Learning Something Old and New

At the Amherst Early Music Festival, we gather to engage with music from Renaissance and Baroque periods. Some instruments are eccentric, with strange names like sackbut or cornamuse. Many of us are equally as quirky.

This year I started learning how to play music directly from the hand written or printed notation that was used 500 years ago. As the sample shows, it is only slightly similar to what is currently used, and many of the modern conventions had not been established until later in history.

It is fascinating to make music reading the same images on paper used by musicians more than a dozen generations ago. As one teacher said after practicing a five-part piece over an hour, “I wonder if this is the first time anyone has heard this music in the last 500 years!” That is pretty heady stuff. But my head could also get in the way.

Learning anything entirely new, especially as an adult, takes one back to feeling like a child. Playing from early musical notation led to feelings of ineptness, stupidity and embarrassment, and was deeply humbling. I have had to let go of deeply trained and ingrained habits, and needed to re-learn what to expect from the paper with black ink in front of me.

Those with more experience told me the ways that they adjusted, but all emphasized the importance of relying on my sense of musicality instead of specific rules or techniques. I needed to find a way to trust what I know about music, and to keep my analytical mind out of the way. Trying to process it intellectually while sight reading is impossible.

It is like learning a new language as an adult. You can learn the various verb tenses and memorize definitions of new words. But when speaking to someone, you cannot pause for several seconds to mentally flip through the dictionary in your head. It needs to become much more intuitive and automatic.

It is hard to let go of the sense of control that one’s intellect provides. There were times when the panic would set in, when I felt so overwhelmed there seemed no point in going on. My brain could not process all of what it needed to do any faster, and I would sink into despair.

I tried to monitor myself for those times and then intentionally let go of my anxiety, taking a few deep breaths and put down my instrument. If I could just listen to those playing around me, read the notes and let myself begin to hear the music again, I would settle down. I had to get out of my head and listen with the rest of who I am.

Taking the time to listen to those around me and how they would play a passage a particular way, I began to understand how the rules fit into the music. Each class I would have at least one “Aha” moment in which I saw the why a rule was needed, and the role it played. By discovering those patterns and learning how to recognize them in the process of making the music, I understood it better and was able to apply it more easily n the future.

Eventually, I could pick up my instrument and try again, a bit humbler though more confident that I was understanding the music at a much deeper level.

Curiously, much of what I have described here I have been learning on my spiritual journey. I have worked on the problem of getting stuck in my head. I have learned that I need to find time to withdraw and relax my view of things. I have begun to trust in the knowledge that there is a deeper level which will understand things.

Starting Anew

When people who are seeking a spiritual director phone me to set up that first meeting, I experience a wide range of thoughts and emotions. Having searched for a new spiritual director two times now, I have a sense of what is involved. So, let me describe that process of starting anew as spiritual companions.

I had been given the name of my first spiritual director by my therapist several weeks before I made that first phone call. I kept stalling, not sure if I was ready to take the plunge. When I got her answering machine, I was a bit relieved to leave a short message. But once we started talking on the phone and found several things that we had in common, my anxiety level dropped and I was ready to begin.

When someone telephones me to see if I am available, I am never expecting the call. There is no special phone number, no special office hours so the call could come anytime during my ordinary day. I have to stop whatever it is I am doing and decide if it is a good time to talk. It might be better to set-up a better time when I can focus on the series of questions that help both of us to decide if we will move onto the next step. We need to determine whether our schedules will match-up, what the directee is looking for and what I am trained to provide before scheduling our first meeting.

Sometimes the phone conversation provides a preview about who this person is and what led him or her to reach out. Often there is some specific event, either positive or negative, that started the search. Other times the person is experiencing a staleness or stuckness in his or her journey in faith, and wants to know how to get moving again.

When I first called my first spiritual director, I was in the “feeling stale” situation. I had started a regular time for Morning Prayer a few years earlier, and it was feeling monotonous. I did not want to give it up, but I had no idea how to keep it fresh either. There was also a sense of wanting more, a desire to go deeper than I could with people in my church community who became anxious with my questions about God.

The first face-to-face meeting is often filled with hope that the relationship will be productive and spirit graced. At the same time these is some anxiety for both persons as they consider entering a mutual commitment to an ongoing spiritual direction relationship.

