Comfort in Repetition
/The night I found out my childhood friend, committed suicide, I listened to Iron & Wine’s song The Trapeze Swinger on repeat--for hours.
Read MoreThe night I found out my childhood friend, committed suicide, I listened to Iron & Wine’s song The Trapeze Swinger on repeat--for hours.
Read MoreWhen I started attending St. James Cathedral in Seattle 11 years ago, I said to a friend, “St. James? Which one is he again?”
“He’s one of the Sons of Thunder!” she said, a little too loudly with a sort of spirited superhero look on her face.
I nearly spit out the double tall vanilla latte I was sipping, doubling over with laughter. “Sons of Thunder?” I asked.
Read MoreOlivia Laing describes loneliness as “difficult to confess; difficult too to categorize. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair.” Laing’s words left me gasping, like a sucker punch to the gut.
Read MoreScripture says that at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit enabled the Apostles to speak in other languages, previously unknown to them. Native speakers heard the stories of kindness, peace, love, and redemption in their own languages.
Read MoreWe gathered in the school gym across from the Cathedral as we do every year on this day. The children are giddy as we pick out our palm fronds to wave. Parishioners without the obstruction of pews, are socializing with friends and family. The gym is full of electricity as we look forward to joining the processional across the street and into the church
Read MoreAfter hearing a conversation between her two young sons, Shemaiah Gonzalez was led to reflect on the importance of not saying Alleluia during the Lenten Season
Read MoreEarly Saturday morning, I left the house at dawn for a much-needed walk. I’d been feeling down for a few days,The walk was a proactive measure.
Read MoreHe called me when he read the letter, telling me that after reading my letter, he could have stopped teaching and would have been content.
Read More“How you holding up?”
Holding up? I didn’t know what they were referring to. It was as if someone died. Maybe someone did and I didn’t know.
Read MoreThis Saturday, my priest, Father Michael Ryan, of St James Cathedral in Seattle, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of his ordination. Our parishioners were asked to share stories and tributes to be bound in a book for him. This is my tribute:
Read MoreConsider what it means to have faith like a child during Advent. Read my essay at Busted Halo
Read MoreI pull out the boxes of Christmas decorations from the basement the day after Thanksgiving. My stomach is still full from the night before. It will be another day before we set up the Christmas decorations yet already I feel stuffed, in my clothes, in my home, in my life. The tree will take up much needed real estate in my already tiny front room. I groan thinking of a full month of feeling claustrophic in my house.
Read MoreOn my grandparent’s shaggy avocado green carpet, I set up the Winnie the Pooh Weeble house they gave me for Christmas. Chubby Christopher Robin and Tigger go for a ride on the teeter totter. Pooh slides down the mini slide, rolling around when he gets to the bottom. “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down!” I sing as I push them on the tiny swings, after I have given them a nice picnic lunch of honey, of course. I tuck Pooh into his little bed and sing him a good night song, “Jesus is coming, coming for me, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye.” The song is about the rapture, when Jesus will come for all those who believe in Him. It will happen quickly and without notice, I am to always be ready.
Read MoreRead my reflection on the Gift of Silence in the Morning over at Busted Halo
Read MoreThere is a sense of surrender in Joy that is different than its lesser, tamer cousin, happiness. Joy, that next level of happiness, is when we let go
Read MoreSome of us realize that we just aren’t as dazzling or special as we thought we were going to be, myself included. Life gets in the way. There is always someone prettier, smarter, more successful, someone who shines brighter.
Read MoreThe first thing you notice is just how quiet is it. You become self-conscience, aware how loud every thud of your foot hitting the pavement. You are an elephant in a monastery. You take smaller, quieter steps reminding yourself you are not in a rush.
Read MoreWe gathered in the school gym across from the Cathedral as we do every year on this day. The children are giddy as we pick out our palm fronds to wave. Parishioners aren’t obstructed by pews, excited to see friends and family. The gym is full of electricity as we look forward to join the processional across the street and into the church. The Archbishop has come for this special occasion and blesses our palms. We follow the cross, the Archbishop and our Priest out of the gym into the sunshine to proceed to the church, trumpets blasting on all sides of us. The children are in pure delight, waving the fronds as we sing joyfully “Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna in excelsis!”
