Death and Life, Earth and Heaven

My dear friend Rod has just lost his father in the way that all of us want to lose our fathers someday – after a long and fruitful life, amid the company of family and friends keeping watch over his bed, in a peaceful home, blanketed by prayers. His words are so full of holiness and wonder that you owe it to yourself to read them. But they got me thinking, as they often do.

We kept a vigil of our own just days ago, as my sister brought the next generation of our family into the world, and in reading about my friend's adieu journey, I’ve been struck by many similarities between the beginning and the end of earthly existence. Waiting for a loved one to be born is just as joyful, just as frightening, just as sacred as waiting for his death. Endless uncertainty, at the mercy of medical professionals who (for all their education and experience) have to admit in the end that they, too, are baffled by the amazing and absurd things our bodies can do. And then can't anymore.

Watching, wondering, trying to reconcile the flood of emotions with daily existence. This person is in such terrible pain, but I need a cup of coffee just to stay awake with him. Time becomes malleable, now compressed into a tumultuous blur of moments and now elongated so that every second is agony. You can’t truly empathize with the experience of your loved one in the hospital bed, and you wonder, guiltily: what is it really like for her? What would it be like for me? To give birth? To die?

I’ve always felt a connection with the protagonist of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, and not just because we share a name. From the other side, she looks back at the world, and is filled with true nostalgia – the pain of nostos, of returning home. It is excruciating:

Mr. Webb: Where's my girl? Where's my birthday girl?

Emily: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. She breaks down sobbing. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back – up the hill – to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners ... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking ... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. She asks abruptly, through her tears: Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?

Stage Manager: No. Pause. The saints and poets, maybe – they do some.

Emily: I'm ready to go back.

A sprinkling of salt on a chocolate pie, a spoonful of honey in a spicy vinaigrette: both are better with a swirled-in bit of their opposite to intensify and prolong their beauty. The line between joy and sorrow is such a fine one that neither can be experienced without a touch of the other. You greet the squalling child with a shout of exultation, but hovering behind your beaming eyes is the realization that she will know loneliness and want. She will live a life full of pain, but also full of Emily Gibbs’ ticking clocks and hot coffee and the lovely, terrible moonlight. And someday she will be right back on the edge, and her descendants will gather around her and weep, but in the distance they will feel a thrill of delight for her, on the verge of entering back into the eternal bliss to which we are all called by that still, small voice.

From death to life, from earth to heaven, this existence is a blessed mystery.

The Top of the Mountain

Numbers have never been very close to my heart, but during Great Lent I find it encouraging to track the days with the help of Fr. Thomas Hopko's 40 Maxims. Today is Day 10, which means we are already one-fourth of the way through the fast. While preparing some music for this weekend, I discovered something else: this is also the halfway point in the period of the Triodion, which begins several weeks before Great Lent itself and continues all the way to Pascha. So if this period of spiritual struggle were a mountain, I'd be standing on its peak this afternoon.

The rich irony, however, is that absolutely nothing about this afternoon feels like a peak. If anything, I feel like I'm at the bottom of a pit (something like this, actually.) Since the New Year I have heard more bad news than I know what to do with, and I'm talking really bad, heartbreakingly bad. My professional life is in shambles, too. I just learned that that word, "shambles," actually refers to a slaughterhouse -- so it's sadly appropriate. My curriculum is bleeding to death slowly on a floor of wintry weather: delayed openings, early closings, canceled events, and students who believe the entire world stops for a snow day, or should. Amid the abandoned plans and crises and unmade beds, literal and metaphoric, that clutter my path, I just can't seem to find that place of deep spirituality that Lent is supposed to usher in.

