The children are nestled all snug in their beds -- the children who are now adults, some of whom have children of their own. I have read one grandson and my only granddaughter "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," as my father did for me as a child, and as I have done for my children for every Christmas since their birth. I have served a meal of chili and hot chocolate to warm the body and the spirit. I have raised up my candle in church as we sang "Silent Night." I have wrapped the last gift and baked the last cookie. I have included the lonely, the grieving and the estranged in my celebration.
With consistent attention to my attitude and with reliance on my spiritual source, I have warded off any tendency toward Christmas blues. For the most part, I did not cave in to any anxiety I may have experienced as I wondered with whom and just how I would spend this Christmas Eve. By doing that, by living in the moment and by refusing to over-plan with high expectations of my own or of others, I enjoyed a loving, uplifting and pleasant evening.
This holy night of bringing light into the world has brought light into mine.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Happy e-holidays
I can justify my holiday greeting decision by saying that economic angst has all of us on edge, so we scrimp and save wherever we can, including the cost of postage.
I can justify it by saying I'm "going green," doing my part to protect the environment by saving trees.
I can justify it by saying that the age of technology has grabbed us by the throats, shaking us into sensibility.
No matter how I justify sending an e-greeting this year, even if personally written, I still don't feel quite right about it. Having grown up in a time when pen, paper, and postage stamps provided the only options for written communication, I learned the pleasure of sending and receiving letters in the mail. My mother carefully taught me the etiquette of the handwritten note, and as I grew up, she would not allow me to type a personal letter. Nothing personal about that at all, she would say. She probably was right (again!), for I still have letters I wrote to my grandmother as a child, sentimental keepsakes my mother saved for me. I can see how they might have made my grandmother smile and feel close to me, even though I lived far from her.
Speaking of my mother, even she, at the age of 95, will read my holiday letter on her computer. Kicking and screaming, she bought one a few years ago. All resistance aside, she enjoys e-mail jokes from her friends, and she chats with me online almost every evening.
Happy e-holidays.
I can justify it by saying I'm "going green," doing my part to protect the environment by saving trees.
I can justify it by saying that the age of technology has grabbed us by the throats, shaking us into sensibility.
No matter how I justify sending an e-greeting this year, even if personally written, I still don't feel quite right about it. Having grown up in a time when pen, paper, and postage stamps provided the only options for written communication, I learned the pleasure of sending and receiving letters in the mail. My mother carefully taught me the etiquette of the handwritten note, and as I grew up, she would not allow me to type a personal letter. Nothing personal about that at all, she would say. She probably was right (again!), for I still have letters I wrote to my grandmother as a child, sentimental keepsakes my mother saved for me. I can see how they might have made my grandmother smile and feel close to me, even though I lived far from her.
Speaking of my mother, even she, at the age of 95, will read my holiday letter on her computer. Kicking and screaming, she bought one a few years ago. All resistance aside, she enjoys e-mail jokes from her friends, and she chats with me online almost every evening.
Happy e-holidays.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Making music
In the first of my lifetime careers, I made my living by writing. I still make part of my living by writing. Sometimes I allow myself to think I have some talent.
Then I get humble when I recognize real genius, which I experienced today with Handel's Messiah.
Handel composed his choral masterpiece in less than a month. For centuries, musicians and singers around the world have performed it. Today a friend and I participated in a Messiah "sing-along," an annual event in North San Diego County, as it is in many communities around the country. Whenever I have the opportunity to sing it, I do, admittedly relying extensively on the strength of more fully trained altos to create the essence.
As the program began with the first tenor assurance of "Comfort Ye," I felt a sense of peace come over me. It lasted throughout the celebratory "Hallelujah Chorus," which swept me into its joyful Scriptural promise. My friend with whom I shared the experience does not believe the Scriptures. Her spiritual life revolves around pagan beliefs and love of Mother Earth. Still, as a musician herself, she appreciates the music for the sheer emotional magnitude of it and for the fact that it calls to pleasant memory the times she has sung it with her sisters and their late mother.
Hallelujah for this day! Hallelujah for this talent!
Then I get humble when I recognize real genius, which I experienced today with Handel's Messiah.
Handel composed his choral masterpiece in less than a month. For centuries, musicians and singers around the world have performed it. Today a friend and I participated in a Messiah "sing-along," an annual event in North San Diego County, as it is in many communities around the country. Whenever I have the opportunity to sing it, I do, admittedly relying extensively on the strength of more fully trained altos to create the essence.
As the program began with the first tenor assurance of "Comfort Ye," I felt a sense of peace come over me. It lasted throughout the celebratory "Hallelujah Chorus," which swept me into its joyful Scriptural promise. My friend with whom I shared the experience does not believe the Scriptures. Her spiritual life revolves around pagan beliefs and love of Mother Earth. Still, as a musician herself, she appreciates the music for the sheer emotional magnitude of it and for the fact that it calls to pleasant memory the times she has sung it with her sisters and their late mother.
Hallelujah for this day! Hallelujah for this talent!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Pillow Book thoughts
My brain has checked out for the most part. My eyelids feel a bit heavy. Thus, I'm going to borrow Sei Shonagon's model in her fascinating glimpse into imperial court life during the Heian period of Japanese history, The Pillow Book. In it, she makes lists of her likes and dislikes, discloses gossip-like tidbits of her surroundings, offers no-holds-barred opinions, and invites her readers into the little known workings of the court.
Tonight, in the brisk waning hour, I work slowly and clumsily at my task, but I can make a Pillow Book list.
What I Loved Today
Tonight, in the brisk waning hour, I work slowly and clumsily at my task, but I can make a Pillow Book list.
What I Loved Today
- Looking out across my school campus to the ocean, which reassures me every day.
- Coming home early to a festively decorated home.
- Writing notes of thanks to friends and colleagues who have supported me in trying times.
- Chatting with my 95-year-old mother online about letters I had written to my grandmother as a child.
- Watching the surf sparkle in the moonlight.
- Laughing at Lolo, my Tonkinese cat with immense blue eyes, as she somersaults through the kitchem, tossing her catnip toy.
- Reflecting on friendships near and far.
Simplify!
While on this Thoreau jag, I need to apply his advice -- "Simplify! Simplify!". Having had a yesterday that spun out, I did not allow myself to fit in my commitment to write every day. I realize that an examination of priorities is in order. I could have skipped my Facebook check-in. I could have skipped a game of Spider Solitaire. I could have cut five minutes off my nap. I could have completely avoided participating in job politics.
I did not run out of time; I mismanaged it.
The God-moment of the spinout day came as I drove home from work. On the freeway heading east on a bright California winter afternoon, I noticed the nearly full moon. To borrow a line from Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, the moon looked "pasted in the sky like a wafer."
Dimmed in the daylight, it provided a promise of brilliance once darkness came. Hope. Promise. Beauty. Simplicity.
I did not run out of time; I mismanaged it.
The God-moment of the spinout day came as I drove home from work. On the freeway heading east on a bright California winter afternoon, I noticed the nearly full moon. To borrow a line from Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, the moon looked "pasted in the sky like a wafer."
Dimmed in the daylight, it provided a promise of brilliance once darkness came. Hope. Promise. Beauty. Simplicity.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
More Thoreau
Perhaps I took a bit of a risk by alluding to "size isn't everything" in a room full of adolescent testosterone. I couldn't help it. As we continued talking about Henry David Thoreau's "Battle of the Ants," I remembered Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself 31," quoted here:
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of the wren
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels . . ."
When I read it to them and explained that a pismire is an ant, I swear I could hear I collective groan. "Can't she get over the ants?" the groan seemed to say. When I told them that Whitman's whole transcendental point is that "size isn't everything," at least I had their attention.
I love Whitman. I want them to love Whitman, and maybe some of them will. That's why I keep teaching.
"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of the wren
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels . . ."
When I read it to them and explained that a pismire is an ant, I swear I could hear I collective groan. "Can't she get over the ants?" the groan seemed to say. When I told them that Whitman's whole transcendental point is that "size isn't everything," at least I had their attention.
I love Whitman. I want them to love Whitman, and maybe some of them will. That's why I keep teaching.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Teaching Thoreau
I taught Thoreau today.
At least, I think so.
My audience of a dozen 11th-grade cadets at an all-boys' military boarding school perhaps did not lend itself particularly well to the study of a 19th-century philosopher and observer of nature. They like the rebel in him, though. One of the boys had read Henry David Thoreau before at his previous school.
