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Thus Have I Made It

Monday, March 29th, 2010

After reading this post of Rod’s just before Lent began, I added “The Mission” to my Netflix list.  It arrived soon thereafter, but we’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to watch it until today (I don’t teach lessons during Holy Week, in an effort to conserve my voice.)

The plot and characters are riveting, but beyond that, it’s one of the most spiritually moving films I’ve seen in a long time.  A moment near the end brought tears to my eyes: discussing an atrocity, the politician remonstrates, “We must work in the world . . . The world is thus.”

And the bishop, agonized, replies: “No . . . thus have we made the world.”  And, more quietly: “Thus have I made it.”

A good thought to have at the beginning of Holy Week.  Let none of us deny the part he has played in the evil that surrounds us.  And yet, in the real world as on the screen, there is the promise that love will yet conquer all.

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A King, a Prophet and a Priest

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

No, they didn’t walk into a bar.  They just made me think.

Tomorrow is the first of 11 days when I will be at church every evening for several hours.  There are a few days when I will practically wake up and fall asleep there.  In short, Lent is coming to an end.  And as you can probably tell from my sadly-neglected blog, it’s been harder and harder in the last few weeks to come up with something to say.

Lent is a time of growth – it involves taking a hard look at yourself and making some changes, throwing out things to which you’re attached and clinging to what is true and good.  It’s a time of prayer, thought, and sacrifice, and those things aren’t very easy or entertaining to write about.  It’s a time of testing, as I can always count on a major catastrophe or two to send me reeling, and one in particular has kept that promise this year.

But all this has been good for me in countless ways.  More than “good for me;” I’ve actually felt blessed by it.  Being sustained by grace, day after day, is a rare and precious experience. I marvel at the complexity of this message of hope I’m about to share, one that spanned many days and was borne by a diverse cast of characters. Yet it was obviously intended for me – it’s what I needed to hear, what I needed to learn.

From a king: “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”  I’m slowly working my way through the Old Testament on CD, and I realized last week that I hadn’t read Ecclesiastes since college.  It’s an amazing story of a king who had all the world had to offer, yet realized how worthless it all was without some central meaning.

Why do we flee sorrow?  Why do we tell each other to smile, put on a brave face, project the appearance of success?  Pain is such a crucial, beautiful, beneficial part of life.  As I read the rough drafts of my students’ term papers last week, I was stuck by how many of the world’s most formidable literary talents had lives that were wracked by sorrow: illness, rejection, guilt, struggles, death.  To a person, these writers turned their sorrows into keenly incisive works that speak plainly of the human experience.  This is why literature, and all of art, is so moving to us.  We are fallen.  It’s a fallen world.

From a prophet: “[Food] will taste so much deeper, more intense.  Everything will feel that way for awhile.  You’ll feel more alive.  You should probably try to hang onto that feeling for as long as you can.  It’s a gift.”  It might be a bit of a stretch to call a fictional character a prophet, but I think that’s his closest title.  I heard this while watching The Mentalist, a formulaic detective drama that for some reason is awfully compelling.  I am mainly drawn to the title character, a man who has undergone a traumatic loss and is consumed with a desire for revenge, coupled with an unbearable grief that he largely hides from those around him.  I call him a prophet because he is able to understand others at a level far beyond ordinary humans, but the sad irony is that he isn’t able to understand himself – or isn’t willing to.

In this situation, he is speaking to a girl who has just lost her mother.  I love the simplicity of his speech, and the fact that he doesn’t pull punches with her, telling her it will be all right or her mother is in a better place – but also doesn’t apologize for what he can’t control.  Having been through an even worse experience himself, he is serenely circumspect – seeing everything and taking this experience for what it’s worth.  Her mother is dead.  This experience will change her.  The change could be a good thing.

From a priest: Man’s punishments from the Fall were really second chances for humans to restore communion with God. We work the earth in toil, but we enjoy the fruits of our labors. We bring forth children in pain, but we still desire each other.  We have knowledge of pain, but also knowledge of a source of healing.