So I'm going to focus instead on the bright spots I've encountered in recent weeks. Things like this book that I read during a recent snow day and cannot stop mulling over, which taught me so much about the ways that sin and selfishness creep into our lives but left me with nothing but hope and inspiration to do better at rooting them out with God's help. Or this priest, who served the church so faithfully he was killed returning from Vespers last week: thousands of ordinary people, friends and strangers alike, have banded together to support his family, raising nearly half a million dollars and counting in the last two days. And above all, this Scripture, which our deacon quoted in a homily last Sunday in a foretaste of what we will encounter on Holy Saturday. Sometimes God delivers us from the furnace; sometimes He throws us in. Our job is to pray. Just pray. So I'm sticking to that. 30 days to go.

Forward, Onward, Upward

I didn't want to look back on this year. I'm not sure why. It was very difficult in a number of ways, most of which I can't talk about here (and even if I could, I wouldn't really want to.) But there have been more difficult years, and I have always been able to highlight the bright spots and gloss over the rough patches and sculpt the whole thing into a chatty, upbeat Christmas letter. This year, I just didn't want to, and I guess I'm at the point in my life at which I've realized I don't have to keep doing things I no longer enjoy.

It has been a year of growth; I thank God for that. I have learned a lot, sometimes at great cost. After my first wretched few days in a grad-level French language pedagogy course, I told a friend how strange it felt that none of these people really knew me as I am, or rather, as I like to think I am: Intelligent. Driven. In control. 

(My classic anxiety dream is not my teeth falling out or forgetting to wear pants or being chased through the woods: it's traveling with my cat. Sometimes I'm at school, or in church, or shopping. Once I was walking through Paris. The common thread is that I have my cat with me, and she's trying to get away, and I'm trying to contain her, and I almost always lose before I wake up in a cold sweat. That is literally my worst nightmare: losing control.)

But, at the same time, I told my friend, it was strangely freeing to be someone else for a change. The me who always knew the answer got to stay home with her feet up, while the other side of her -- the side who tried not to get called on, who enjoyed listening for listening's sake, who flushed with pride when she understood enough of the joke to laugh at it -- that me got to climb out of the cellar, squinting at the sudden brightness, and explore the world for herself.

So here I am looking back, after saying I didn't want to. What I really want to do is look forward. The Church Fathers reduce the spiritual life to three very simple maxims that sound suspiciously Zen, and I believe this is because Buddhism was, like Judaism and paganism, awaiting the fullness of spirituality that would only come with Christ. Still, there is much wisdom in the simplicity of their advice: don't resent; don't react; keep inner stillness. It is only when we are able to "lay aside all earthly cares," as we sing each week in the Liturgy, that we can hear Christ speaking to us. I'm chipping away at the crippling mountain of resentment I've allowed to rule my life, but at the same time, I'm trying not to focus on it, but instead to look over it -- to see the beauty and goodness all around me and to be inspired by it. 

For instance: last weekend I got to chant Matins with a friend who is talented, charismatic, thoughtful -- one of those people I just can't be around enough. Joy pours out of him. He invited me to sing with a smile and an open heart, even though I lack much of the experience and skills needed to keep up with the others; he drew me in toward the music even though I couldn't understand most of it; he cracked jokes that only I could hear to make me more comfortable; in short, he helped me feel like I belonged. That is something at which I am terrible. My extraordinarily high expectations keep me from making those kinds of adjustments and concessions, the kind that are necessary in order to show love truly and freely. But instead of looking inside, when I look outside -- at him, at the light of Christ shining through him -- I don't feel fear and disappointment, but hope and inspiration. I want to change, to grow, to become more than I have been thus far. 

I think that's a good way to end this year.

Sixteen to One

Twelve-hour days are really killer. I don't know how nurses do it. There's really only one a year for us: the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when we teach five hours of classes and follow that with five hours of parent conferences. In the lull between the two, I squeezed in an impromptu gathering of my French Club officers to plan an upcoming outreach project, wrote the last of my college recommendation letters, and got to use the bathroom approximately three seconds before I exploded. 

