Longing for home

This year I was all jazzed about writing weekly reflections for Advent - pairing them with O Antiphons, even.  But, of course, this did not happen, as life intervened yet again and the days and the hours slipped silently away.  I was, however, invited to write a reflection on a piece of music for Advent for a site called ecclesio.com - you can read it here.  This will be the extent of my spiritual musings for the season.  Off into another direction we go...

I learned a new word this week - hiraeth.  It's a Welsh word that is somewhat difficult to translate, but according to the Facebook Oracle (which is gospel truth), it means, "a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past."  I read this and was suddenly flooded with images in my head - images and feelings and pieces of hopes and dreams that seemed forever broken and lost and impossible to recapture.  Here was the place where those disturbing middle-of-the-night dreams originate.  Here were those nagging thoughts in my brain to which I could never put a name or a face or an idea.  

Hiraeth.

The definition itself has a bizarre, vague clarity to it, describing something that is tangible but only because you can never really put your hands on it.  It's that moment of clarity that lasts for 5 seconds in your head, and then disappears.  It's the swirling, wisps of morning fog that dissipate the moment you walk through them.  It's that elusive lightning bug that always carried the possibility of holding a fragile, wondrous glow in the palm of your hand before it disappears and leaves you with a rather gross-looking bug.

Hiraeth.

What is this home?  Is it a place?  Is it a people?  Is it a state of mind?  Maybe it's that little girl who, years ago, was full of dreams and fantasies about what the future would look like.  Maybe it's that not-so-little girl who, no-so-many years (weeks?) ago accepted that the dreams of that little girl really were fantasies, and that life sometimes is exactly what it looks like.  And sometimes that really isn't very interesting or inspiring at all, but feels gray, dull, and death-like.  Or maybe, just maybe, the home we are really yearning for does not and cannot exist.  It is utopia, complete in its double meaning:  the "not" place, and the "perfect" place.  And that makes us want it even more.

Hiraeth.

It haunts.  And yet, is also inspires a dream of something even more fantastical.  Maybe this home will be filled with the warmth of the people we want to have in our lives, but cannot.  And maybe those people will only haunt its rooms for eternity, in their trail the pleasures and pains of nostalgia.  Whatever this "this" is, it leaves us incomplete, and our homesickness is a disease that, seemingly, will never heal.

Morning Time

Mozart - a great way to start any morning...

I have never been a morning person. In fact, my mother used to call me “Evil-ina” as a child when I reluctantly descended the stairs.  For me, morning was always the time to shrink back underneath the covers and pretend that just a few more minutes of closing your eyes in the darkness would do the trick.  These days, mornings are my favorite – especially days like today when I don’t have to be anywhere. I rather enjoy stumbling around the house in my bathrobe searching for that first, elusive cup of coffee, strains of “The Golden Girls” on the tv in other room as I stare blankly out the window, ignoring the lawn that needs to be cut, reveling in all the changing colors, but not the neighbors leaves on the grass…ah, fall.  

I work from home most Wednesday, although things seem to get scheduled on these days with annoying frequency.  In theory, Wednesdays – at least the mornings – are supposed to be all about me.  It’s not selfish.  It’s survival. 

At this morning’s brain feeding at the time-sucking trough of Ye Facebook Oracle, I came across 2 articles – this one here  about understanding and living with the things we feel like we’ve lost (even though, perhaps, we haven’t lost them yet), and this one here about Millennials and high church.  These articles seemingly have nothing do with each other, but the combination of the two unleashed some powerful stuff.

I had an immediate, irrepressible urge to write.  For me, writing is much like music and the need to get on the instrument - gotta have it, gotta have it now, when the heart says it’s time.  Screw the world and its schedule.  It’s not a need, it’s a NEED.  I opened up my blog interface, was assaulted by that dark page with the red candles on it, and I just couldn't do it.  I clicked the “x” and moved on to Word.

Under the Cassock.  A cassock that has been a suffocating, torturous presence – a reminder of hurt and loss, of unanswered prayers.  A hurt that is deep, because it is mixed with joy and success and music and life changing opportunities.  I can’t integrate these things together in my mind.  These feelings can’t possibly coexist.  I don’t want this cassock anymore.  I don’t believe in it

Or do I?

I have struggled mightily with my beliefs and with my faith.  Do I believe in God?  Yes.  Probably.  Most of the time.  Probably all of the time, but sometimes I don’t want to – not always because of God, but because of all the ‘stuff” that comes with God, even though it really has no place there. “They” – you know, those people - say that “God’s presence is with us through the people around us.”  Really?  Even when those you love and to whom you are closest disappoint you and fail you in massively destructive ways?  What a cruel joke.  Some other “they” will probably say, “Well, Nicole, if your faith was stronger you would accept that this is God’s path for you, and would just bow your head lower and pray for Jesus to take all your pain away.” 

I think “they” are full of it. 

God doesn't promise that to take all our pain away – not in this lifetime.  God promises to be a presence in our lives through EVERY time, difficult and joyful.  And guess what – his presence mostly comes through those people up there who, at times, fail and disappoint us.  See?  Here I am making arguments for God in the midst of doubting him.  Perhaps I was just well indoctrinated as a child.  Or, perhaps faith is a living, breathing, organic being that can never tolerate being static.  <Sigh>  Sometimes the truth is annoying. 

