Thyself in times of trouble?
In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;
let them be caught in the schemes which they have devised.
For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart,
and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lord.
In the pride of his countenance the wicked does not seek him;
all his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
His ways prosper at all times;
thy judgments are on high, out of his sight;
as for all his foes, he puffs at them.
He thinks in his heart, “I shall not be moved;
throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity.”
His mouth is filled with cursing and deceit and oppression;
under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He sits in ambush in the villages;
in hiding places he murders the innocent.
His eyes stealthily watch for the hapless,
he lurks in secret like a lion in his covert;
he lurks that he may seize the poor,
he seizes the poor when he draws him into his net.
The hapless is crushed, sinks down,
and falls by his might.
He thinks in his heart, “God has forgotten,
he has hidden his face, he will never see it.”
Arise, O Lord; O God, lift up Thy hand;
forget not the afflicted.

If God’s not too good to care for the poor, maybe we should think about doing the same.

All Hallow's Eve

On my thirty-second Halloween, I thought a couple of weeks ago after reading this, I’ll finally have an appropriate response.

Growing up, many of the families in my conservative Evangelical circle did not celebrate Halloween at all.  They had “harvest parties” that, ironically, were probably more firmly rooted in paganism than the idea of a night when the demons gain a measure of independence from the power of the saints’ prayers.

Others, like mine, allowed trick-or-treating but shunned costumes that seemed to glorify death — no bloody-fanged vampires; hippies, cowboys, or even dice.  (This was my sister’s brainstorm: her head, with a black stocking cap, was the single dot.  As costumes go, it was pretty straightforward.)

Neither response seems exactly right, though.  How can you be a light to the world without marginalizing the traditions of our society (which, on the surface, have merit — on what other night will you spontaneously interact with so many neighborhood children?)

I like Steve’s idea because it allows people to participate in a lovely tradition without too much explanation or judgment.  I meant to borrow some supplies from the church yesterday, but amid the post-Liturgy chaos it slipped my mind.  So this afternoon I was a little grumpy until I remembered the jar of candles I keep in the icon corner, leftovers from special services like Pascha and memorials.  I liked the idea of these unknown children picking up where my prayers left off; what better way to connect with the people of my community?

I rustled around in the basement for a candle box, but after a little brainstorming, decided there really was no acceptable substitute for sand. (Topsoil? Pea gravel? Rock salt? All fall short for different reasons.)  So I headed over to Lowe’s to buy some — and lo and behold, found a half-empty bag that I could actually carry out.

It was a nice night, so I opened the windows and turned on The Rudder, a streaming radio station run by some friends in California.  It’s a wonderful variety of meditative and joyful Orthodox hymns from all different traditions, and I found that I enjoyed listening to it even in place of the silence I so treasure after a hectic day at school.  It was a little too cold to sit outside, so I settled for just inside the door, with my book and a slightly-alarmed cat (music and open windows are not standard operating procedure, and she knows this.)

Just after nightfall, they started to knock.  Following Steve’s lead, I offered each one a piece of candy and then asked, “Would you like to light a candle?”  Out of dozens of children, I only had one refusal all night — a shy adolescent who was alone.  The others were gleeful and full of questions.

“What is it?” some asked. “It’s like a prayer,” I responded, as simply as I could.  They understand prayer, I know.  In this mostly blue-collar neighborhood, black families are AME or Baptist; Latino means Catholic. The vast majority attend church; it’s the white families who don’t, and very few of those have children of trick-or-treating age.

Mostly, they were probably amazed that an adult was asking them to light something on fire.  Well, I’ll take what I can get.  Bigfoot removed her furry claws to grasp a beeswax taper, and Mario singed one of his white-gloved fingers.  A tiny bumblebee accepted my guiding hand over hers, and her mother was grateful: “That’s really nice,” she said.  “What a good idea.  That’s really something different.”  

They all said that, the adults: from the street, the steps, or — as is disturbingly more common — the car, which I suppose must be more efficient than searching for the next friendly house on foot.  “That’s different.”  That’s why it worked so well.

“Happy Halloween,” I said, over and over again, and behind me, a Russian deacon intoned his assent: “A-MIIIIIINNNNN!”

The Five-Minute Pitch

It started innocently enough.  My students had just read “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and were, fittingly, incensed:  

“How can he just say this stuff?”  

“People will never listen!”  

“This would NEVER work.”

So although he did, and they did, and it did, I tried to channel their outrage into a more productive endeavor. Imagine you only had five minutes to change someone’s life by telling them about Christ.  What would you say?

I called it the Five-Minute Homily, but it was really more like the Five-Minute Pitch; the sales metaphor is less distasteful if you really do believe in hell and think you may never have another chance to help someone stay out of it.  Plus, it’s a useful exercise in self-analysis: how well do you really know your own beliefs?  And how can you distill them down without watering them down, intrigue and ignite without glamorizing and smoothing over?

After grading theirs, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and — you guessed it — ended up writing my own.  You can read it if you want, but before you do, I encourage you to try your hand at the same exercise.

Belief is a funny thing.  When someone says, “Believe me … ” you may profess that you do, but a part of you is always waiting — isn’t it? — to see if he really means what he says, because part of that belief can’t happen until later.  You need to see that she’s sincere by watching what comes next.  “Believe me, I hate to be late” can’t be true, really, if he’s always late, and “Believe me, I love kids” sounds a little less plausible when you’ve only ever seen her frown in their direction.

So, although believing that God exists is hard enough without a vision or sign, that’s actually the easiest part of faith.  The difficult part is the lifetime that follows: will your actions, words and innermost thoughts profess that belief, or will it be another “I don’t believe in holding grudges” from one who can’t bring himself to forgive?

If you believe, your life will change.  That is a fact.  It will not be perfect, but your job is to keep trying, while at the same time admitting you can’t do it on your own.  Loving your enemies?  Honoring your parents?  Giving to the poor?  A life that is centered on God will include them all, and yet none of them are easy to practice.

In fact, life itself is far from easy: everyone knows this.  The world is full of beauty and light, but there are also moments of darkness and pain so acute we almost feel we can’t bear them.  Some of us have more of the first kind, and some much, much more of the second, but we all have burdens, many of them secret, all of them heavy.

And here’s what you may find incredible: your whole life, each joy and sorrow, the note from a friend on the day you really needed it and the car accident on the day you really didn’t — each of those moments were created for you by a being more powerful than you can imagine, who somehow saw fit to be involved in the smallest and humblest details of your existence.  You don’t have to do this alone.  He doesn’t want you to.

It’s incredible, really.  So is the world, and yet we open and close our eyes to it every day.

Tous les Matins du Monde

We spent a lovely weekend at the beach with our friends, who have really become family — and due to a lucky aligning of the scheduling stars, were able to stay an extra night and drive back this morning.  My husband, the human traffic sensor, did not want to chance the morning rush hour, however, so we were on the road before six, when the world was still dark — speeding across the farmland of the Eastern Shore with the highway mostly to ourselves.

I started to think (because I couldn’t do much else at that hour) about how seldom I had had to wake that early.  5:30 is normal for a lot of people, including many of my students, who attend swim practice before school or face hourlong commutes from other states.  My own commute is walkable, and I’ve never had a homeroom, so the earliest I’ve had to face the world is several hours after they are up and running.  What a blessing, to wake with the sun or well after it!

Yet, as I watched the white fog settle in pillowy sheets on the flat fields, and the ghostly, dark forms of cattle moving among the newly-plowed grasses, I wondered at the beauty of the early morning that I almost, again, missed — and that was even before the sun started to rise.

A lot must depend on where you are in the world, I suppose.  When I lived in New York I would sometimes walk to church for a midweek Liturgy in the early morning, and the dark alleyways and still-drunk residents of the street seemed awfully sinister.  Even here in the suburbs, the most I could hope for would be the romantic drone of the trash truck or the shriek of school-bus brakes.  Maybe it’s just out in the wilderness where we can watch morning unfold as God intended it to.

Ten Years and a Day

It’s hard to say what kind of a day it was, ten years after the most horrific tragedy I have ever known.  Two years ago I wrote about my experience on that day and the way it has never left my consciousness; yesterday was no exception.  It was a day of remembrance, tears and bleak thoughts.

It was also, in many ways, a day like all others.  Liturgy in the morning, bracketed by baptism and memorial services.  Two baby boys joined our family, neither of whom had waited for the hospital.  One was born on the bathroom floor, the other on the apartment steps — they were that eager to begin their earthly lives.  After communion I held the more placid of the two; he was a warm, firm lump in my arms, stirring every now and then to nurse an imaginary breast in dreamland.

The memorial was for all those who had died in the terrorist attacks and recovery efforts.  We did not read this prayer by Bishop BASIL (although I have visited the church Rod discusses in the introduction — a remarkable place); it was a memorial service like all the others we have served for parents, friends, cousins and co-workers who have left us, from our point of view, too soon.

We often spend time with friends on Sunday, and yesterday was no exception.  My high-school best friend had a baby shower and surprised me with two guests I hadn’t seen since our graduation; we spent time catching up and looking forward.  On the way home, I stopped to see the friends I had made ten years earlier when, in desperation, I fled my school’s campus in search of a safe place.  My goddaughter brought us peanut butter crackers as we talked over the noise of the football game.  We had dinner with our church family: melt-in-your-mouth pulled pork, velvety rice pudding, and laughter until our stomachs hurt.

But in between, and often during, these rituals of faith and friendship, I couldn’t shake the thought that this was a sad day.  During my hours in the car, I listened to the dedication ceremony at the United 93 memorial, which I was lucky enough to visit this past summer.  The speakers, each eloquent in their own way, gave messages of hope and inspiration, but also of grief.  One disagreed with the conventional wisdom about recovery — to recover, he said, would be to lose the bonds that linked us to those we had loved and lost.  The pain helps us remember, and in its own way, it is sweet.

Later, I heard the names at Ground Zero: two people read about a dozen names each, and ended with personal tributes to their own relatives.  It was almost too painful to hear, but it would have been harder to turn it off.  I listened, tears in my eyes, in rapt attention.

That night, I opened (for the first time in three months of delivery) a copy of the New York Times and read, cover to cover, a special section about the decade of rebuilding in the city.  Fiances who had not married. Children who had not recovered.  Buildings that had not been built — and some that had.  Photos of the moving memorial at Ground Zero, where waterfalls mark the footprints of the missing towers, framed by names of the dead.

Between rainshowers I drove home; I pulled over to take the above photo of a tribute on the roadside.  It would have to represent all the groups I had seen waving on overpasses, the flags flying at homes and churches, and the thoughts in my own heart about this ordinary, iconic day.

Joyful

Yesterday was tough, disappointing and tiring. It was also exciting, cathartic and joyful.

I'm choosing to focus on the joyful part. When I saw how my hardworking student and her mother had prepared the refreshments table for her recital, my heart was lifted. They'll never know how much.

Something about that ritual, the one I've performed countless times for students whose names and faces are now blurred by time -- the one I can perform by heart, including the speech at the beginning, the silly story punctuated by repertoire and the encore bow at the end -- never fails to help me face the trials I am called to bear with renewed strength. And even with joy.

Natural Understanding

The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. (Psalm 33:5)

Last month I was given the great blessing of attending my church’s Sacred Music Institute, a conference for chanters and choir directors from around the country.  We learn, talk, work, make friends, eat good food, and most of all, sing.

Just before we all parted ways on Sunday morning, the priest gave a sermon that has been lodged in my heart ever since.  He began by reading a brief summary of the life of St. Christina, a fourth-century martyr:

Christina was born in the city of Tyre the daughter of Urban, the imperial deputy, an idol worshipper. The reason her parents gave her the name of Christina is unknown but it concealed the mystery of her future following of Christ. Until age eleven, she knew nothing of Christ. When she reached the age of eleven her father, in order to conceal her from the world because of her extraordinary beauty until she fully matured, designated the highest floor of a tall tower for her to live. All the comforts of life were afforded her; slaves were given to serve her, gold and silver idols were placed in her quarters so that she may offer daily sacrifices to them.

However, in this idolatrous environment, it was difficult for the soul of young Christina. Looking out through the window each day at the sun and all the beauty of the world, then again, at night, at the miraculous cluster of shining stars, Christina, through her own natural understanding, came to firm belief in the One Living God. The merciful God, seeing her longing for the truth, sent His angel, who traced the sign of the cross upon Christina and called her the bride of Christ and completely instructed her in godly understanding.

Hearing these words, I could do nothing but weep.  There is, after all, hope for the world, if one soul — even only one — can have such faith, finding God on the strength of its own purity.  And if there is hope for the world, I suppose there is hope for me, too.

The rest of the story is considerably less beautiful, but it ends with an honorable death amid numerous miracles for this holy young girl who continues, many centures later, to inspire and encourage her brothers and sisters in Christ.