The meetings fell into a comfortable rhythm after an hour or so, and there were lots and lots of moments worthy of the Secretary's Report. The first mother had made an appointment and come to school just to tell me how much her daughter appreciated my sympathy after she had become emotional in class over a sick family member. Others told me how much my students loved the class, loved me, even loved the tests I gave (I promise I would never make up something that absurd!) They had discovered an unknown passion for the French language or American literature. Some of them were hoping for higher grades next quarter, but they were inspired by the online resources I suggested for extra practice, impressed by the detailed syllabi I provided each quarter, supportive of my high standards and desire to challenge my students to take an active role in their own education. They thought I was doing a great job.

Buried among sixteen wholly productive exchanges, however, was one laced with frustration and negativity. Sixteen to one. In baseball that would be a massacre. In craps it could win you a small fortune. In the grand scheme of things, you can't please everyone, and because one student is just not up to par in one class, one family is clearly not pleased.

So why on earth was I so haunted by the one? When my principal came by to ask how everything had gone, I shared this with her -- and even though it was late, she sat down and commiserated, and reminded me that sometimes there's just nothing you can do. I remarked that because teachers (for the most part) care so deeply for our students and feel each failure and triumph so acutely, it's even more painful when parents imply that we haven't done enough to help their child succeed. It's hitting below the belt. It's kicking us when we're down. It's a guilt trip down a well-worn mental path. Because really, there's a grain of truth in what they're saying: we probably could have done something more, and if we'd thought it would end like this, we would have found a way to.

Finally I promised my principal I would let it go and rethink the situation in the morning, and we said goodbye, and on the way out she promised to say a prayer for me and for my student. I stacked up my papers and turned off the lights and bundled up against the cold and stepped outside into the night, twelve full hours after I'd stepped in.

On the way out in the darkness, the convent chapel was a beacon, flooded with light, and through the window I caught a glimpse of a lone figure in white, kneeling before the altar.

The next morning I received an email of apology. A promise to work harder on communication. A step toward a positive resolution. Why was I so shocked by this development? I'm not sure. There was no reason to be. Sixteen to one is pretty fabulous, but seventeen to nothing? That's nothing short of a miracle.

View from my Classroom

A few weeks ago I read about upside-down salads on a food blog. It's a pretty simple concept: dressing and sturdy vegetables on the bottom, protein in the middle, greens on top. Refrigerate until lunchtime. Dump out onto a plate. Voila: perfectly-dressed salad you prepared the night before. I've been on a kick ever since, throwing in anything I have in the fridge -- today it was a hard-cooked egg from my mom's chickens and some leftover smoked salmon. 

Over this lunch, alone in my classroom for 25 minutes of introvert recuperation, I thought about May. It's a strange time of year. Looking forward, looking backward. Trying to stay afloat in the present while worrying about the future. Sticking to your guns, but trying to end on a bright note. Feeling disappointed. Feeling giddy. Feeling tired. 

Although I had plenty of Huck Finn essays to read, I found myself instead feeling already nostalgic for this classroom, the first place in the school I've ever thought of as my own; after seven years of dashing in and out of different rooms just before the bell (and sometimes after it) I finally got a full-time contract, and a place to call home, two years ago. I liked to think I was rewarded for my patience with one of the best classrooms in the school -- plenty of space, high ceilings and a gorgeous view all the way to the harbor: snowy rooftops in winter and wisps of green foliage in spring and dazzling pink streaks across the neverending sky every morning, if I arrived early enough to witness them. Today I stopped in the middle of a review session to point out to my students a lone male cardinal, bright red, surrounded by the dark, leafy canopy of a mature oak that floated in clouds of gray, drizzly fog. It was a postcard, I told them. We stared together, lost in the moment.

We imprint on the spaces we inhabit. My classroom was an extension of me, almost as much as my living room, with its vase of graceful Palm Sunday willow branches on the piano and dog toys eternally, aggravatingly strewn on the floor. I enjoyed the clean white boards with my neat block printing, color-coded by class; the icon prints I hung on the back bulletin board, to which I referred a surprising number of times during conversations about faith; and the comfortable, worn rolling chairs I could drag to the center of the room when I wanted to sit for a discussion instead of standing for a lecture. (There's a big difference.)