"Oh, yeah, he's the dude who sold all his stuff and went to live in a vacation home, right?"
If one considers two years' solitude in a rustic hand-built cabin at Walden Pond in Massachusetts a "vacation home," so be it.
Actually, they think he's crazy, especially in the part where he observed ants for a day and compared them to Greek soldiers.
Nonetheless, they succeeded in having a rather stimulating discussion about Thoreau's use of Greek allusions and the metaphors for life that he creates from his observations, including the battle of the ants. They questioned wars and the alleged purposes for them. They understood his aphoristic sentences, especially one of the most famous: "If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away. " At an age when many of them scoff at others who differ from the norm, and when few take the risk of exposing their innermost thoughts and ideas, they enjoyed gnawing on this bit of wisdom for a while.
I love Thoreau. One of the hardest parts of teaching high school English is the utter disdain with which some students reject authors I love. They don't get why I envy my colleague who won a grant to spend the summer at Walden Pond studying the transcendentalists. They think I'm crazy, like Thoreau.
At least, I think so.
My audience of a dozen 11th-grade cadets at an all-boys' military boarding school perhaps did not lend itself particularly well to the study of a 19th-century philosopher and observer of nature. They like the rebel in him, though. One of the boys had read Henry David Thoreau before at his previous school.
"Oh, yeah, he's the dude who sold all his stuff and went to live in a vacation home, right?"
If one considers two years' solitude in a rustic hand-built cabin at Walden Pond in Massachusetts a "vacation home," so be it.
Actually, they think he's crazy, especially in the part where he observed ants for a day and compared them to Greek soldiers.
Nonetheless, they succeeded in having a rather stimulating discussion about Thoreau's use of Greek allusions and the metaphors for life that he creates from his observations, including the battle of the ants. They questioned wars and the alleged purposes for them. They understood his aphoristic sentences, especially one of the most famous: "If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away. " At an age when many of them scoff at others who differ from the norm, and when few take the risk of exposing their innermost thoughts and ideas, they enjoyed gnawing on this bit of wisdom for a while.
I love Thoreau. One of the hardest parts of teaching high school English is the utter disdain with which some students reject authors I love. They don't get why I envy my colleague who won a grant to spend the summer at Walden Pond studying the transcendentalists. They think I'm crazy, like Thoreau.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Starting this journey
I don't like to read manuals, although I do try to follow directions when I have to assemble something. Learning style tests label me as kinesthetic and visual; I prefer doing and seeing. In simple language, I learn best by trial and error. That's why -- to experienced bloggers -- I probably will have blunder upon blunder here. I skipped the manual.
Even though it's common to almost everyone under my age who sits at a computer, blogging is a new journey for me. I met someone at a professional event for publishers and writers this week who put me in my place. First, when I told her I was "thinking about" some different writing projects, she said, "Thinking about it isn't enough. You won't do it. To do it, you have to do it." Duh! (I didn't really say that. My brain just went into the lingo of teens, around whom I spend the majority of my time.) Second, she handed me a sassy-looking business card and told me to check out her blog.
Result of the conversation? Now I'm doing one of those projects -- starting a blog, not just thinking about it. As soon as I can put together an idea for business cards, I can hand them out with attitude, too. Easy enough, at least enough for the first baby step.
Today's Teacher Pets story: If You Get Yourself In, You Can Get Yourself Out
When I heard the frenzied scratching by the kitchen cupboard, I figured that Ginger, my seven-year-old Tonkinese cat, had simply wound her way through some of the large bowls and casserole dishes stored there and couldn't quite figure out what to do next. Instead, I discovered with dismay that she had somehow gotten stuck between the back of the cupboard and the wall. After about an hour of occasional wild-sounding meows and more scratching, reminiscent of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and without having figured out how she ever managed to find her way behind the cupboard, I called the humane society to see what I should do. As an after-hours caller, I was referred to the sheriff's department non-emergency line, which referred me to the fire department.
The fire captain gave me the standard "cat talk."
"Lyn," he said, "we can come out if you want us to. We can punch a hole in your wall or whatever it takes, but here's what we have found out over the years. Time after time, when a cat is stuck in a hole or up a tree or in a cupboard or wherever, it won't stay stuck. If she found her way in, she will find her way out."