That’s a paraphrase from the Lenten retreat I attended last weekend with Fr. Theodore Dorrance; I vowed I would not take notes during this retreat, since I never re-read them anyway and I felt I could listen more deeply if I wasn’t concentrating on writing everything down.  But I didn’t need to write it to remember the impact of what he said.  What an illumination!  Even our greatest punishment – what makes us uniquely human, our suffering and alienation – can be viewed as a gift.  If we were self-sufficient, we wouldn’t need God.  I rejoice in my infirmities as a means for acquiring even greater healing.

Lent draws to a close.  It was a good Lent, if only for these three small things – things that have helped me to see clearly, to be stretched, to cut away the excess and feel freer from the world.

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Blessing My Enemy

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Enemies have driven me into your embrace more than friends have.

Friends have bound me to earth, enemies have loosed me from earth and have demolished all my aspirations in the world.

Enemies have made me a stranger in worldly realms and an extraneous inhabitant of the world. Just as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal does, so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary, having ensconced myself beneath your tabernacle, where neither friends nor enemies can slay my soul.

This afternoon I learned of the death of one of my former professors, Raimund Abraham.  He was an architect from Austria who taught at Cooper Union, where I spent the first two years of college.  In studio and critique, he loved to digress into diatribe about the violence of tectonics, the dialectics of form, and his cats.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

They, rather than I, have confessed my sins before the world.

They have punished me, whenever I have hesitated to punish myself.

They have tormented me, whenever I have tried to flee torments.

They have scolded me, whenever I have flattered myself.

They have spat upon me, whenever I have filled myself with arrogance.

Abraham (as we knew him) was both immensely talented and immensely troubled.  He ran his studio with a gleeful sadism, promising us we wouldn’t sleep for days and lambasting us with choice expletives when we got too relaxed and seemed to be enjoying ourselves.  He frequently told us we were stupid, foolish, and would never succeed in architecture, and he failed or forced withdrawal on many to prove himself right.  In his furor, he ripped drawings off the wall and snapped carefully-assembled models into pieces to “fix” them.  He gave tacit approval to ideas and then turned on a dime to skewer them later.  He never gave specific assignments, but he expected us to work until we passed out or injured ourselves using box cutters and power tools in a sleep-deprived state.  He took evident pleasure in belittling and slandering others, both behind their backs and to their faces.  He could sense fear better than a wild dog, and if it was present he would capitalize on it, refusing to give his approval even when we bent over backwards to win it.

He made us cry, and not just the women.  His abuse made my father say, “I can’t remember the last time I just wanted to deck someone,” and a pious, devout friend called him “the reason they invented” a certain seven-letter word.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Whenever I have made myself wise, they have called me foolish.

Whenever I have made myself mighty, they have mocked me as though I were a dwarf.

Whenever I have wanted to lead people, they have shoved me into the background.

Whenever I have rushed to enrich myself, they have prevented me with an iron hand.

Whenever I thought that I would sleep peacefully, they have wakened me from sleep.

Whenever I have tried to build a home for a long and tranquil life, they have demolished it and driven me out.

Truly, enemies have cut me loose from the world and have stretched out my hands to the hem of your garment.

This man almost singlehandedly drove me away from architecture.  Worse, he made me question my faith in God, the faith that had sustained me through a childhood I now realize was wonderfully uneventful.  Where was God when Raimund Abraham, who didn’t seem to like anybody, decided to teach a class full of young, idealistic teenagers who wanted to change the world — and instead turned to cigarettes and shrinks to cope with their feelings of worthlessness and despair?  Where was God when we failed crit after crit, unable to produce something he would like and frightened for our academic future with expulsion forever on the table?  When we got sick and depressed, flung ourselves into loveless relationships and rejected the advances of friends and family members who worried about us?  When I had the darkest thoughts of my life (and even wished for the courage to end it), desperate to prove to someone, anyone, that I was the smart, funny, creative person I knew myself to be?

