Thinking of Lena Horne

For some reason an obit for Lena Horne popped up on my Facebook feed today.  So I was reminded of this.  My favorite.  Such tenderness.

Intense

I just listened to the Met radio broadcast of Dialogues of the Carmelites and I have to say:  WHOA.  Look, I know how it ends.  I have seen it live (with a friend as one of the sisters).  But listening to the final scene, with no visual cues, was its own kind of terrifying.  Perhaps because I do not know the piece well (having only seen/heard it that once), not knowing when the guillotine slices are coming was just...well I gasped aloud every time and my cielo became worried. The first time, I actually jumped I was so startled.  Poulenc was a genius for sure.  I am still shaking and it has been over now about half an hour!

Here is the final scene, from an earlier performance (in the 80s) of this same production.  Close your eyes and just listen.

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

Nice neighborhood.  Who wants to move?



Isabel Leonard is really a delight.

Blessed Easter

Seen

A Blessing for Easter Sunday

You had not imagined

that something so empty

could fill you
to overflowing

and now you carry
the knowledge
like an awful treasure,
or like a child
that roots itself
beneath your heart:

how the emptiness
will bear forth
a new world
that you cannot fathom
but on whose edge
you stand.

So why do you linger?
You have seen
and so you are
already blessed.
You have been seen
and so you are
the blessing.

There is no other word
you need.
There is simply
to go
and tell.
There is simply
to begin.

Jan Richardson 

A Night at the Opera

Enjoying Romeo and Juliet at Opera Colorado opening night.  And those are Jenny Lind's opera glasses! Courtesy of the church memeber who invited us. Prett cool! 

Remembering, Ain't That Good News

Preach it, Dr. Reagon.

"I'm gonna lay down this world, I'm gonna shoulder up my cross...ain't that good news!"

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.
And never, never, to forget. "

- Arundhati Roy

I find it hard to believe that it has been five years, today, this day, Saturday October 6, 2007, since the columbus day parade protest.  Some of you have been reading here long enough to remember my first post of many about that day and all that came after, "Trying to Live the Life I Talk About."

I find it hard to believe it has been five years, because that day, the whole experience, from the street and arrest to the trials that followed over the next many months, my trial...all of it still seems as close to me as my skin.  As present to me as my own feet.  As pressing to me as the ache I still carry in my wrists, my arms, my shoulders...Yes, each day I remember, and that day comes to mind, a touchstone now for all the work I do, the one with the collar who remembers the pain and strength and LOVE, yes, the love, with each step I take in the street standing for justice, with every raising of my voice for justice, with every prayer and liturgy and breaking of bread and holding of the blessed people who I pastor.  

Oh my god, such beautiful people who I am blessed to pastor, in the street and around the table.

I remember this anniversary each year.  This date, in the last few years, has marked a descent into layers of despair, remembering only the pain of that day.  The worst being last year, when at last, I completely broke down, and stopped everything for two months -- Advent, Christmas, Epiphany -- rejoining my work, my blessed vocation, at the birth of spring, St. Brigid's day.  

Yes, I still carry the pain of that day, the ache of damaged nerves and muscles and tendons, the ache of watching friends (and friends-to-be) be violated, in my body; the pain of that day, the persistent violence of the trials in my body and soul.  I will never forget.

Still...today I find myself in a place of gratitude.  Yes, I carry the pain, but it no longer has its hardened stiff fingers clutched around my heart and lungs.  Yes, I broke down, and I also broke open, broke apart, broke wide, and I found myself anticipating this day, the small rituals I created for myself for this day, the blessings and prayers of friends offered, the time set aside to write this reflection.

This is new...to come to this place, this day, not with fear, but with honor for the pain and gratitude for all that has come from that day.  Gratitude is where I place myself this day.

• I have paused in writing to re-read all my posts from that time, from the first one above through my trial and graduation.  I place myself  in gratitude for all the people and all the care and am in awe of the good sermons I preached -- this one is still my favorite -- and poetry I wrote.

• From the place I stand now, I can see the cracks in the hopefullness I held on to during that time.  I am grateful for both the hope, which I have found my way back to, but differently, and the cracks, which eventually split jagged across my my being, setting me free.

• I was up at the farm this week, hugging Arlo and helping out with chores.  I realized suddenly that because my dear friend BlueEyes was so determined to provide me anything I asked for in terms of self-care over those months, I got to meet Arlo when he was a newborn, thus beginning a beautiful friendship.  Goat mama Lori and talked about how we would have met eventually, but if it hadn't been for the arrest et. al., I would not have met Arlo in this way, and perhaps my bond with him, and Lori, and the farm, would be quite different.  Tending the goats has become a respite and healing place for me, and I am grateful.

• As I have been getting ready for this anniversary, I began to realize that each descent into despair each fall has also brought with it -- eventually, sometimes with tears and struggle, sometimes with ecstastic experiences of Divine love -- growth and healing and wholeness and now a more fully incarnated me, a more fully human me.  My retreats at Nada each year after Easter have been crucial to this, and the Spirit's urging to go there the first time in 2009 grew right out of my struggle to make sense of what had happened to me.

• I think there is something to be said of my insistence on making meaning out of this experience, wrestling blessing after blessing after blessing out of it, refusing to only sit in pain and despair (even when I that was all I knew), seeking healing of heart and body and soul.  This insistence is itself a form of resistance!

• The experience of the arrest and trials broke my hope.  Broke my imagination.  But that is not the end of the story -- not the end of the story!  Resurrection happens, quietly, a small green stem easing its way out of the bulb, and my hope is rooted now in Her, my imagination rooted now in Her imagining, and when I am in the street embodying true community, around the table embodying true community, my hope and my imagination are grounded in Her love.  Anger yes, and also fierce love.  Hope and imagination informed by the violence, the pain, and even the despair.  Never forgotten, never.  Hope and hopelessness go hand in hand...this is crucial to know, in my body.

• I have had experiences, since rejoining my vocation this spring, of overwhelming love.  Of standing in front of the immigrant detention center with beautiful young adults, undocumented, shouting for their lives, and feeling waves of love for them and knowing, out of that love I will lay my body down for you -- right here, if the cops move in, if ICE moves in, they will have to go through me first.  Of standing around the table baptizing sweet little Lucky boy, who no one thought possible, pouring that water over and over and over his sweet little head, how much love can a body hold for this sweet little blessed boy?  Of jumping up and down in the street, just this week, just outside the debate fences, with brilliant, beautiful folk who are immigrants, documented and otherwise, and feeling my shouting and my jumping coming from joy, from love, love for these beautiful, beautiful, oh my god how beautiful people.

This is what broke in me -- and I did not have words for this, in many ways, to write here about it, but today, now, I speak of this -- this is what broke in me:  

The hardened stiff resin of untempered anger,
hardened stiff resin of unshed repressed tears,
solid bound shame around my heart my lungs.

NOW
cracked open, split open, shattered open,
open open open,
hardness replaced with pinkened fire,
gentlefierce, steadfast, loved, protected.

I just realized:  In many ways the fierce good reverend of the revolution was born that day, 5 years ago today.  I am filled with gratitude for everything.  Oh Divine One, Beloved One, I am filled with gratitude for everything.  I move into the restful darkness of fall and winter without fear.

Saving Hope

Love this.  Perfect for where I am right now.  Enjoy, and much love.

 

 

Because we spill not only milk
Knocking it over with an elbow
When we reach to wipe a small face
But also spill seed on soil we thought was fertile but isn't,
And also spill whole lives, and only later see in fading light
How much is gone and we hadn't intended it
Because we tear not only cloth
Thinking to find a true edge and instead making only a hole
But also tear friendships when we grow
And whole mountainsides because we are so many
And we want to live right where black oaks lived,
Once very quietly and still
Because we forget not only what we are doing in the kitchen
And have to go back to the room we were in before,
Remember why it was we left
But also forget entire lexicons of joy
And how we lost ourselves for hours
Yet all that time were clearly found and held
And also forget the hungry not at our table
Because we weep not only at jade plants caught in freeze
And precious papers left in rain
But also at legs that no longer walk
Or never did, although from the outside they look like most others
And also weep at words said once as though
They might be rearranged but which
Once loose, refuse to return and we are helpless
Because we are imperfect and love so
Deeply we will never have enough days,
We need the gift of starting over, beginning
Again: just this constant good, this
Saving hope.

 

~ Nancy Shaffer ~

 

(Instructions in Joy)

Mimi & Rodolfo Go To Therapy

This.  Is hilarious.

Mon Coeur

Well, I can't say as I particularly understand the video concept itself (why is she singing between two large cowbells?), but I am a sucker for this aria and she sings it quite lovely-ly.

PS: Also, it doesn't hurt that the album cover shot makes her look like Grace Kelly. Ahem.

Friday Five: Grateful

I know, I know, I have all but disappeared here at the Window...so much going on, internally and externally, and much of it non-bloggable (in the sense of "how could I possibly put this into words" non-bloggable) at least as of yet.  Such a journey I have been on!  Nevertheless, the latest RevGals Friday Five is on gratefulness and since I am full of that these days, it seemed a good time to come sit at the Window again.

Here's the idea:

The Friday Five is very, very late but God is GOOD - ALL THE TIME so you are invited to share with us five things that cause you to be grateful.

So here we go:


1 -- An amazing community of people, including my cielo, my friends, my church, and my spiritual director, who have walked with me so steadfastly on this challenging stage of my journey.


2 -- Goat love.  This is Marshall.  (Don't you love my hat?)

3 -- Good work.  And the lovely people I get to work with.





4 -- A break in the heat and the possibility of rain.  Temps are supposed to drop from mid-90s (after mid-100s last week) this week to low 70s and 80s this weekend and next week, with rain possible the next several days.   Even if you are not in Colorado you have heard about the wildfires here.  Hopefully the break in the heat wave will help.  And, since we live with no AC in the house OR car, it will also be a nice break for us, too.

5 --  One of the Met's summer encore re-broadcasts is Der Rosenkavalier with the divine Ms. Fleming, Susan Graham, and Christine Schafer.  (There is a bass in there too, but really, who cares?).  You know where I will be on July 25, and yes, I will be giggling when the curtain rises, and crying when it falls at the end.

Oh, Let America Be America Again

(thinking of my beloved mentor, Dr. Vincent Harding, today...)

Oh, Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright В© 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes.

Why Is This So Hard To Remember?

When I Am Among the Trees

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
     but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

Renee Shoots, Spits, Yodels

No, really!  Renee Fleming was on A Prairie Home Companion a few weeks ago, and you can listen to the whole show here.  It's a hoot.  If you need a little pick-me-up, this is a good choice.

For Good Friday

there must be some kinda way way out of here
oh said the joker to the thief
i want to tell you now
you know there's just too much confusion
and i can't no i can't get no relief
ah these businessmen they all they drink our wine
and the plowman well he dig my earth
and you know that ah none of them along the line
can show me what any of this is worth
you know we wanted to see it now didn't we
didn't we
there ain't no reason to get excited
ah the thief you know he kindly spoke
well now there are those among us right here right now
who still see life as some kind of a joke
but you and i we have been through that
i tell you that this this is not our fate no no no
now let us all not talk falsely now
you know the hour well it's getting late
i said all along the watchtower
the princes they kept the view
while the women the women
they came and then they went
and barefoot servants too
that's me that's you
but outside there's a cold distance
listen for the wildcats
here them growl
two riders were approaching
as the wind began to howl
i said now shelter me
oh there are those among us right here right now
who still see life as some kind of a joke
all along the watchtower
i said all along this watchtower
those of you who still have eyes to see
ears hear me
you will be saved by grace in the end
saved by time if you don't understand
that your hatred is rooted in your fear
and your paranoia and insecurities
well they don't belong here
you got to take someones hand
you got to learn to make your stand
and it's one two three four
look at the sky you can open the door
and take my hand
take my hand
take my hand
ah don't you want to touch
don't you want to feel
don't you know that this is real
i said shelter me
shelter me
shelter me
shelter me
and save yourself
save yourself
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save your
save
and you
you
and you are a part of the world
you you are a part of the world
you gotta learn to touch to feel
and know that you are real
i said learn learn
you are a part of the world
words and music bob dylan
as performed on live at the uptown lounge

Down the Amazon

Well, I enjoyed myself at the opera last night.  Catan's "Florencia En El Amazonas" is a nice show, nice music and good singing.  I was glad I went.  My favorite part was seeing Beth Clayton again, such a great voice and her expressiveness reached all the way to the highest back row where I was sitting.  I was quite moved by her 2nd act aria of lament.  The tenor's aria about flying in Act I was also beautiful moment.  I also enjoyed the lead soprano, Pamela Armstrong, and her aria which closes the opera was quite lovely.  It was fun to see Keith Miller after seeing him in HD Met broadcasts of "Armida" and "Anna Bolena," and there was a nice home crowd for him since he played football at CU!

As a work, "Florencia" is nice, as I said, though not perhaps rising to "great."  It's a 2-hour opera and I felt at times that ideas (musically, thematically, dramatically) were not fully developed, and I wanted to say, "Oh, say/sing just a little more about that...."  Perhaps I have been seeing too much Wagner lately!  But I did enjoy it and actually would see it again...but not from the back row of this house.

This was my first time at the "Ellie" and while the house itself is lovely, the experience from the next to last row of the balcony had issues.  First, the seats themselves up there are high off the floor -- it is like climbing up and perching on a bar stool, complete with a bar to rest your feet on, if the person in front of you doesn't sit back, as the seat back reclines and then you lose foot space.  It was not at all comfortable, and I wondered what someone with different physical capabilities than myself would do. 

I also found that the acoustics were not great either.  I could hear the orchestra just fine, but the singers were sometimes covered by the orchestra, even in chorus.  I wondered if at first it was a problem of an individual singer but then realized it was consistent no matter who or how many were singing.  I could hear every nuance of the timpani but could lose a singer entirely.

I think if I were to go back for an Opera Colorado production, it would have to be something or someone quite special (I mean, I really went to this mostly to see Beth).  At the Met HD broadcasts they almost always plug "going to your local opera company," not just the Met.  But the fact is, for half of what I paid for last night (ticket, ticket processing fee, parking), I can see the Met from the front row in a comfortable chair with my feet on the floor. 

Now, I am listening the Met radio broadcast of "L'Elisir..." Happy Saturday!