Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Standing at the Joffrey Ballet

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

“They should have paid us to sit in these seats,” I joked to the women who were adjusting their chairs in the box next to ours during the first intermission of a Saturday afternoon performance of the Joffrey Ballet.
A friend of a friend had discount tickets she couldn’t use, so David and I found ourselves at the beautifully restored Sullivan and Adler Auditorium Theatre in Chicago.Box seats, I thought as the ushers steered us to the second-floor balcony, pretty good. I was soon to learn that there are box seats, and then there are box seats.
The people in the first row of seats in our box had an unobstructed view. David’s and my seats, however, in the second row of the first balcony box, offered us almost completely obstructed sightlines. The boxes were designed front and forward so if we sat straight in our seats, we looked across the concert hall to the second floor balcony seats across us, not toward the stage.
So? you might be thinking. Just twist your bodies or reposition your chairs. Not so easy. The boxes were crowded, giving us limited room for negotiating space, and even if we twisted toward the stage, my whole right sightline was blocked by all the people sitting in the four other boxes closer to the stage than ours.
The purpose, of course, of going to the ballet is to see the dancers. Mr. Louis Sullivan, I thought, Mr. Dankmar Adler, you goofed.
The Auditorium Building in Chicago is one of the best-known designs of these two architects. Completed in 1889, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and designated a Chicago Landmark in 1976. At the time of its construction, it was the largest and tallest building in the United States. Ferdinand Peck, a Chicago businessman, wanted to develop a cultural center that would rival the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He wanted to make high culture accessible to the working classes.
The building was equipped with the first central air conditioning system and was the first to be entirely lit by incandescent light bulbs. In 2001, a major restoration of the Auditorium Theatre was begun to return the theater to its original colors and finishes. It now is the home of Roosevelt University.

However, even in the best of plans, there is often a glitch. The glitch in the Adler/Sullivan architecture is that anyone in the second tier of chairs in the first balcony box seats, number six, right-hand side, is unlikely to be able to see the stage due to the heads of all the people in the other boxes positioned to the right of said person in said box seat. This is particularly so when the baldheaded gentleman in the first row of box seven rests his head on his right hand.
All during the first half of the opening performance of modern interpretations of classical dance, “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated,” I fumed. I do have a pet peeve when seats perched behind posts at sporting events are sold to unsuspecting fans (or when discounted tickets are not marked with the disclaimer: “Welcome to the Joffrey. You will be unlikely to see the stage from these seats.”) But somewhere midway in that rendition, I became captured by the sheer beauty of the choreographed muscularity, the exquisite physicality of the dancers and gave myself one of those all-too-frequent and necessary lectures, Oh, Mains. Grow up! You peevish, privileged middle-class woman! You are at the Joffrey Ballet! Stop pouting and just stand up. You can sit during the intermission.
This, of course, made quite a difference. If I stood, I could see. I had an unobstructed sightline of the stage. And I quite enjoyed the rest of “In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated” (how ironically appropriate that title to my circumstances). We had a charming chat during the interlude before the next piece “After the Rain,” and then another intermission.
I read my program and realized that we were attending the U.S. premiere of what the notes told me was a piece of “sumptuous beauty and shimmering possibility” (who writes stage notes for ballets and concerts and plays? How much do they earn for doing this writing? Is it the artistic director, Ashley C. Wheater or Scott Speck, the Music Director?) Or maybe—just maybe, it is the choreographer him/herself who writes glowing stage-reviews… “Dancers perform intense and thoughtful choreography, exposing the agonies of indecision, doubt and hope that lie under the surface of the skin.” Oh, I see this quoted bit is attributed to the critic of The Telegraph (and where exactly is that published?).
Somewhere, while standing again for the last ballet in order to be able to see, this thought intruded. Life is full of glitches. Sometimes the most beautiful experiences are threatened by the fact that you are situated in such a way that you can only view a third of what is going on, can only see half the dancers on the stage. The exquisite beauty of this event, whatever it is—sunset streaking the sky as you ignore it while hurrying onto an evening appointment; a grandchild happily and ecstatically destroying your ordered basement with the detritus of concentrated play—can be lost because you are sitting in your seat, hurrying to dinner, craning your neck, so to speak, and allowing yourself to be filled with peeve at the Architects of this high cultural event for the common masses.
Or—or you can choose to stand through the whole performance, leaning against your chair that you have moved in front of you to act as a prop. And if you choose to stand at life’s ballets—no matter the seeming inconveniences—I promise you will see the whole thing. You will be able to puzzle about the “transforming direction of the dance” constructed by the Three Choreographers (in theological terms this is called perichoresis koinonia). Joy will rise in you. I am here, you will think. We are at the Joffrey Ballet. You may be in the middle, somewhat elevated, but that will be quite enough.
Savor each moment, large or small, give praise for the beauty of the work. Lift your heart to the Master Artistic Director. Give thanks. Let us just be glad that a friend of a friend has given us tickets to the show.
I spy God!