Do I believe in The Church?  No.  Absolutely not.  It’s a dream that will never become a reality.  Too many people posturing, hurting, hiding, making it all about themselves instead of about God.  “But, Nicole,” you may say, “don’t you ‘work’ in a church?  Doesn't your ‘work’ require you to fill a pastoral and educational role that, if you really don’t believe in The Church, would make you a hypocrite?” 

Why yes, yes it does.  Well, in a way.  I work in that little community because I love those people.  Some of us have been through quite a bit together, and some of us are making new, awesome memories as we speak. And throughout all these things, we come and worship together every week, even when we don’t want to be there.  There are times when I cannot wrap my mind around these things coexisting together; times when all that hurt, loss and unanswered prayer seems insurmountable, and the best thing to do is turn your back on it and walk slowly and deliberately towards something else.  But then those NEW things come bouncing along and for just a few minutes, I can forget about the hurt.  And the hurt drifts farther, and farther away.  Don’t get me wrong – it's still there.  Just in a fuzzy, indiscernible shape on the horizon.  Some wise person might say, “Well, duh, Nicole, that is The Church.”  Wish I could see it.

I used to have a lot of interesting conversation with friends and colleagues about faith and church.  I used to enjoy them.  Now they just make my head hurt.  I learned a lot about God as a child – hard to avoid it as a Preacher's Kid, but we tried our best.  I also heard a lot of people talk about their relationships with God.  Most of this talk happened on Sundays mornings in some liturgical or teaching context.  What I never really learned is that doubt is ok.  Doubt about anything, really.  How else can we really learn what is truth to us if we don’t explore every side of that truth?  That would have been a nice little nugget to pack away as a child – ignored at first, like every other seemingly unimportant parental teaching, but then discovered later on like your favorite piece of candy in your pocket when lunch is still an hour away and you skipped breakfast.

I suppose the beauty in all this is that different people see different things, and THAT is the beauty of life, the very life of what is beauty.  I can love it, you can hate it, and yet “it” is still there for someone else to interpret and breathe in.  I think, perhaps, there is a wee bit of The Church in that thought.

A New Year

Counterpoint: The technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality; Use of contrasting elements in a work of art; To set in contrast.

New Year’s is such a metaphor for new life – for change and all that comes with.  It almost seems built into our DNA to think about what we will change in the new year, and how we wish to change ourselves.  How can we make life new?  How can we make ourselves new?  Many of us spend time making lists and promises to ourselves and others about how things will be different or in some cases, promises to keep putting energy into the things that are currently working well.  Maybe it’s the group mentality of it, like the secret pinky promises between the bestest friends of our youth, that make this particular ritual so powerful. 

I wish I could say I’ve been pondering the power of new life, but I’ve actually been thinking a lot about death lately, and find myself being confronted with my own fear of dying alone and not knowing what comes next.  (I am tempted to say, “who knows why,” but we all have our demons and I know mine well.)  But I was lucky this New Year’s Eve to spend the early afternoon with a group of people in their 60’s and older – all vibrant in their own way, but dealing with their own late life issues.  What struck me most that afternoon was the anecdotal stories about friends and acquaintances who were 100 and older and of more than sound mind, if not of whole body.  Now, for the most part, my family is fairly long-lived – especially the women – but I’ve never really thought about living until I was 100.  That’s another 62 years on this earth.  Dude, that’s a long time.  And if centenarians are out there looking forward to their next days with a sense of adventure, it seems silly for 38 year old me to be so concerned with the next 5-10 years, especially since I have absolutely no control over many of the things that weigh on my mind.

The older I get, the more I understand myself.  One would think this would make life a little easier, but it doesn’t.  It only makes me feel older and more alone.  I actually kind of miss the blind recklessness of youthful decisions – going on instinct and just doing things because they feel right or seem like the right thing to do without the weight or knowledge of experience poking its opinion into things.  And many times, those decisions are right.  And when we make mistakes, we chalk it up to youth and inexperience.  Next time we will know better, and hopefully, we move on to make smarter decisions. 

But as I look into the new year, I don’t think it’s that simple.  I don’t know if there are “right” and “wrong” decisions.  There are simply decisions, and they all come with their own set of consequences that have the potential of affecting our lives in a myriad of different ways.  Just because we choose to “do the right thing” does not mean that everything that follows is golden.  There is no path that is true north.  Everything goes crooked every once in a while, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  There can be some interesting things growing on those crooked pathways – things that lead us to a better understand of ourselves, the ones we long, and the world around us. 

So what do I resolve to do this year?  Not sure about that.  There’s nothing more soul crushing than making promises to yourself that you can’t/don’t/won’t keep.  I know better than to wish for health and prosperity – sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you just get what you get.  But I think this year it’s worth making an EFFORT – not a PROMISE, because promises just seem too absolute to me anymore – to ponder LIFE and all its forked and crooked pathways.  To ponder the possible adventures ahead – maybe 62 more years of them – and to be hopeful and thankful for the wise souls that we cross on those crooked paths that help us keep our perspective on the scary stuff in our minds that go unspoken.