In short, he advised patience.
Two and a half hours of patience later, I finally noticed Ginger's face poke out of a small hole in the cupboard by the sink. How she got in, I don't know. How she got out, I saw. She finally snagged her paws over the edge of the wall and hauled herself, slipping and sliding, back through the space. She shook herself off -- perhaps with a "Thank-God-that's-over" shrug -- and then proceeded about business as usual as only a cat can do.
I have thought often about that statement the fire captain made: "If she found her way in, she will find her way out." It applies to my own life, too, especially in terms of spaces where I have no business going or spaces where I don't quite fit. I might find my way into someone else's problem to solve, taking it on as my own. I might find my way into a situation where I don't belong, either physically or ethically. If I find myself in those spaces by accident, it's one thing. If I go there intentionally, it's another. If my desire to help someone I care about takes on the flavor of control, then I don't belong there. If my desire to keep job security begins to compromise my professional standards, then I don't belong there. Ginger's In and Out Lesson applies.
If I found my way in, I can find my way out. I may have to stay stuck until I'm extremely uncomfortable. I may take some time to poke around before I stick my head out of the dark spaces. I may have to stretch my limits or scratch and claw, but I will emerge on the other side.
Then I can proceed, perhaps not with business as usual, but with a new outlook.
Even though it's common to almost everyone under my age who sits at a computer, blogging is a new journey for me. I met someone at a professional event for publishers and writers this week who put me in my place. First, when I told her I was "thinking about" some different writing projects, she said, "Thinking about it isn't enough. You won't do it. To do it, you have to do it." Duh! (I didn't really say that. My brain just went into the lingo of teens, around whom I spend the majority of my time.) Second, she handed me a sassy-looking business card and told me to check out her blog.
Result of the conversation? Now I'm doing one of those projects -- starting a blog, not just thinking about it. As soon as I can put together an idea for business cards, I can hand them out with attitude, too. Easy enough, at least enough for the first baby step.
Today's Teacher Pets story: If You Get Yourself In, You Can Get Yourself Out
When I heard the frenzied scratching by the kitchen cupboard, I figured that Ginger, my seven-year-old Tonkinese cat, had simply wound her way through some of the large bowls and casserole dishes stored there and couldn't quite figure out what to do next. Instead, I discovered with dismay that she had somehow gotten stuck between the back of the cupboard and the wall. After about an hour of occasional wild-sounding meows and more scratching, reminiscent of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and without having figured out how she ever managed to find her way behind the cupboard, I called the humane society to see what I should do. As an after-hours caller, I was referred to the sheriff's department non-emergency line, which referred me to the fire department.
The fire captain gave me the standard "cat talk."
"Lyn," he said, "we can come out if you want us to. We can punch a hole in your wall or whatever it takes, but here's what we have found out over the years. Time after time, when a cat is stuck in a hole or up a tree or in a cupboard or wherever, it won't stay stuck. If she found her way in, she will find her way out."
In short, he advised patience.
Two and a half hours of patience later, I finally noticed Ginger's face poke out of a small hole in the cupboard by the sink. How she got in, I don't know. How she got out, I saw. She finally snagged her paws over the edge of the wall and hauled herself, slipping and sliding, back through the space. She shook herself off -- perhaps with a "Thank-God-that's-over" shrug -- and then proceeded about business as usual as only a cat can do.
I have thought often about that statement the fire captain made: "If she found her way in, she will find her way out." It applies to my own life, too, especially in terms of spaces where I have no business going or spaces where I don't quite fit. I might find my way into someone else's problem to solve, taking it on as my own. I might find my way into a situation where I don't belong, either physically or ethically. If I find myself in those spaces by accident, it's one thing. If I go there intentionally, it's another. If my desire to help someone I care about takes on the flavor of control, then I don't belong there. If my desire to keep job security begins to compromise my professional standards, then I don't belong there. Ginger's In and Out Lesson applies.
If I found my way in, I can find my way out. I may have to stay stuck until I'm extremely uncomfortable. I may take some time to poke around before I stick my head out of the dark spaces. I may have to stretch my limits or scratch and claw, but I will emerge on the other side.
Then I can proceed, perhaps not with business as usual, but with a new outlook.
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