At one time I would have said quite freely that Abraham ruined my life.  He certainly brought my dream of living and working in New York to an abrupt close; when I took a leave of absence from Cooper Union, from which I never returned, I couldn’t afford to stay in the city, and by then it held so many painful memories that I was happy to leave.  Years of antidepressants and therapy helped, and I can honestly say I’ve forgiven him, but the pain is still there, the insults and taunts embedded deeply in my memory.  That time is a part of me now, a part that will never go away, like the dot of rapidograph ink  just below the skin on the palm of my right hand, another wound born of late-night drawings and despair.

Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.

Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitterly against me:

so that my fleeing to You may have no return;

so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;

so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;

so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins, arrogance and anger;

so that I might amass all my treasure in heaven;

ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.

Enemies have taught me to know what hardly anyone knows, that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.

“The world is your enemy,” Abraham once told me during a critique.  It seemed to imply, within the context of the entire tirade, that this is why he was so hard on us: he wanted the weak to crumble away and the strong to conquer all.  And he succeeded.  I never had the heart to return to architecture school, partly for fear that my awful experience might repeat itself at a different institution.  This failure remains one of the biggest embarrassments of my life.  I will forever have to explain to people that I started architecture school, but didn’t finish it; that I received C’s and D’s and F’s when I had put forth my best effort, all that I had.  That I couldn’t succeed, no matter what I did; no matter how much I prayed and wheedled and fumed and sobbed, my best wasn’t enough.

I thank God for that experience.  I thank God for teaching me, through Raimund Abraham, that the world is a fallen place; that we should never be too comfortable here, too used to getting what we want and think we deserve.  I thank God every time my husband teases me about dropping out of architecture school, or my students ask why I changed majors halfway through college, or a friend remarks on the photographs of the East Village that grace my kitchen, the only visible reminders of that wretched time.  It was a time when I had nothing and no one to turn to, when I was friendless and alone in a city that was happy to continue on without me, and it was a time when I realized that suffering is a blessing — that it is only through doubt that we learn to have faith, only in torment that we learn to have peace.

One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.

It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.

Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and enemies.

A slave curses enemies, for he does not understand. But a son blesses them, for he understands.

For a son knows that his enemies cannot touch his life.

Therefore he freely steps among them and prays to God for them.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon the soul of your servant Raimund Abraham, a sinner.  And as the first among sinners, I beg you to have mercy on me.

Prayer by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich. Originally published in Prayers by the Lake, Serbian Orthodox Metropolitanate of New Gracanica, 1999.

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Sweep and Sweep and Sweep

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

My mother had an LP of Hansel and Gretel when she was little.  The expositiondescribed Gretel’s evil stepmother in lilting polysyndeton: “She made Gretel sweep and clean and cook and sew.”  However, this being the Dark Ages, recorded media was imperfect, and the record had a scratch, so the previous sentence became, “She made Gretel sweep and sweep and sweep and sweep . . . ” and continued in this way the needle was bumped.

I was reminded of poor Gretel yesterday through a series of events.  My personal goal this Lent is to keep my house reasonably in order, such that I would not be embarrassed if someone stopped by unexpectedly. The thing is, cleaning is humbling — maybe the most humbling job there is.  As a liberated citizen of the twenty-first century, it’s hard for me to accept that my husband is the main breadwinner, that he works hard to support us, and that my most natural and  grateful response should be to work just as hard at my jobs: teaching, writing, and keeping our home so that it’s a peaceful and lovely place to live.

The goal is to tidy one room per day, and yesterday I surveyed the kitchen.  It wasn’t too bad: a few dishes to wash, recycling and compost to be taken outside, some old food to throw away.  And the floor.

Several years ago I put my foot down, literally and metaphorically, and decried the use of white sheet vinyl in kitchens.  There is just no way to keep it clean, I explained.  Rob kindly relented and we stuck down vinyl tiles over it, in a much more forgiving pattern of mottled “stone.”  Now almost nothing shows up, and the temptation is to pretend it’s as clean as it looks.  But if you’re wearing socks and they’re dirty at the end of the day, or if sandals and you feel crunching underfoot, you know the truth.

Out came the broom.  Sweep and sweep and sweep.  A nice, satisfying pile of dust and dirt.  Lunch was almost ready; the sweet potatoes were starting to squeal in the oven.  I decided to get a head start on breakfast by soaking my Irish oatmeal.  Quickly, open the freezer, grab the can by the top and –

If you haven’t done this, been deceived by a cute canister with an ill-fitting lid, then you really have no idea of the quality of steel-cut oats when dropped on a clean vinyl tile floor in 2-cup portions.  They’re a little like tiny ball bearings, making a most pleasing bouncy sound as they fall, roll and scatter to all corners of your previously-clean kitchen.  I actually laughed.  Then I thought, “Well, at least the floor is clean.  I learned a lesson here!”  The broom, again: sweep and sweep and sweep.  A nice, neat pile of oats.  But as I turned to drop them back into the can, I looked more closely.  There was some dirt — well, to be honest, quite a bit of dirt — in the pan with them.  I actually thought of rinsing them, but decided that was too much even for a cheapskate.  Into the garbage.

Now I reopened the freezer door to survey the damage: a rolling landscape of mounded oats all over the bottom shelf of the freezer, nearly burying the door of the closed refrigerator.  I touched the mountain — just touched it — and a cascade of oats rained down onto the floor again, tappity-tappity-tap.  After a few more similar showers, I gave up trying to keep the floor clean and scooped them out of the freezer, putting handfuls back into the can and consigning the extras to the floor.  In the end I needed to use a sponge, in the process wiping up several spills I hadn’t noticed previously.  How do things get this dirty?

Finally, I opened the fridge, and a line of oats neatly hidden in the folds of the rubber seal tumbled into the egg tray, the shelves and the crisper drawers.  (Yes, they somehow made it into the drawers.)  Again, out came the sponge, and again, I was most displeased to find that the refrigerator was not nearly as clean as I’d imagined.  Ugh.

I crunched over to the oven and turned off the potatoes.  One more time with the broom, this time all over the floor — those oats were awfully determined to get away.  Sweep and sweep and sweep.  Again, a pile of oats and dirt; I gave up wondering where it had come from and was just grateful it was going into the trash now.

Lunch was wonderful, maybe all the more so for the wait until the oats (now transferred to a Ziploc bag) were safely back in the freezer.  And an hour later, in walked my students, tracking mud and dirt in a trail from the door to the piano bench and back again.  I swept (and swept and swept) it up.  A thankless, never-ending task if ever there were one.  A task to keep you humble.

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Lent is Dangerous

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

From my good friend the Rev. Toby Sumpter:

Stephen was stoned to death. James was beheaded. Matthew was pinned to the ground and beheaded. James the brother of Jesus was thrown off the temple tower and clubbed to death. Following Jesus is dangerous.

Matthias was stoned and then beheaded. Andrew was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Mark was dragged to his death. Peter was crucified upside down.

Paul was beheaded. Jude was crucified. Bartholomew was beaten and crucified. Thomas was tortured, run through with spears, and thrown into the flames of an oven. Luke was hung from an olive tree.

If the season of Lent is an annual, concentrated reminder of the call of discipleship, the call to follow Jesus, then Lent is dangerous.

Lent is dangerous because there is historical controversy associated with it. While it had been celebrated for over a thousand years by the time of Calvin, there was so much superstition associated with it that he counseled against keeping Lent. Lent is dangerous because there are a number of ways to celebrate it badly: morbid introspection, conjuring up vague guilt and feeling holy for it, prideful abstaining from food and drink, looking down on those who don’t celebrate. False humility is as easy as lighting a dead Christmas tree on fire. One little spark and we puff up.

But Lent is dangerous ultimately because the cross is dangerous. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to those who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). To those who want to find another way to grace, another path to mercy, the cross is an offense (Gal. 5:11). The sinful heart of man is offended by grace, offended by the folly of the cross. We would rather be proud in all sorts of ways.

Read the rest! It’s wonderfully arresting and sound advice.

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