Next year I am moving to one of the worst classrooms in the school, a tiny closet of a space in the damp basement with no room to breathe and a dismal view of the parking lot. I am moving there so I can teach French, which may be what I do from now on. I am not sure about any of this, but for now, I am focusing on the positives. Fewer papers to grade. More opportunities to cook. New challenges. Learning to know the students in a deeper way instead of bidding them farewell after one season.

I will take down my Dorian Gray posters and my Mythology flow chart and put up posters of French kings and farm animals, and I will buy a dehumidifier and some cheery curtains and make the best of the space while I try to make French as fun for them as it was for me so many years ago. Of all the vocabulary I learned then, I remember most of all "Je suis si fiere de toi." I heard it over and over and over until it spilled forth naturally the first time a student shyly confided that she had spoken French to a stranger in the grocery store. I'm so proud of you, I said, without stopping to summon up the words first. I didn't need to think. I felt it. That's what teaching is all about.

True Love and the Tides

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity -- in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.

--Anne Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I'm not sure how I made it through a decade of marriage without these words. But I'm grateful to have them now.

On Taking Your Own Advice

I had a wonderful conversation today with a new friend who recently began teaching. She had a bad week, almost quit and called me to talk. Her words were so familiar that hearing them was like hearing myself a decade ago.

After listening with complete empathy, I replied, in essence:

• The devil sows confusion. Whenever there is hearsay or gossip or implication, there is room for misinterpretation and divisiveness, the enemies of progress. Do your best to cling to the truth and to let everything else fall away.
• Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. They will, St. Paul notwithstanding, but you must dismiss their criticisms. Age does not guarantee maturity.
• When people say cruel things, they often speak out of envy. A young, talented, wise leader is a target for all kinds of hateful comments. Pray for those people, remembering the worst things you have said with a jealous heart.
• If your supervisors really wanted you to leave, they would have asked you to leave. Instead, they have said that they're proud of the work you're doing and that they believe God has called you to minister here. Write down as much as you can remember of those positive, encouraging thoughts they gave you. Re-read them anytime you are feeling persecuted. They are the reality of your situation. The rest just doesn't matter.

• Remembering David Foster Wallace's words about worship, choose to worship God and to view yourself as He sees you -- flawed and struggling, but always with your eyes fixed on Him.

After talking with her for several hours, we hung up both feeling deeply nourished: helping is at least as gratifying as being helped. It occurred to me later that what I said was very good advice, but that none of it was my own; reading back over it, I can hear my mother, my priest, several dear friends and my extraordinarily wise husband. 

It also occurred to me that, if I took my own advice, I would be a much more joyful, loving and Christ-centered person. Not a bad thing to learn this week, halfway through Great Lent.

Overheard

X: My mom is so mean to me. Your mom is so nice.

Y: No, mine is mean! She's nice in front of my friends, but she's really mean to me.

X: No way. I've never even seen your mom get mad.

Y: Oh, she got really mad at me over break.

X: What for?

Y: I don't even remember. But she was really mad.

They had neared my desk at this point, and I couldn't help but interject: "I'll bet you were getting sassy. Right?"

Y: Probably. I'm sassy a lot.

(pause)

Y: I'm really mean to my mom sometimes.

X: Me too. I'm so mean.

A week later, I can still remember this conversation, and it still makes me laugh. If only their parents could see this, I think they would take heart.

Back Into the World

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

She stood perfectly still, her pale skin smooth except around her eyes, where she squinted up at the ceiling for a moment. "What motivates you?"

"Whoo!" I blew through pursed lips, laughed nervously, buying some time. "Like . . . in general?"

"Yeah."

"When I'm dealing with my anxiety disorder? Or just all the time?"

Her hands found each other, fiddled for a moment. "It's just that you seem so . . . enthusiastic. All the time. How do you get out of bed every morning? What makes you do it?"

I looked at her and saw myself, the day she was born. The same curiosity tempered by a desire to fit in. The same searching look that scared away most of the boys I liked. The same deep-seated, unfounded fears. It wasn't so long ago.