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Between the Onion and the Parsley

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:


I found three journals hidden away behind a stack of books in the bookcases in my home study ... one brief line intrigued me. I had written, “Enjoying reading and copying out quotes from Capon’s Supper of the Lamb—such lovely thoughts on being attentive.

I do not know exactly where I copied out these lovely thoughts on being attentive, but this hidden-away journal reminded me that I had delighted in reading Robert Farrar Capon’s amazing book. An ordained Episcopalian minister, and at the time of the writing Professor of Dogmatic Theology and Instructor in Greek at The George Mercer Jr. Memorial School of Theology, Robert Capon captures in all his writing the exquisite beauty of the commonplace experience of living sacramentally. The book is subtitled “A Culinary Reflection.” Taking the ingredients for “Lamb for Eight Persons Four Times,” the author builds what simply looks like one meal reconfigured four ways into a profound meditation on finding God in life.

I pulled the book again from my cooking library, which is in the old post office desk in our finished basement and read my comments recorded on the frontispiece:

This is a mighty book with an original and daring metaphor.
Capon is an incredible writer & has made the common holy & the holy common.
Wondrous work! Would that all Christian writing was so incarnated with the meaning of the world & with the world of meaning.

So I give to you just a few of the lovely thoughts on being attentive I highlighted in one of my numerous readings of this volume:

“The whole world looks as it if has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presence of absence of the loving eye. Turn a statue over to a boor, and his boredom will break it to bits—witness the ruined monuments of antiquity. On the other hand, turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little, and its numbed surfaces prickle with feeling.

“Or, conclusively, peel an orange. Do it lovingly—in perfect quarters like little boats, or in staggered exfoliations like a flat map of the round world, or in one long spiral, as my grandfather used to do. Nothing is more likely to become garbage than an orange rind; but for as long as anyone looks at it in delight, it stands a million triumphant miles from the trash heap.”

Or how about this quote?

“Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing. ... If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil’s Cathedral.”

This book is an outrageous, extravagant and breathtaking look at the real Supper of the Lamb when believers of history will sit down to an unending banquet with the Son of
God. Appropriately, the vehicle for this meditation is a work the publishers have classified under “cookbook.”

And I had forgotten how wonderfully it is written or how worthy of another read except that I rediscovered the notebooks I had hidden on a shelf in my writer’s study.

It makes you want to take up journaling again, in earnest, to finish the incomplete pages, to record life for that time, perhaps, when the timeline is waning so that I can remember what have been the real lessons—that “only miracle is plain; it is the ordinary that groans with the unutterable weight of glory.” —Robert Farrar Capon

I spy God!

Monday, February 13, 2012

Sick Days

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:


Despite getting a flu shot, I came down with what seems to be going around in the influenza category. Oh, not the head cold, sinus infection, runny nose, sneezing and coughing category; nor the digestive track, vomiting and running to the bathroom category; but the achy, weary (is-this-a-vitamin-or-iron-deficiency?) category.

Starting with Friday night, I took to bed and slept and slept and slept (14 hours that night, then another 12 hours the next day!). I dragged myself downstairs, weakly impelled my concerned husband to fetch tea, Dayquil and Nyquil tablets, the morning newspaper, and the heating pad.

