scratchings of a churchmouse

Lully Lulla

2009-12-21T21:06:00.004-05:00

Something I like about the Western Christmas tradition is how many Christmas carols are lullabies. Silent Night and Away in a Manger are definitely written in the style of a lullaby, and there are ones I know of in French, German and Dutch as well. Some are actual lullabies not addressed to the Christ child but to some mother's baby as she reflects on the birth of Christ.

Maybe it's because I am nursing my second child this Christmas, that I notice these things. And I wonder, these folk carols that have come down to us through many generations, were they written by clergy to bring the message of the incarnation home to average folk--those nursing and caring for infants? Or were they written by the women themselves--woven out of the already existing nursery melodies and the readings and hymns they heard in Church?

Or was it just the fact of the Baby Jesus himself that inspired the young men and the old bards to compose songs like this?

Whatever the case, there is something about singing my baby to sleep that can feel like one of the most sacred moments in my life as a mother. However much my baby screams, fusses, squirms, poops, or spits up when awake, in this moment I can reflect on the Eternity present in the tiny soul resting in my arms, and on the mystery of my Lord born in this same way of a woman.

Some of the lullabies mention Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and while this might seem gruesomely out of place, there is a sense in which all lullabies are bittersweet, and have a dark undertone. I comfort my babies, making them feel utterly safe and loved, and yet I know that the world outside my home, my arms (and even within my arms--the darkness of my own soul!) is a dark and dangerous place, marred by sin and death.

I just went to my two year old son who woke up with a bad dream, and stroking his head found myself whispering--it's all right. Everything is all right. And I caught myself wondering, But is it?

And this is the joy, for me, of anticipating Christmas. Because it is! Light in the darkness. God made flesh. The Lord is Come! Emmanuel! He has put on our flesh to restore the fallen image, to save us from sin and death.

It is a special thing to contemplate and celebrate the Feast of the Nativity as a mother of young children. These little, squalid, Wonders.

And we say, "How can this be?..."

"My cup overflows..."

2006-11-12T20:06:00.000-05:00

Matthew and I have been reading the remarkable story of Mother Gavrilia (1897-1992), "The Ascetic of Love."

Throughout her diverse travels and various places of service: podiatrist in England and Greece during WWII, Physiotherapist in India working with lepers, as spiritual guide to many as a nun and public speaker (to name only a few of the different things she did), her humility and constant love for all who came her way were evident.

In a letter to a friend in 1955 she wrote:

The more time goes by, the more I understand why the Lord gave me such an outstanding mother. Because for me she was Love and nothing else. This is why I can love everybody and everything. I never had to make an effort for that and to this day I do not.

Reading about her life and attitude to life, I become painfully aware of how constantly I judge: myself, others, even God. I am so busy fretting about what is not right with the world, that I do not see the other.

I learned such important lessons in the work I was given this last year with people who have disabilities. Many of them are defined and described in the field by the "behaviours" they have--"behaviours" being rather distressing jargon for socially unacceptable or negative behaviour. I could never get quite used to using that system of seeing them. I saw cries for love and affection, for understanding, for attentiveness to their being. I saw protests against insecurity, indignity, and indifference.

I saw that Love manifested as listening, respect, time taken, personal vulnerability and honesty towards them, and freedom to make their own choices tended to "improve" these "behaviours" far more successfully than "behaviour protocols" manifested as "warning", "consequence," "reinforcement" etc...

Many of the people I had the privilege of getting to know had spent much of their lives (sometimes including their infancy) in institutions, where personal attention, committed relationships, individuality, privacy, agency, personal voice were minimized necessarily for the sheer pragmatic purpose of preventing chaos in a mass-living situation.

I was able to easily forgive, overlook, tolerate, and bear these "behaviours" which seemed to stem so clearly from the lack of absolute love and security for such a large part of their lives.

I have a reason for telling you this.

I have apparently not actually learned anything at all. Back to Mother Gavrilia's words:

The more time goes by, the more I understand why the Lord gave me such an outstanding mother. Because for me she was Love and nothing else. This is why I can love everybody and everything. I never had to make an effort for that and to this day I do not.