In forming any new relationship, there are questions about who this new person is and how trustworthy he or she will be. I like a conversation where we are each telling the other our personal backgrounds, looking to see where there are similar issues and approaches to life and faith. If there is not some common ground, the relationship may not have enough shared experience to build upon. Either one of us might decide not to continue.

I remember feeling reassured the first time I met with a spiritual director. We had similar experiences and I left with some new ideas of how to enhance my daily Morning Prayer time. Most importantly, she affirmed the yearning I felt for connecting to something beyond my current life.

We continued our relationship for six years, and it was hard to end it. But both of our circumstances had changed, and each needed to move into new things. I knew I needed a different kind of director, with a different focus and skills, and began to seek a new director.

I did not know where that first meeting would lead, and as I look back now, I am deeply appreciative of taking that leap. It did not seem a big leap at the time, but it has led me into a rich new understanding of God. The journey has been scary and challenging alongside the times of satisfaction and newness. I would not have done it by myself. Having a companion has made it possible.

Intimate Wrestling

While researching the story of Jacob with the angel, I looked for images available on the Internet. This drawing by Bonnat makes it dramatically visible how intimate wrestling is. Bare flesh against bare flesh, and faces held just inches from each other. The intimacy is not just physical. It includes all aspects of a person, such as the emotional and intellectual, as two persons battle to gain the upper hand, moving into a position of power.

How does this adult who avoided wrestling in high school gym class engage with this image? As a teenage male, holding another boy closely made me anxious. It was too close to the intimacy I desired even though society told me it was wrong. Even now, I want to avoid the intensity of wrestling, especially with God.

So, how can any of us put himself or herself into this story am imagine we can wrestle with God? As I try to picture what that would be like, I want to make it into an interior rather than an exterior struggle. I am good at intellectual manipulation of ideas and thoughts. That feels much safer. Yet, my own body betrays me with a knot in my stomach and tight shoulders. I am wholly caught up in the struggle.

One of my cherished images of God is a companion on my journey. I have been comforted by the idea of God walking beside me, often in silence, but there to turn to as I needed. There has been a comfortable distance between us, the equivalent of the 30 or so inches that social norms require for friendship. So, when did the One who has been nearby but not deeply engaged become so closely and intensely entangled in my life?

Didn’t I keep saying, praying, and hoping for a closer relationship with God? But I did not expect this kind of conflict between us, this struggle over who would be stronger. I want God to do it my way. Just like Jacob, I want to define the direction and set my own goals.

How dare I take on the all powerful, all knowing creator of my own flesh? Not only is it dangerous but it is totally foolish. There really would have been no match if God chose to be all powerful creator of the universe. I would have been beaten into submission at the first sign of my resistance. Maybe this is an invitation from God to move into a new level of relationship, or intimacy?

Wrestling with Jacob - Reading the Genesis account

At the urging of my spiritual director, I have been reading, marking and inwardly digesting the story in which Jacob struggles with the angel throughout the night (Genesis 32:24-31). She was responding to my describing myself as wrestling with God. So here are some initial thoughts on the Biblical story.

I have a hard time identifying with Jacob, and a brief scan of the preceding chapters reminds me why. You may remember Jacob and his twin brother Esau wrestled in their mother’s womb, but Jacob was born second. As a young man Jacob bought Esau’s birthright for some stew, then deceived his father Isaac to receive the blessing meant for his first-born brother. After Jacob fled fearing recrimination, he is deceived by his father-in-law-to-be into marrying the Leah, the older sister before being allowed to marry her more desirable younger sister Rachel. (I will skip over any discussion of polygamy being the norm for parts of scripture, and ignore the role of Leah’s and Rachel’s maids as fore-mothers of Israel’s tribes. Family values were different in those times!)

At the time we pick up the story, Jacob was facing an encounter with Esau who he had fled some twenty years earlier. The story in Genesis doesn’t say where the man came from who wrestled with Jacob, or even specifically who he was. However, they fought throughout the night with Jacob stubbornly continuing to wrestle, unwilling to give up even though the man put Jacob’s hip out of joint.

I may be stubborn, but not that stubborn. While I recognize some similarity between my life and Jacob, I don’t want to believe I am as deeply as flawed as him. Yes, I deceived my family about my sexuality until I was in my mid twenties, and I tried to be someone I wasn’t to make them and everyone else like me more. Yes, I fled from my parent’s home, attempting to use physical distance from them to establish my own, separate life path. Yes, I hid my relationships from my parents because I was quite sure they would never accept my same sex partners.

Alright, I’ll admit maybe I have done some of the same things and may be a little bit more like Jacob than I want to admit. But I don’t expect to become the father of an entire religious faith, either. Having no children of my own would seem to end that similarity.

So, to see if there are things not visible in the English translation, I read a few scripture commentaries and learned that there are many identities that have been seen in the angel. A common one is the angel is God or at least representing God, but others see Satan or an internal battle of Jacob wrestling with his own internal demons. In my own reading of the story, my wrestling is with God, my will against God’s will, with God trying to make me submit and acknowledge God’s overpowering strength.

I am not willing to submit, though. I find myself going against all of the spiritual masters who say I must submit to God. While there have been times during the wrestling that I will do that briefly, I also know that I am not going to give up. I refuse to lay down my claim to pursue what I deeply believe I have been called to be and to do.

What gets me angry is that this is a very different God than the one who I have known. I have seen God as a companion on my journey, who encouraged my creativity and effectiveness, walking beside me to provide support and encouragement.

What caused the wrestling? What has changed?

Living Openly and Honestly

A recent interview of Bishop V. Gene Robinson in the Church Times, a British newspaper, reminded me of the challenge that gay and lesbian clergy experience in trying to live openly and honestly. In the interview, the Bishop notes:

The degree of openness with which one lives one’s life is a very personal choice. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong about that. The question for any gay or lesbian person is: “Is the price that I’m paying for being quiet exceeding the benefit?

Bishop Robinson is pointing to an unstated contract from the church and society to clergy people who hide their differences in sexual orientation. Society and the church hierarchy will leave gay and lesbian persons alone if those persons do nothing to upset the status quo or to raise suspicions. It is very similar to the military policy of “Don’t ask and don’t tell.” It is a very attractive option that makes the personal price seem reasonable, while also carrying a threat for those who violate the contract.

It is difficult for clergy to hide their personal lives because they are in such public roles. Everything they say or do is watched. One of the common dilemmas of an apparently single clergyperson is the well meaning church member acting as a matchmaker. If the person is not heterosexual and is hiding that, dealing with the situation requires constant energy and self-monitoring.

Twenty five years ago my ordained gay and lesbian friends paid a tremendous price for being ordained. They chose hiding that significant part of their sexuality so they could be ordained. The price was in their being dishonest, telling lies, and hiding any relationships. The emotional strain on my friends was clear. A relationship with a significant partner was almost impossible, requiring clandestine behavior which led to a feeling of shame by one or both persons. The alternatives of forced celibacy or promiscuous sex were equally shame producing and destructive to any sense of integrity. However, those persons felt the price was necessary to respond to their call from God.

Fortunately in the United States the price for being openly gay or lesbian has dropped considerably in the last 25 years. As more and more people tell their friends, family, co-workers and churches about themselves, the specter of prejudice and strangeness disappears. As people are seen for who they are, the ignorance and old assumptions are replaced by real, living, ordinary human beings. It has been happening one person at a time, and will continue to happen as long as open and honest conversations can be held.

For all of the progress that has occurred, there are still many dangers in living openly and honestly. It is seen in the death threats that Bishop Robinson receives, that require him to wear a bullet-proof vest and hire security guards in certain public settings. It is seen in need of gay and lesbian clergy to have a private meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is seen in pressure put upon an openly gay clergyman to withdraw from becoming a bishop in the Church of England.

The personal dangers also became visible to many in the Episcopal Church who were shocked by the vicious and violent statements and actions in response to consecration of Bishop Robinson. We had deluded ourselves about how much progress has been made. We had forgotten how an open and honest persons threatens society that demands secrecy and lies to protect the status quo.

In his book In the Eye of the Storm Gene Robinson describes making the decision to stop hiding and lying to himself, his family, his friends and the church. He expected to pay the price by losing his ability to be a priest, but found welcome and acceptance. Instead of rejection, his call was affirmed and his ministry grew even to the point of being elected to the episcopacy.