"I love literature," I said. "I didn't study it much in college, but I've always loved to read, and I genuinely enjoy that part of my job -- talking about stories, getting into the hows and whys. And I think enthusiasm is contagious, so I try to be enthusiastic for my students because it makes learning more fun for them. Beyond that --"

I paused. Suddenly there was nothing to say, and way too much, all at once.

"I know I'm not the best teacher. But I think God has given me some gifts, and I want to use them as best I can. My vocation is to be a teacher and wife, just like yours is to be a student and daughter. Have you ever read Tolstoy?"

She shook her head.

"He has this great story called 'Three Questions.' This king spends his whole life looking for the answers to three questions: What is the most important thing? What is the most important person? What is the most important time?"

She nodded. She was listening.

"In the end, he finds out that it's all based on the present. The most important person is whomever God has placed in front of you, and the most important  thing is to do good for that person. And the most important time -- really, the only time -- is now. Do the best you can with now. If now is your brother sitting next to you in the back seat and he's driving you crazy --" 

Here she smiled. "I know," I said. "Your brother is only a baby."

"No, I have another one," she said. "In middle school."

"Okay, then. That brother in the car -- at that moment, God is calling you to be kind to him, to love him. That's your job. It's actually very simple. But we don't think about it that way often enough."

She nodded again. I realized how still she was, her hands at her sides, her face a little puffy with fatigue. I hoped I wasn't boring her. 

"You know," I said, extending my arms to encompass the desks, posters, walls, building, "All this is nothing. In the end, you won't remember any of it. Even your grades -- I know they are SO IMPORTANT to you right now -- you won't even remember what they were. But you will remember whether people treated you with kindness. And they will remember that about you. We just have to trust God that the hard stuff is there for a reason. Who knows: maybe the reason I struggled with anxiety for so many years was just so I could be here now, with you, to let you know it will get better and you will be a stronger person for it. Don't worry about the future: just trust God that whatever you have to do today is the exact right thing for you to do today. And that today is the only time to do it."

She was quiet, thinking. "How's that for a long answer?" I laughed. "Serves you right for asking an English teacher."

"Thank you," she said. "That helps."

"I'm glad." I gave her a hug -- and sent her back into the world.

Night, Rediscovered

There's something to be said for the hours of late afternoon and early evening. Most of the world spends these hours either rushing from place to place or cursing the traffic that prevents said rushing.​ They are rushed, squashed and downtrodden.

But suddenly, they are all mine.​

With grad school behind me, and having said farewell to my weekly piano students, I am discovering all sorts of things to do in the evenings:

• Walk. These days I have the freedom to go just about anywhere -- no one is going to mess with a dingo -- and, thanks to a prong training collar, can even enjoy it without a battle of wills. Especially loving the Indian Summer weather that enables me to stay out for an hour without getting gross and sweaty.
• Cook. I especially enjoy the challenge of using up CSA veggies: tonight I made a velvety, warm broccoli soup with local cream and smoked salt. And some baba gannoush, topped with tomatoes and mint from my own backyard. Currently working my way through my parents' thoughtful birthday gift. 
• Read. After a love-hate journey through the Game of Thrones series, I picked up the books and got pretty thoroughly engrossed in the impossibly complex plotline, complete with gratuitous sex and violence (though not nearly as much as in the TV show!) I know it's half garbage, but the other half is great character development. Hey, I'm still reading Homer, Hemingway and Wilde for school!
• Listen. My brother got me the most ingenious little invention: it does a great job of magnifying sound from my phone, so I can listen to podcasts while I garden or drive or clean.​
• Pray. Most dear to my heart is the opportunity to attend weekday Vespers at my parish. The last time I went regularly was over a decade ago, before I had even met my husband. ​

Most happily, very little of this time is spent staring at a screen (I have it on all day at school) and I have enough hours to myself that I can stop happily in plenty of time to clean up and go to bed. Sleep is a gift in a class by itself!​