What I learned working in the homes of the people I supported, and in visiting the institutions they came from has not translated into the rest of my life. I do not look at the people around me, my friends, fellow parishioners, family members, my husband, strangers on the street, at the store, --people who complain, who get angry and frustrated, who are rude to me and others, who are impatient, intolerant, quick to jump to conclusions, unwilling to listen or compromise, violent, offensive, selfish, or thoughtless--with the same love, patience and perception which Mother Gavrilia exemplifies and which I strove for in the work I did.

What I have failed to recognize is that we have all grown up in institutions. We have all been deprived of the perfect and complete love of God for which we were made because we were raised amongst broken and malfunctioning human hearts just like the ones we ourselves possess. All of us. To varying degrees. We have grown up in the Institution that is this wounded world.

What Mother Gavrilia is saying is that the love we have been given enables us in turn to love.
Lovelessly I judge those who do not love. When what I could be doing is loving them...adding a small drop to their cup which, given enough drops may one day overflow into the world somewhere else however unlikely it may seem that someone so fearful and bitter and hurt could love...

As my belly grows with the child inside me I am profoundly impressed with the opportunity I'm being given to offer one person Love as completely as I am able, by God's mercy, and the profound effect it will have on this person's ability to love and forebear in future the many people they will meet and the manifold suffering this world will allow them. This little one will be born with a cup in its heart which I will instinctively and naturally desire to fill to overflowing...

Thank God for the instinctive natural part of being a mother...it gives a sinner like me such a head start!

The Lord is my Shepherd
I shall not want
He makes me to lie down in green pastures
He leads me beside still waters
He restores my soul

He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake
Even though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death
I fear no evil
for You are with me
Your rod and your staff,
they comfort me

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies
You anoint my head with oil
My cup overflows

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

This psalm has become my theme, my meditation during this, my first pregnancy, and my preparation for parenthood.

The Lord is leading me, has led me, beside still waters. He has restored, is restoring my soul. I feel endlessly grateful for the bountiful love both Matthew and I received as children from our parents and how much it is already enabling us to prepare to love our own little one.

I feel surrounded by the love of my husband, my parents, close friends, and our church as this child grows and prepares to be born, as I grow and prepare to be reborn a mother. Unaccountably when I read "I shall not want", "He restores my soul" and "You anoint my head with oil" I feel that they are true of me right now. And I know that this love and security will be my comfort when I do walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, when God leads me in paths of Righteousness where I am challenged to grow and to obey Him, when I am given opportunities to suffer for His sake.

I don't think it's just a matter of being able to love because I have been loved, or am being loved, by others. I think I also have a choice to open myself now to God's love; to trust, to know in faith that it is flowing to me

To sit at the table He has prepared for me, though many trials and much darkness surrounds me

And to stay there, knowing that His goodness and love does follow me and will follow me

As I begin to overflow and am compelled to direct that overflowing to those around me, to the little one inside me.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Teach me to love!

A new thing

2006-08-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

Matthew and I are two separate people, and consequently we have two separate blogs. However, we have become a part of something in which we are so entangledly mutually complicit, blessed, responsible, involved, affected, rejoiced, changed, excited and bewildered... that we've decided to start a blog together so we can share it with you.

Go check it out.

(Consider this our formal announcement)

okay, okay

2006-08-01T19:31:00.000-04:00

And I tag Biss. (sorry)
(not really)
(not really sorry that is)

1. One book that changed your life:

The Road Less Travelled by M. Scott Peck

I was twenty. I was home for a year off after two years of college. I was having an existential crisis of sorts. I read this and had an awakening to my ability to make my own decisions and take responsiblity for my life, my circumstances, and the choices I make... in a hopeful, non-angsty way (in contrast to the distressing perspective described by Sartre, whom I'd been reading earlier that year). There's more to it than that, but it gives you an idea...

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:

Jane Eyre by Charolotte Bronte (4 or 5 times since I was 15)

3. One book you’d want on a desert island:

The Psalter

4. One book that made you laugh:

Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland

(*spoiler alert! spoiler alert!*)
especially when liz's sister comes over to find out why there's a handsome young man 16 years younger than liz with no shirt on walking around liz's apartment and answering her phone calls, not realizing that he is actually liz's long lost son the sister never new about... you gotta read it, though...

5. One book that made you cry:

I can't think. If I'm engrossed enough in a book to cry, I'm probably too engrossed to notice, or remember later, that I'm crying. I might have cried when I read Courage to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

6. One book that you wish had been written:

Knitting: Orthodox Reflections and Prayers for Expecting Mothers

7. One book that you wish had never been written:

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

-disclaimer: I don't wish Roy never wrote a book set in Kerala, or that some of her characters were never developed, but I wish the darkness and bitterness of her mind would not have kept the book completely void of any hope or redemption, and that she had not inflicted that darkness and bitterness on her readers in the twisted way the plot culminates.

8. One book you’re currently reading:

When I say No I Feel Guilty

a hilariously 'seventies approach to assertiveness training! with some helpful insights on how we manipulate others and are manipulated by others rather than just being gently straightforward about what we think and what we want and respectfully working towards agreement or compromise.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:

The Absent Body by Drew Leder

the jacket illustration is Magritte's Le Pelerin, an image of a man in a suit and a bowler hat, except his face has been removed from between the suit and the bowler hat and is floating in the air at the appropriate hight about a foot to the right of where it should be.

in fact I might just go read it right now. It's been on Matthew's "Philosophy Shelf" since before we were married.

2006-06-27T11:08:00.000-04:00

There aren't enough trees in this neighbourhood, but at night, when the lights in the street reflect in the wet pavement after a summer's rain, it is beautiful.

And when the cars whisper, rush and swish past our street down Somerset, they can be confused with the sound of angels' wings rustling,

and the moving shadows of leaves on a patch of shining asphalt could be mistaken for their movements as they hover in their ministrations,

gently nudging us back from the edges of forgetfulness and despair.

the in be tween

2006-06-07T23:55:00.000-04:00

This ascension I have been unaccountably filled with thoughts about the spiritual father I lost this year. My Bishop reminded me that I have not lost Papa John, that Papa John's proximity to God makes him more close to me, more available to me in prayer, than he was while still alive with us. This has been so difficult to accept when the blessing of his immediate presence is still so real in my memory, more real, though in my memory, than my faith in his presence with us through Christ. I imagine some of my feelings must be like what some of the disciples experienced: I have so many questions I still hadn't had a chance to ask! Who else can I tell this to, who will understand and know exactly what to say? It doesn't feel the same without him here. How will I continue to grow, to change, to be healed, without seeing his face, feeling his love, exeriencing his embrace?

In a recent sermon one of our priests described the two icons on either side of the royal doors as the Icon of Christ's First Coming (Theotokos/Incarnation) and the Icon of Christ's Second Coming (Christ Pantocrator). We enter into worship between those two realities: at the altar where we celebrate Christ's mystical presence with us now, in the Holy Eucharist.

Perhaps if I keep alive my longing, keep receiving Communion, keep waiting for the Lord (more than the watchmen wait for the morning)...perhaps then I will begin to understand.

All this puts the coming of the Holy Spirit in a fresh light for me, and I understand in a new way why He is called the Comforter.

After Ascension, Before Pentecost.

2006-06-07T23:06:00.000-04:00

My good friend Shannon (of "little" fame) sent me this a few days ago. It is a meditation she shared during one of the Ascension services at her Anglican church. I read it just as I was realizing the bearing of my most recent post on this mysterious time of the liturgical year.

“The end of all things is at hand; be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer.”

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen +

Here on this evening of the feast of the ascension it is important that we understand our bereavement of the Son of God.

When Christ withdrew into heaven, the disciples must have been left in a state of joyous sorrow. They had lost Him once to death, and now again, to glory. Surely they must have known their cups to be full in those 40 days after the Resurrection. To wake every morning with the risen Christ among them, to have the revelation of God in human person, The Son, present with them, their friend and their hope.

But when Christ withdrew, how could they not be bereft, even with angels assuring them of His return, even with the promise of the coming of a comforter?

Some of us may know what it is to loose our connection to one who, for us, holds the Wisdom, a spiritual Father, mother, mentor or even a friend. When our path is no longer illumined by their presence, their teaching or their personal encouragement to us—we miss them sorely and wonder how we will know the light of wisdom in our hearts again.

And so how can this not be also with the disciples who beheld the human face of God?

Between the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost marks this place of absence, and it is good if we pause here, for as Father Snook said in his sermon last Thursday, this place of pain is the birth place of faith. We do not need the coming of a comforter unless we know we are bereft God.

I quote a sermon from Father Crouse:

What does the Ascension mean? Remember that incident in the Easter garden, when Mary Magdalene longs to embrace the risen Lord? And he says "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to the Father." (John 20.17) The point is this: those who follow him must be weaned from earthly hopes and expectations. The earthly, the fleshly, must be transformed, transfigured, so that we see its true reality as spiritual. In that sense, he must depart from us, and it is expedient that he go away. "The flesh profiteth nothing," he tells us, "the words I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (John 6.63) In the travail of earthly life, we must give birth to faith, a faith which knows God as Spirit. And thus he returns to us in the power of the Spirit, and that is Pentecost.

With the coming of the Holy Spirit begins a new order.

In this empty space I know my poverty. In the light of the glory of his ascension, I can know how insignificant I am, relinquishing what I have known by natural intellect. This is the sobriety, I pray for, that I might watch unto prayer. Amen+

the heart's desire

2006-06-03T22:41:00.000-04:00

I went into the church tonight.

Vespers had been over for some time and the church was empty and dark except for a faint yellow flicker of a candle on the altar, and some patches of varying blue light on the east side of the arched ceiling, a streetlight refracting through the stained glass windows.
I brought in a candle and lit a few of the others over the icon of the Ascension, and the icons of Christ and Mary.

I sat for a long time in the semi darkness, in the silence with just the whirring of the fans overhead.

It is hard to remember the last time I felt this safe to enjoy darkness and silence in such a large space, a space that is usually public. I gradually became bold enough to speak my prayers into the spacious darkness. The sound of keys in car doors outside and distant laughter from restaurant goers in the street added to the feeling of sanctuary within, beneath the arched roof.

I was sitting on a pew at the back of the large open space we have between the altar and the pews. The emptiness of the sanctuary, and the darkness made it feel as though I were really quite near the icons before which I had lit candles, and the dark stretch in between felt more like a link, like connective tissue, than a distance or a separation. In the centre of the icon of Christ, instead of His face, I could see only the glow reflected from the candle I had lit.

I have long avoided this sort of solitude with my thoughts, with the true prayers of my heart.

It seems that this solitude is necessary to discover the true prayers of my heart, and to be able to pray them.

"Cast your burdens upon the Lord," Father John said today during confession.

I'm funny. I don't want to "burden" or "bother" God with all my petty woes and complaints. Instead I grumble to everyone else about my troubles and frustrations.
I've had it all backwards!

"Grant me compassion for another's troubles
and courage for my own!"

I discovered something. It is possible to feel a deep sorrow and longing, not out of shame, not out of distress. It is possible to weep with longing for Jesus Christ. Because of missing Him. Because it has been such a long time since I've "seen" Him. The business and burdens of life, my petty preoccupation with inner and outer troubles, have kept me from tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. Have kept me from the sweet and painful knowledge of His nearness and His farness. Oh, how we need Him to change us! How we need Him to heal us! How I want to be able to touch the hem of his garment; how I want to weep on his feet!

I refrain from love, because it hurts. When I allow myself to feel all the love I am capable of for Matthew, it comes together with the knowledge that I do not know for how long I have him near me. It comes together with the knowledge of all the sinful brokenness that still keeps us from loving and encountering each other fully and purely and being revealed to one another completely. The closer we come to one another, the more keenly I am aware of what still holds us back.

The early church must have been so aware of this hurt, this sweet pain, this paradox of Christ's presence and absence, of longing for His return, and the consolation of His presence through the Holy Spirit, in the breaking of the bread, in their fellowship in His name.

Is it out of this that they prayed, "Come, Lord Jesus!"?

Somehow this time of waiting is special, His absent presence with us even better, He said, because we have the Holy Spirit. How? Is it because, in our longing, we are stretched to grow toward Him, like daisies straining their little green stems so taut towards the far sky? Is it because, in suffering we are purified?

How will I grow, how will I be purified, when I do so much to avoid this good suffering, and the feeling of lack? I numb myself with little activities to fill up my potential solitude--puzzles and games on our laptop, complaining and self-pity, inane conversations with unsuspecting people over whatever jumps into my head to ramble about.

I went into the house of prayer and I could take none of this with me. Nothing but myself, my thoughts, and the bodily sensations and impulses that come, for me, when my heart's radar is casting about for the right frequency for prayer.

A sudden desire to be weightless, to be lifted from the ground.

"Lift me up!"

"Lift me up!"

A desire to curl up on the floor at the foot of the icon and stay there, and sleep.

A thirst.

Homesickness for something, I can never quite put my finger on.

Come, Lord Jesus!

The Great Glebe Garage Sale

2006-05-27T23:34:00.000-04:00

I found:

1 carved wooden lampstand, maple finish
1 soddered iron lampstand (evokes art deco, '80's junk art, and african native art)
1 small round stuffed rattan footstool (perfect perch for a little person)
1 very large carved wooden frame painted a very pre-raphaelite green (perfect for my battered map of Narnia!)
1 hard cover Reader's Digest "Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual" (It's so DIY!)
1 solid (hard) wood fruit bowl (dark as chocolate. beautiful.)
1 vintage eaton's cardboard box full of embroidery thread and a small carved bone tool for who knows what!
6 panels of coarse weave brown curtains for our living room!
8 prints of "The Vanishing Buildings of Rural Canada" (including a beautiful one of some grain elevators in a very prairie landscape which was a special surpise for Matthew)

I am quite pleased.

Real encounters with the small kind

2006-05-26T01:32:00.000-04:00

This old church building really does have mice, but there are poison traps and sonic barriers to keep them away, so we haven't seen any evidence of them since we first moved in. However, some folks from the church were recently cleaning out a storage space that had not been touched in a long time, and I think they must have stirred things up.

The other day I walked into my kitchen, opened my dishwasher door, and just before I put my full weight on my right foot, I felt something soft under it, and I jumped back. All I saw at first was that it was dark, larger than most bugs, and moving! I let out the classical bloodcurdling scream.

Then I saw that it was a mouse.
And that he was kind of cute.
And that he was staring at me as intensely as I was staring at him.
We both stood there frozen to the spot for a good two minutes. I was recovering from my fright, and racking my brains for a way to both keep from hurting him and keep him from getting into the rest of the house, or going back to where he came from only to return again.

When I started to move, I moved very slowly (my heart still pounding).

I eased my way over to the cupboard and softly took out a used yoghurt tub.

The mouse didn't bolt.

I stretched gingerly over to the counter for the scissors, and began to poke holes in the lid while keeping half an eye on him.

He moved a little, wiggling his nose and adjusting his position but stayed where he was.

I (half determined, half skittish) moved closer and closer until I was able lower the container down over top of him, trapping him inside it. He didn't blink. He was still definitely alive: whiskers wiggling, ears twitching. I experienced considerable misgivings about my endeavor when his tail was sticking out from underneath the container and that was all that I could see of him. His tail was not nearly as cute as the rest of him.
I took a piece of cardboard and slid it underneath the container gently, and heard him scramble onto it as he ran out of room to stand. Then I slowly turned him upside down and replaced the cardboard with the lid.
I stood there holding the container for a while trying to sort out my conflicting impulses of disgust and maternal nurturing, my sense of public health responsibility and my sympathy for all things persecuted and misunderstood.

Then Matthew came home.
We took him outside and let him crawl into a shady spot at the base of some lilacs at the bottom of the church lawn, entrusting him to his own fate. Poor little fellow.
We figured out that he must have eaten some poison and was so content and blasé because he was extremely high.

I hope he didn't suffer too much.

He was so cute and soft and furry and brown looking.

My husband's unconscious strikes again

2006-05-23T17:07:00.000-04:00

So Matthew had a dream last night.

In it we were having dinner with my parents (who are moderately charismatic, evangelical Christians). My Dad asked me to pray before our meal, and (as Matthew tells it) we were all getting ready to pray, waiting for me to begin, when my Dad piped in:

"Come with your power!"

(not an unusual prayer to the Holy Spirit used by charismatic evangelicals)

And I, apparently irritated by the interruption and the contrast of his style of prayer with the Orthodox blessing I was about to use, taking full advantage of the ambiguity of "your" in his sentence, retorted:

"Maybe I will on Monday."

I'm still chuckling.

Attitude

2006-05-23T16:56:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid I have to confess to having what is called a "bad attitude" lately. All my life I have been afflicted with what some call idealism, and others perfectionism, and which at its best is healthy conscientiousness, but at its worst....

I have been grumbling a lot about work. Why is it that when things don't go the way I think they should, I feel so tempted to jump ship, even though the reason I even have such ideas is that I care so deeply about the people I support?

Do I give up too quickly? I balk at the idea of doing the long hard work of being an agent of change. Part of the longness and hardness of it being that if you want your criticism listened to, it's got to be constructive, and presented very carefully, and through all the appropriate channels. I find myself so tempted to abdicate and shake the dust off my heels, but am prevented from it by the thought of the people who are getting the raw deal I'm so conscious of.

Does being aware of a problem make you responsible to do something about it?

I have been dismissed in my concerns before for being the only voice on something because others around me either didn't notice or care. For some reason I am not content to just continue doing what I think is best, while letting everything else around me go the way it should chance to go. I tell myself that that is what a saint would do: take responsibility for the task at their own hand, and pray for everyone and everything else (and themselves). Only sometimes am I able to do this.

Is it just pride?

When I think about it I realize how much I make myself sound like a lone voice in the wilderness, some kind of martyr for my principles.

The level of responsibility I have at work (quality of people's lives are at stake) is bringing some ugly things to the surface of my heart which ask to be addressed, and which I hope, by God's grace, to weed out some day. All the faults I find around me cloud my perception after a time and dominate my whole experience untill all I feel is frustration, anxiety, and anger towards work.

And then I went into work today for the first time after an eight day break, and saw that some things had been changed. Things which I had despaired of being able to change. I'm clearly not the only one who cares. And I was reminded too, of all of the things that are so good about the people I work with, and that the organization is on an upward swing (however gradual).

It is likely I will change my occupation in the near future, whether to go back to school or find something closer to home. But I want it to be because it is time (kairos) for the next step, and not because I have quit in bitterness. And I want to do the best that I can realistically do while I'm here, in humility, with gentleness, and most of all hope and faith.

Pray for me, a sinner!

Some things must be said

2006-05-22T17:37:00.000-04:00

quietly

or they will be quite
unintelligible
to the small
who
live
in
all

the in
be
tween

places

your humble host
Copyright 2001

Welcome to my humble burrow

2006-05-22T15:01:00.000-04:00

Here is the entrance! Considering that I leave such long comments on the blogs of others, verbally crashing on their virtual couches, so to speak, I have decided that it is probably time for me to get my own place, and air my thoughts in my own space...

I have selected small lodgings, for I have chosen to be a small creature, in the hope that it will prevent me from getting too long winded, or big in the head.

You will find it easiest to come through my small door when and if you are striving to be, as i am striving to be, little.

little /lit'l/ adj. [slang of cheryl & shannon] 1 humble, unpresuming, content. 2 meek, usurping no power, without guile. 3 childlike, frank, inquisitive