However, I definitely was not at the I-think-I-may-die stage; it was more the “how-tired-and-muscle-sore-can-a-body-get stage. Somewhere soon after self-diagnosis and the conclusions (“I’m not going to get the Christmas stuff packed away in the attic this weekend; I’m not going to make it to church; I’m not going to make it into the office today”), I thought, Oh, how lovely! I can spend wakeful time just telling God how much I love Him—not enough of that in my life. AND—I can read! YEAH!

Truthfully, sometimes sick days are the best thing that can happen to us.

So, this is what I did do:

1. I really had the time to love God and thank Him for scheduling this unplanned break, which of course was not on my calendar.

2. I sat in the sun, which in February in winter in Chicago is not all that frequent an opportunity—particular since our Mainstay offices are on the interior of our building, with no outside views.

3. I read three books by Imre Kertész, the Hungarian Jewish author and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature. I had bought these books in May 2011 while in Budapest: Fatelessness, Kaddish for an Unborn Child and Detective Story.

4. I finished reading The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World by John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan.

5. I listened to the first three discs of His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, which David received as a white-elephant Christmas gift.

6. I sat in the sun in my south-facing home study and reviewed the notes in my past writing study.

7. I started reading John Polkinghorn’s Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship. Underlined pertinent observations.

8. I canceled a joint birthday outing with my sister but exchanged e-mails and photos of our grandchildren.

9. I reread some well-loved poetry Mysticism for Beginners by Polish writer Adam Zagajewski. I loved the poem “A Flame,” since we have been dialoguing about the aging process (observing ourselves as we age)…

God, give us a long winter
and quiet music, and patient mouths,
and a little pride—before
our age ends.
Give us astonishment
and a flame, high, bright.

10. I texted my teen grandsons (I learned to text so I can keep up with them).

11. I slept with the heating pad, remembering that I love solitary days without schedules, whole days set aside for thinking and listening. Slept some more.

12. I pulled out my Gregorian chant CDs and filled the house with this ancient worship music.

13. I looked out the windows at the melting snow, watched the sunset at the end of the days and felt the night creep on. Looked some more.

I cannot tell you how centered I felt, how close and at home I came to the core of my being, how replete with God, how satisfied with the world and my life, how reminded that I love to write but that much of writing is this thinking process, this listening to one’s self and the God who whispers in the silence through the beauty of words and ideas and stillness. And that I have not have had enough time to listen deeply, that I have gotten out of the habit. I ended my sick days replete, full, satisfied, spiritually renewed and mentally massaged.

Thank God for sick days. I think I should schedule a few in each month.

I spy God!

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Lonely No More



Lonely No More looks those lies finally in the eye and begins to deal with them honestly. "If my marriage is as perfect as I say it is, why am I so lonely?" "What are these dreams, these painful emotions, these attractions pointing to?" This book was extremely controversial in certain sections of ultra-conservative Christianity so I warn you, read it carefully. I stand behind every word, despite the controversy. It may even shake the ground beneath your feet. I will probably never write anything this well again. But I have certainly paid for the effort to be excellent, to be lovingly truthful, to want God. Covers age 45-52.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Comforting One Another


Author Karen Mains references her personal pain experiences, and unfolds a theology around the meaning of mercy, with pietas from art, literature, film, news photography, poetry and real life building pictures of how God's love can demonstrate itself through us in tangible ways in today's modern world.

This is a book for those who are suffering and for those who want to hold and comfort those who are suffering.

Karen defines a pieta as any person or group of people comforting and holding those who are broken or suffering, and in need of the healing touch of our Lord.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Open Heart, Open Home


In Open Heart, Open Home (over 500,000 copies in print) award-winning Karen Mains steps far beyond how-to-entertain you hints to explore the deeper concepts of Christian hospitality-the Biblical way to use your home and an open heart to care for others like God wants us to. Countless pastors have recommended this classic resource as the meaningful example of how the Holy Spirit ministers to and through us to make other people feel truly welcome and deeply wanted.

Perfect for any womens bible study group, especially when used in tandem with the Opening Our Hearts & Homes Bible Study.

This new edition contains 54 helpful ways to make hospitality work whether you live on a country farm, in a house in the suburbs, or in an apartment in the city. Everyone in your bible study will appreciate the life-changing principles of this timeless classic.