I am proud of how Bishop Robinson is able to stand openly and honestly as a person of faith who knows God is with him. I realize he will make mistakes and will do things that will disappoint me. I pray that he might feel the support of so many who are deeply moved by who he is and who he is becoming. I hope my prayer, joined with many others around the world, will keep him safe from the dangers he faces from within and without. May God continue to be present with him, for him and in him in the weeks, months and years of struggle still ahead.

Proceed as the Way Opens

Reading a new-to-me book, Writing the Sacred Journey*, I was surprised by the use of the Quaker phrase “proceed as the way opens.” In the context, it describes an attitude toward writing which respects the ambiguity of the process by allowing the emerging of the words to define the direction and content of what is being written.

Of course, the Quakers are describing an attitude toward the journey of life that doesn’t expect all of the steps to be clear from the beginning, and that expects God will keep showing where to go a bit at a time. The process of discerning where to go is not settled, but must continually be engaged, requiring an ongoing sensitivity to God and listening to one’s life.

This is not to say that this is the only Quaker approach to life and decisions. In fact, the Quakers developed a very different approach in the “clearness committees” to assist individuals to explore what they believe might be a call from God for action. In the clearness process a group of people listens to the individual and asks questions, so that the possible blind spots or unconsidered aspect of the decision can be more deeply explored. It takes advantage of the wisdom of a variety of perspectives to improve the discernment.

They are not mutually exclusive, and both forms could and would be used by the same person or persons at different times. But, it strikes me how regularly I have seen the model of the clearness committee described, adapted and used in both church and society. Yet only this day have I discovered its sibling decision making process of “proceeding as the way opens.”

What does it say about us as people and our society that we expect the clarity to be obtained through a clearness committee and we avoid the ambiguity and insecurity implied by proceeding as the way opens?

I know I want clarity even though my life is mostly lived in watching and wondering what will open up. Openness in this sense is living in the moment, acting in response to ordinary everyday experience. I must pay attention to the world, people, and to God around me.

Just this morning Glenda, who is a priest in Panama, called to me as I walked through the Metro station. If I had not heard her call my name, which I can easily do when I am focused on my clear agenda of getting to my train, I would not have had the pleasure of our short hug and sharing of greetings. God opened a way for us to reconnect.

I am learning to appreciate and trust God will be with me as I proceed as the way opens, even if I am still learning. I certainly have used it as I have written this!

*Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir by Elizabeth J. Andrew p. 17

Crying at Baptims

This Pentecost with the baptism of an infant, Karl, as well as his mother, I found myself crying again. It started early in the presentation and reached full flow when I joined the rest of the congregation in saying “We receive you into the household of God . . .”

I have been much more aware of my emotions during church services in the last few years, and am still learning to adjust to them. Often during some point in the Eucharistic Prayer a few words will suddenly jump out at me, speaking directly to something I have been dealing with in my life. I believe it is a gift, God wanting to reassure me. That doesn’t make it any easier.

It can become incredibly awkward since men are not supposed to be emotional. I have decided that I am not going to stifle the emotions just to make other people more comfortable. That would feel like I am stifling God. In consideration for other’s sensitivities when the crying starts, I wait until people are busy making a joyful noise singing a hymn to blow my nose. Or, when my eyes are full of tears, I blink them back until there is a time for prayer and people are supposed to be paying attention to God rather than the guy several feet away who is dabbing his eyes.

I should not have been surprised by the tears last Sunday, as I looked at the parents and their young son. I saw their hope for Karl and the love of those standing with them. Baptism is a time for hope, for bringing the salvation of Christ into his life and in the welcoming him into a community that pledges to teach and encourage him into the faith.

Alongside that hope, I thought of all of the pain and grief that Karl would experience in growing up and becoming a mature person in faith. I wondered what kinds of problems he will encounter in his life, and if he would be overwhelmed by situations. I prayed that he will be given the strength and courage to face those problems.

The sadness grew because there is nothing any of us, including his parents, his godparents or the rest of the community can do to keep that pain away or to protect this young infant from all that will happen. He alone will have to find his way to cope with and overcome the turmoil. I wish it could be different.

So, one more Sunday, I had to stuff my damp handkerchief into my pocket before turning to those around me to exchange the Peace of God, my eyes still damp from tears, and feeling a bit foolish. Foolish for caring about what might happen to Karl. Foolish for wanting to be emotionally open to God and for God.