Category Archives: art

A Sled and a Hill

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Sliding

When was the last time you pulled a sled up a snowy hill, jumped on it, and whooshed all the way back to the bottom? Do you remember what it feels like – wind whipping, snow spraying, the sound of the sled against the snow? How many times did you tromp up and fly down the white hill before it was time to go home? Can you remember the sheer joy of it all, or do you remember only the cold feet and hands, the chapped lips? If given the chance, would you grab a sled and do it again?

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a sled on a hill. It could be a tire swing in the back yard, a pile of crisp leaves, waves on the beach, a polished bannister. Floating sticks a la Winnie the Pooh works, or any number of other things. They offer us wonder and drop us into the mystery of this world and our own lives. And that is no small thing.

I suspect that it might be the most direct way most of us come to what is most sacred – the sheer joy that there is this creation, and the wonder that you and I are part of it.

Mailbox Blessings

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Masked Angels by Thom Nordquist (2020)

Every year, Thom Nordquist created a new card. I’m lucky enough to have several of them. This is one that came in 2020 – a lovely piece of art and connection in a time of isolation.

Magi by Thom Nordquist

Thom created the Magi card for an Advent activity – mailing post cards of Advent travelers out into the world to connect the Christ Church community in Plymouth with family and friends near and far a la Flat Stanley.

After Thom’s death, his wife Ellen gave me framed editions of the originals. They are in my work space year round and in my living room during the holiday season.

I admire the artistry in these cards. Even more, I am touched by the effort and intention that went into their creation. They are reminders that love and kindness, regard and concern, can show up in many forms. Such blessings make their way though that holy gate commonly known as a mailbox.

Carded

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I have a couple of boxes filled with ones my husband sent, ones my sons created at school or home, and even one with my grandmother’s handwriting preserved inside. I use my favorites as bookmarks long after the day they arrived in my mailbox. They are little pieces of words and images that remind me of the ones who sent them and the occasion for the sending. Cards.

The one above is Saint Matthew, sent as a Christmas card from my mentor and college advisor, John Rouman. He was the one who introduced me to Greek Orthodoxy – something that ended up being the beginning of what would years later become my dissertation. Every time I see this card holding my place in my latest read, I think of him and how he changed my life.

Not all cards are touchstones to such things, but many are signs of care and concern offered in a particular place and a particular time. As I begin this new year, I’m going to take a look at some of them. If you are inclined to do the same, get your stack of cards ready…

Perfect Turn of Phrase

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Why the gods above me think so little of me…

Whether near to me or far…

I love Paris in the Springtime…

It’s a perfect collaboration – Cole Porter’s words and music, Ella Fitzgerald’s perfection in bringing them to life. Something comes into being that continues to be as amazing today as it was in 1956. Timeless and equally of its time. Words and delivery coming together in a way that heightens both. I’m more fully human because I’ve spent time with this music.

I feel the same thing every so often when someone standing at a lectern offers words of scripture, occasionally even singing them. Ancient words oft repeated, suddenly alive in a new way – and offering life to all who hear them.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve, 1956

Unexpected

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It was a gift I didn’t request, didn’t really want, but received on Christmas, 1985. When I finally slipped the album out of the cover just after New Year’s and a day before meeting up with the person who gave it to me, I just wanted to be familiar enough with the songs to prove that I’d actually listened to it. But there was something about Brothers In Arms that kept me playing it over and over again. Walk of Life and Money for Nothing were instant favorites, but it’s the title song that haunts. I’d seen enough of pain, loss, and death to realize how little I knew of pain, loss, and death. Listening to Brothers In Arms, I understood the Vale of Tears, the Shadow of the Valley of Death in a whole new way – Biblical imagery wed to life. And that we cause the suffering and death ourselves far too often.

For this one song, it would be on my top ten list…but the rest of the album is amazing, too.

Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms, Vertigo Records, AIR Salem, Montserrat and Power Station (NYC),1985

It Takes Two…and four more to complete the band

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It’s only 34 minutes long, put out in the beginning of 1963 by Impulse!Records. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new – or I understand something emerging that I hadn’t before. Not one note feels forced in this conversation, and there’s almost an inevitability to one note following another. How is it that the living give-and-take of jazz can feel almost predetermined? It’s a musical mystery.

It makes me wonder about all the many choices that brought me to this point in life – the where of it, the ones I call family and friends, and all the other particulars that would not have been the same had my life taken a different road on this life’s journey. If I hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…What would the particulars of this life I call mine be? If you hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…Fill in your own answers.

Had Duke Ellington and John Coltrane recorded a different take on all seven of these songs, I’m sure it would still be on this top ten list: the spirit would be the same even if the particulars within the frame of the songs weren’t. I’m inclined to think the same is true of life in general.

Still, I’m grateful that the years God has granted me have brought these particulars.

Duke Ellington and John Coltrane

What A Dream I Had…

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A man waits in the shadows…

I held your hand…

Slow down, you move too fast…life, I love you…

and the shadows wash the room…cast in our indifference…and you read your Emily Dickenson, and I my Robert Frost…

Home, where love lies waiting silently for me…

Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine…

It’s poetry set to music – the voice of an age of war and protest, the voice of life seeking fulfillment. It tugs at my soul, asking questions of life and meaning. Do I sleep, unaware of the clarion call? Of course, I do. Do I move through my days too fast/quickly? Certainly. Haunting lyrics, in the best sense. Gentle, tuneful, beautiful: the union of voice, meter, key, and word. The same could be said of almost any album Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel created. I chose this one because I sang most of these songs in high school chorus.

What a wonderful introduction to existential questions and a glimpse of what is sacred and usually overlooked. I’m quite convinced that it’s one of the reasons I asked the questions that guided much of my seeking God’s face in those around me.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Simon and Garfunkel, Columbia ia Records, October 10, 1966.

On the Road – Again

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I was five years old when it was released in 1969, too young to realize its genius. And way too young to know how difficult it is to create something beautiful, meaningful, or tuneful when disagreements threaten friendships and working relationships both. The four of them went on to do more, but there was no reunion tour. The sum was greater than the measure of its parts – brilliant parts though they were.

It makes me wonder what beauty might come out of other difficult things…

What is your favorite from the Fab Four?

Abbey Road, The Beatles, Released September 26, 1969, Apple Records

Holiday in the Air

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It was in every one of my relatives’ homes, a constant in otherwise very diverse record collections. It’s one of the first albums that comes up in the Christmas Apple playlists. Bing’s versions of White Christmas and Silent Night nestle among more contemporary tunes and artists in malls and restaurants throughout the holiday season.

The album is a mix of Christmas hymns and secular holiday songs; I’ve known every word of every song for well over fifty years – something I can’t say about many albums. Each time I listen to it, some memory of past holidays surfaces – my aunt making fruit compote, my grandfather drinking tea out of his saucer, going outside after decorating the tree to see it twinkle in my grandmother’s bay window, decorating a tree with friends in my Dover apartment. It is an auditory touchstone.

Is it the only or best Christmas album I own? No. Is it the most important as far as what it has added to my approach to the Nativity? Yes. It has been part of the soundtrack of my life as far back as I can remember, and I suspect it will continue to be so – even if and when memory fails.

Wish You Were Comfortably Numb…

There is no pain. Do you think you can tell heaven from hell? All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall. Pink Floyd lyrics are amazing, but add the music and they are mesmerizing. Existential angst and a peek at the darkness that lives inside every human heart shoot through the music and I greet them. Their presence within me is released, if only for the few minutes between opening chords and final notes. They are true to life, a truth that sitcoms and Hallmark movies do their best to deny or cover up.

But they aren’t the only truths, nor the deepest ones. They aren’t the final word, nor are they the ultimate narrative of a life well and deeply lived. In the end, it’s love and a benediction that close the book of life. Amen.

Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd – on the top ten:

Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd