Poems of Prayers

Dear God,

I know we don't really talk anymore.  
Correction:  I don't really talk anymore.  
I just haven't had the heart to do it.  
I know you're there.  
And I know that you know that I know that you're there.  
I'm just...tired of the whole thing.  

Someone told me it's ok to say and feel that.  
Someone else told me that it shows a lack of faith.  

I think that second person is wrong.  

Me.


Dear God,

Sometimes I feel that I love you but I don't like you.  
Sometimes you're too hard for me to handle.  

Someone told me it's ok to say and feel that.  
Someone else told me they were praying for my soul because of it. 

I appreciate all the prayer I can get, but I think that second person's motives are a bit misguided.  

Me.


Dear God,

I really don't want to say anything to you right now.  
You know what's going on in here, anyway.  
I appreciate you toughing it out with me, though, and I love you for it.  
But for now, all I'm capable of is throwing some random thoughts in your general direction.  

Someone told me it's ok to say and feel that.  
Someone else told me it wasn't enough and that's why I couldn't hear you like I used to.

I think that second person is wrong.  
I know you're there.
I just choose not to listen.
Maybe I should try to spend a little more time with that second person, anyway.  

Me.

Middle Night Musings

Sometimes I do some of my best thinking at night.  And by "at night" I mean between the hours of 2 am and 6 am.  The middle of the night, really, or Middle Night, as I like to call it.  It has more of a poetic and less pathetic ring to it.  

So here I am in the Middle Night, after being up for 2 or 3 hours.  I spent the time trying to think positive thoughts because I wanted to avoid a repeat of the ginormous black widow spider dream I had the night before.  It's my own personal version of the "chase" dream, being stalked by a big, hard-shelled black arachnid with a red hourglass on its forehead...but I digress.  The Middle Night is also the time I end up wrestling with my biggest demons, for whatever reason.  Perhaps being surrounded by darkness makes the mind, though tired, vivid with imagination.  Or maybe it's the fatigue itself that chases away rational thought.  Whatever it is, it's annoying.  But tonight, for once, my musings were dispassionate and lucid.  

These days I am calling myself a "concert organist", well, because I am.  I do not currently have a faculty position at a college or conservatory (mostly by choice) and I've retreated from the church music world enough that it just doesn't seem  truthful anymore to label myself as a church musician as my primary professional identity.  It's also an unconscious yet conscious way to distance myself from the stress of the past 2 years or so.  But as a musician, I find it difficult to label myself as anything else but a musician.  It's not just a part of who I am, but a guiding force behind my identity.  And not just because of the beauty of music itself, but because of what it represents - life.  Life in all its ups and downs, in all its beauty and ugliness.  Music is an expression of that up and down beauty and ugliness, and music as a process is an expression of the process we call life.  At least, that's how I see it.

But here's my revelation.  For the past year I've been trying, for the life of me, to figure out how a life that was built on all the "right" principles, with the "right" spirit, and with the obligatory blood, sweat, and tears could be so quickly taken - stolen - from underneath you.  It's not as if we weren't all paying attention.  But yet, it happened.  Perhaps it's happened to you at some point, too.  It made me think:

"Well, perhaps you weren't as happy as you thought you were."

"Perhaps it wasn't as good as you thought it was."

And here's the kicker - "Perhaps YOU aren't as good as you thought you were."

Once you start down that road, you begin doubt yourself and everything that makes you what you are.  In essence, you erase yourself out of existence.  And it's not out of self pity.  It's just dispassionate, rational thought, really.  Or so you think.    

Oh, Nicole, this is so depressing, you say.  But hang on, here's the good part.  I think that "extraordinary life", that "mountaintop experience", or whatever you call that thing that you strive for - that shining goal in the distance you raise all your standards in expectation of is actually a very fragile thing.  It's not a solid fortress built on top of an impenetrable mountainside made from years of study and experience.  It's a small, shining, crystalline sphere of hope and imagination floating just above our reach that is as bright as the hottest sun but as fragile as the tiniest, thinnest sliver of ice.  It takes the whole of our very souls to keep it suspended in mid air for that period of time for which it lives.  But it only takes the clench of one or two or three fists to shatter it to pieces.  We could attempt to build an impenetrable wall around it, but that would only shield us from bathing in those beautiful rays.  We could only share with those we think of as "safe" enough to get near it, but then it would lose some if its brilliance.  

I know there is truth in this, but it's a frustrating truth.  Why is something that took so much time and effort to build so freaking fragile?  It doesn't seem to make much sense, but I feel in the depth of my soul that it is true.  The mistake we make - well, the mistake I made - is that I only saw one very fragile crystalline sphere in my future, when in fact there are an infinite number floating around the ether - floating around our imaginations just waiting to be thought into existence.  We just tend to get sidetracked and put on blinders when the one right in front of us starts to form, and then we can't even see the forest of possibilities that still lie around us.  

This, of course, does not lessen the pain watching the first one smash to pieces.  But it does give me a little hope - more than a little hope - that this very brilliant, very virulent, very overwhelming, very fragile sphere of hope and happiness and imagination can be created.  Again.  But different, this time.

Now - back to the spiders...

Are You There God? It's Me, Nicole

I was a big Judy Blume fan growing up as a kid. In fact, I was a big book fan, period. (Still am, but I think now you'd call it a book junkie.)  We used to have Book Fairs at our elementary school - remember those?  They would pass out those small, newspaper circular-like catalogs of delight where I could gleefully plot the direction in which my imagination would be turned. I remember the unbelievable freedom I felt while shopping for those books. Book Fairs were the only instances I can remember as a child where my parents never restricted how much I could buy. The sky was the limit, and I was usually that kid who came home carrying her books in one of the boxes they were shipped in. On Book Fair days we could be picked up by our parents instead of taking the bus home, and I remember waiting with glee in the school cafeteria, staring out the big windows for the familiar car. I spent  the whole ride home wishing my mother would drive faster so I could choose the first book to be read. Once home, I would drop my bookbag full of homework just inside the door (which to my father's annoyance made the most effective doorstop when he tried come in after work) and plop myself and my box on the end of the couch and choose. And then I would read. And read. And read.  Boy, do I miss that kind of excitement.

"Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" was one of the many, many books I read as a child. It was about a young girl who grew up with a Christian mother and a Jewish father and was searching for a single truth for herself.  I actually did not remember that part of it until I Googled it earlier - it was the title itself that popped into my head.  It got stuck there as I pondered my own search to find God "again". Over the past several months I've had a number if conversations with many different people of all ages about faith and belief and just about everything that intersects with those things.  And do you know what the one common denominator is?  Doubt. Doubt about many things. The very existence of God, or the existence of any God, for that matter. The value of faith communities. The transparency of organized religion.  The validity of the doctrines and practices of different denominations. The genuineness of "devout" Christians and Christian leaders. And it seems that underneath that doubt lies the other common denominator- fear.

Now, Nicole, you say, you can't have two common denominators!!!  That may be true, but where you find one you usually find the other. And the truth us, fear and doubt are two very human responses that we are so often told are signs of weakness and lack of true commitment when it comes to faith. And you know what?  That's just crap. We all have our own fears and doubts in life, and in my own life the exploration of these doubts and fears have led to some pretty extraordinary discoveries about God, faith, and myself. The key for me has always been to not allow myself to be paralyzed by doubt and fear, but to find a way to work through them to the other side. And don't get me wrong - it doesn't always work out.  I don't always "work on it", and I often end up wrestling with the same stupid demons over and over again.  I have found myself lying awake at night wondering if God was really up there anyway, and did it really matter if I did the right thing even though no one would ever see only to wake up in the morning wondering what in the world I ate the night before that brought such ridiculous thoughts to my head.  And while I've never really been afraid of death, per se, I know that when I'm pondering these things in the middle of the night I am terrified that when the time does come that I will die alone. And then morning comes and I roll my eyes at myself and move on.  Maybe I should work on my "middle of the night madness" next...

I refuse to believe this makes me less faithful, or even any less strong. It makes me human. I am not perfect, and I never want to be. I want to become the person I was meant to be by living into the potential that has been built into my soul. I know that God put that potential there and gave me the tools to achieve it. I just don't always see it or have the patience to look for it.  But hey, that's my struggle. Being faithful doesn't mean being perfect.  So every once in a while I will stare into the ceiling lit by the occasional light of the moon, notice with disgust the spots I missed with the paintbrush, and say, "Are you there, God? It's me, Nicole."  Hopefully those times are few and far between.  But despite the doubts that may be momentarily running through my head, I can take some assurance in the fact that I still crave to have the conversation and that God is still listening.