As we approach the Cathedral, we stall as the pathway becomes narrow, there is a corridor ahead lined with the choir to join our singing. The mood begins to shift as our gait slows, those nervous of crowds, tense as we are packed tighter to walk through the corridor ahead. Then I hear it. On the other side of the Cathedral. Bagpipes. I had forgotten. Each year on Palm Sunday, a bagpiper in full regalia plays during this procession. I don’t know if it is because I am part Scottish, as the sound of bagpipes stirs in me a sense of longing for a connection to a country and a family I never knew or if it is my association of bagpipes with funerals, but my heart drops. I am reminded that at the end of this Holy Week, Christ will be on the cross.
I look at the joyous faces of the choir, eager to join the celebration, now appear jeering as I am reminded that this same jubilant crowd who welcomed Him into Jerusalem would be shouting “Crucify Him!” later in the week. I begin to cry. As if we are thinking the same thing, my 6-year-old looks up at me and asks “Mommy, did Jesus know He was going to die?” I answer, “Yes, son, He did.” I imagine myself as Christ on that donkey looking out on these faces with more compassion than I can muster.
I am reminded of my own faith, so enthusiastic and then waning. Even at the beginning of this Lenten season, I was so eager to give, to return to basics, to listen. But…my excitement dwindled. I know come Friday I would have been standing with the crowd calling for His death, even after celebrating His glory just days before.
We enter into the Cathedral to begin Mass. In years past I have dreaded standing during the entire Luke reading accounting the entire Passion: Today it is the very least I can do to honor Him. I enter Holy Week with a heavy heart but looking forward to saying "Alleluia" next Sunday for the 1st time in 40 days and truly meaning it.
My 5- and 6-year-old sons were in a week-long day camp during a break from school. The camp focused on “music and movement,” which is another way of saying it was a theater camp. Each week had a theme. The week my boys attended was Elvis week. They learned how to pretend to play the guitar and shake their hips. They had a blast.
The camp concluded with a performance on Friday. I arrived early and got a seat on aisle so I’d be sure to see both children wherever they happened to be on the stage. When performance time came I was taken aback when every single adult in the audience stood up, took out their phones and began filming the performance. There was no way I could see through the barrage of phones and iPads. I found it strange that I was the only person who was actually watching the performance, not the screen, but couldn’t see it.
The poet Wendell Berry speaks to this in his poem “The Vacation,” in which a man spends his vacation filming it, “preserving” it.
It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
I completely understand this phenomenon of being there but not being present. I absolutely suffer from it too. My mind is always running through a list of the next three things to do. I am always trying to see if the other person I needed to talk to about x is here in the room. Even when I look into the eyes of my little boys, telling me a sweet story they made up about their Lego creation, I am thinking about what I need to do next.
It is hard for me to connect with people in my life. I’m not sure if this is because of my chaotic childhood, my inability to trust people, my own anxiety, or all of the above. I am gregarious, fairly likable, open, but I never seem to actually get close to others. I think to myself, “I should take medication. Maybe this would help me to connect with others …” Or is this disconnection, this loneliness, what connects me to Christ and His sufferings?
When we are at last united with Christ, what will that feel like? Will He have time for me? Or will He look over my head for the next person in the room? I give Christ my symptoms of anxiety.
I honestly do not know what it is like to look into someone’s eyes and have them be completely present for me for more than a minute. The artist Marina Abramovic exhibited a performance art piece called “The Artist is Present” at MOMA a few years ago. In the piece, she offered herself to a “sitter,” a museum patron simply sitting across from her for a few minutes, as completely present, silent but meeting their gaze, never breaking it. The sitters’ responses ranged from nervous giggles, to iced stoicism, to tears.
The response to Abramovic was so powerful, it makes me wonder what it will be like to sit across from Christ. Will I giggle? Will I crumble? Will I meet His gaze? St Paul says that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I will be fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I feel that this is a promise, that I will be a new creation, that I will not reach for my phone to record my meeting, that I will not be thinking about how I can tell others later. I will allow myself to be loved.
Thrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide.