Do you hear what I hear?

I’ve always imagined that little lamb in the Christmas song didn’t really say anything to the shepherd boy about hearing a song. Though Christmas is the season of miracles, this seemed like pure fiction to me—improbable enough to suggest that a Southerner probably wrote it.

Today, however, I’ve changed my mind. I think the little lamb got a hearing aid like I did and is amazed by all there is to hear like I am. The little lamb is reminding the shepherd boy of the miracle of sound and song, a miracle that the shepherd boy has come to take for granted.

See what you think:

Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy
“Do you hear what I hear?
Ringing thru the sky, shepherd boy:
Do you hear what I hear?

“A song, a song
High above the tree
With a voice as big as the sea,
With a voice as big as the sea.”

I knew that I had lost some hearing in both ears after radiation two and a half years ago, and that the loss in my right ear was more severe than the loss in my left ear. I became accustomed to sitting myself on people’s right, and when someone to my right spoke in my right ear, I often said, “What?” and turned my left ear towards them.

Nobody treated this as odd. Bless them.

Now, however, I have a hearing aid in my right ear, and I’m overwhelmed by all that I hear. My rain jacket’s zipper is extremely loud and incredibly close. The floorboards in our house creak when I walk. Tapping on a computer keyboard sounds like the first giant drops of a Salvadoran spring rain hitting a tin roof.

Yesterday, as I walked through the university under an unusually blue sky, I kept thinking that I heard a truck’s breaks behind me. I finally figured out that I was hearing birds singing, and I relaxed and enjoyed their celebratory song. (They were singing in birdese, “The sun’s out! The sun’s out!” And since my hearing aid comes with a translator from birdese to English, I could understand them.)

Of course, just as there’s always an upside—even to brain tumors—there’s also a downside—even to a hearing aid.

Everyone’s talking like Owen Meany: voices high and loud. Also, I keep thinking I’m hearing people on the front porch, so I open the door, but the voices are a house or two down the street. Perhaps worse, I can hear myself sing.

Still, like the birds, I’m singing a celebratory song.

 

 

Couching

When I lived in Dallas twenty years ago, I had two friends who were Physics PhD candidates. Neither seemed to have much of a social life, and they were beginning to have paunches from the chips and beer they consumed as they watched television.

When I asked, “What are you doing this weekend?” they would look at each other, shrug, and say, “Couch.” For them, couch was a verb. An action verb.

I understand couching now better than I did then.

Last night, Ann and I had dinner with our friends Ellen, Donna and Chris. Ellen and Donna are twins, originally from Long Island, but hippie-Donna and her late-blooming sister Ellen have lived in Seattle for a long time. Now their mother Lillian, in her nineties, lives here, too. All three are characters.

Chris is a gentle soul with a loving heart who loves to be around characters, as I do.

During our tasty vegetarian dinner of rice with onions and mushrooms, soy loaf (as opposed to meatloaf) and mixed salad, Ann shared with us her nightmare about returning to college and living in the dorm. We all talked about our experiences living with other people when we were younger.

Chris once lived with three married couples, and the men didn’t do their share of the cleaning up, so one day all of the women just got a new place to live and moved out without telling the guys. She guesses that it took the guys a while to notice.

Chris also told the story of when her girlfriend lived in a house with a lot of people, and the woman who lived in the attic had the best stereo, so when she was out of town the others who stayed in the house tried to get to her room first.

One midnight, Chris and her girlfriend were sleeping in this woman’s bed when she returned and caught them in her room. She was mad, but Chris couldn’t say anything because her girlfriend taped Chris’s mouth shut when they slept to keep Chris from snoring. I’ve forgotten what absurdity kept her girlfriend from speaking, but she couldn’t talk either. The woman whose bed they were in was not amused. I was.

I told the story of living in D.C.’s Georgetown one summer with two male friends from Dallas (sort of like the sitcom “Three’s Company,” as mom said, which was code for no sex.) One of the guys, Eric, was pathologically neat. Once when I was reading a book with a cookie on the plate beside me, I reached down for the cookie, but cookie and plate were gone. (I’m really focused when I read, but I suspected that Eric had taken my cookie.)

“Eric!” I yelled. “Did you do something with my cookie?”

“I threw it away,” he said. “And I washed the plate.”

“I was eating that cookie! I was sitting right beside it! Next time, at least ask before you take away the food I’m eating!”

We all had stories.

After dinner, we moved into the other room to talk. The other three sat in chairs, and I lay on a couch that already had a bedroom pillow and a comforter, and Donna tucked me in. I was “couching.” (As an aside, I must say that every home should have a couch like this.)

I was comfy, and I could hear the conversation. I couldn’t really sleep because the conversation was too amusing, but I did rest as I couched.

The other three talked about movies that they’d seen lately or would like to see.

Donna and Ellen took their mom to see the 3-D version of The Life of Pi. As fish swam by, she tried to catch them. At the end, the narrator reflects philosophically on the matter of truth, and asks rhetorically, “Is this the truth or not?” Ellen’s mom yelled out, “It’s not the truth!”

Donna said that she doesn’t like films with dead people that she’s “known personally, like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan or Martin Luther King, Jr.” Films with royalty, like kings and queens, are fine. She never knew them personally. She says that historical figures she didn’t know personally are probably fine, too. Like Joan of Arc. Lincoln’s probably fine, too.

Donna tried to invite the others into the horror of playacting. She said, “One day, they could make a film with someone else playing Pete Seeger.” Shudder the thought.

“Someone can play themselves,” Donna said. “Like Barbara Streisand. And she’s not dead yet. In her last film, Barbara Streisand plays an excellent Jew, with the intonation and hand gestures and everything.”

From my place on the couch, I laughed and thought, "Two thumbs up for Barbara Streisand."

Telling Stories

In church yesterday, Ann and I sat in a pew with Cute Cousin Michael and 92 year-old Betty and heard the Christmas story re-told, as it is every year. Different people in the congregation, kids and staff, read Bible selections and the congregation sang hymns.

As the story progressed, a living crèche emerged: Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus who was in a manger; angels and lambs (who have the best costumes every year); shepherds and wise men. (My favorite moment was when one of the wise men, who could not get near the manger because of the greenery, threw his gift down to the baby Jesus.)

This is a season for miracles, the season for telling stories.

Last weekend, Karen invited friends to her home to celebrate the last day of Chanukah. The plan was to light many menorahs and tell the story of the miracle, a tradition I love, but her friends didn’t cooperate with her plans for telling the story.

She had planned a game called “Strangers on a Train,” which was a little complicated for the group and required that newcomers not sit on the only apparently available seats in the room because these seats were the train seats.

Newcomers rolled their eyes as they were asked to move and Eve, dressed in dark greys and blacks, repeated, “I don’t understand this game.” A twelve year-old boy tried to explain the rules, but she was too irritated by having to move to another seat to really try. Besides, I think she was really saying that she didn’t understand the point of the game, and after one round, others agreed that this would be a Faulknerian telling, since it would be very long and fragmented.

Finally, Karen asked, “Can someone tell the story?”

Another Karen, a woman dressed in a black sweater, black pants, and black rimmed glasses, began the story somewhat curmudgeonly, as if at last this would be done right, “There was a king somebody,” she started.

And the chorus of voices began. Judy added, “Maccabee. King Maccabbee. That’s why they were called the Maccabbees.”

“Right,” continued the Karen-in-black. “King Maccabee. But the Syrians ruled the land, and it was a violent time for the Jews.   One night, Syrians came to the temple and tore it apart.”

Another voice chimed in, “They had false idols.”

And yet another: “No false idols! That’s a different holiday.”

“Desecrated the temple,” corrected Yarrow. “They desecrated it.”

“There were false idols,” said someone.

“No false idols!”

“Right. The Syrians desecrated the temple, and…”

“And the Jews needed to be sure that the eternal flame stayed lit. Though someone did find one small bit of oil, it was only enough for one night,” continued Eve who was once irritable but was now engaged. “It would take a trip of four days out and four days back to get more oil….” She demonstrated the trip to and fro with two fingers walking down the table and back.

And another voice, “I think there were false idols.”

Not willing to take this misdirection again, Karen-in-black banged her fist on the top of the bookshelf she was leaning against. As she pounded her fist, she yelled, “No false idols! No false idols! No false idols!” She laughed. So did I.

From the kitchen came the smell of Ellen frying potato latkes in oil, a smell that saturated the room.

“So a man went off to get the oil for the eternal flame, and those people who remained lit the candle…”

“And the miracle was that the candle burned for eight days and nights. That’s why the Menorah has eight candles (plus the shamash which is used to light the others).”

“Yes, that’s the story. Shall we sing?”

And the group, once grumpy, joined in song. Another miracle.

 

Solstice Coven 2012

My partner Ann and I spent this year’s winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, at our friends Rita and Linda’s home with a lovely group of thirteen women (the traditional number for a witches’ coven, I’m told).

Rita directed each person to bring healthy and sustaining food to share, so there were hearty kale salads, root vegetables, roasted chicken…and black bottomed pie, a delightful addition of dark chocolate, custard, and whipped cream (lest we take ourselves and our healthy food too seriously).

As we ate our dinners, Rita shared with me a book titled Ripening that looked like it was printed in the 1970s. On the fading orange cover and throughout the book were Georgia O’Keefe inspired drawings of flowers that suggested female anatomy. “My mother could not abide this book,” I tell Rita.

On the back page, in Rita’s handwriting, is the solstice celebration from Rita’s younger years. There’s a lot of dancing in a circle. I’m glad to be at this celebration at a more seated time in Rita’s life.

After a hearty meal, Rita (a camp counselor in a recent life), directed us into the other room to order ourselves according to age. “Crones,” the oldest and most revered among us, stood at the front of the line and as the youngest, I was the maiden and stood at the back with Davida, who was the penultimate woman-child.

Eve, our most respected crone, with energetic eyes and apple cheeks, said to me, “You’re young enough to be my daughter.”

Even at reverent times, I can be sassy, so I said, “There’s another way to say that.”

The room tittered as women said, “We’re old enough to be your mother.”

Having turned out most of the lights, we re-entered the darkened room and Eve as the eldest crone chose her seat. The rest of us sat in order. A kind crone who had noticed my difficulties with balance, Eve situated herself so that I would be in the same seat that I started in, a full chair with full arms that made it easy for me to keep my balance.

After we took our seats, Karen—a middle-aged crone with lovely white hair—led us in a meditation. She closed, “Tuck the world into your heart.”

In the semi-darkness, camp counselor Rita invited us to talk about the gifts of darkness. I was quiet. Though in the daylight hours, I am thankful for my dark times, I could not summon that thankfulness in the dark. Having survived profound depression and brain tumors, I could only think about the gift of light in the darkness.

I thought about Martin Luther King, Jr’s quotation, painted on his mural on the side of Catfish Corner (where they advertise “farm-raised catfish”): “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

I also thought of Emily Dickenson’s poem:

There’s a certain Slant of Light,

Winter Afternoons – 

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes – 

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – 

We can find no scar,

But internal difference,

Where the Meanings, are – 

None may teach it – Any – 

'Tis the Seal Despair – 

An imperial affliction

Sent us of the Air – 

When it comes, the Landscape listens – 

Shadows – hold their breath – 

When it goes, 'tis like the Distance

On the look of Death – 

Almost everybody who spoke talked about light in the darkness, especially about stars and the moon. Only Linda talked about a tulip bulb’s under-the-soil darkness. Utter darkness. A time of rest.

Storytelling about the Mayan calendar followed, each person building on the next. Candy said that some people in Japan were truly afraid that this was the end of the world and bought pods, white shelters, in which to protect themselves.

Louise added that the Mayans had many calendars, each of a different length of years in cycles. Their longest cycle ended yesterday, though according to the Mayan calendar, with that ending was a time of the end of one epoch and the beginning of another, not the dismal apocalypse that I had imagined.

Camp counselor Rita asks us to consider what darkness we will relinquish in the upcoming year, what we will carry into the light.

Responses ranged from the humorous to the serious: “I will give up my anger at people and things…especially when I’m driving,” said Eve. And others: “This year I gave up doing anything that I'd feel resentful about...I haven't gotten much done.....I will give up sadness and guilt about mother’s last years….I will give up avoiding exercise….I will give up believing that I have the best way to do everything….I will give up fear….”

We wrote our responses on little pieces of paper and burned them with the fire of the one taper and then drowned them in a watery bowl.

Next, camp counselor Rita asked: What light will you carry into the world this new year?

Louise said, “I have struggled with the male-nature of the word ‘God,’ so I have begun to replace that word with Love. I will continue to focus on ‘love’ this year.”

Reflecting on the discussion about the Mayan calendar, I said, “Recently, it has sometimes felt like we are headed for the apocalypse, with so much environmental degradation, war and other violence, including the recent massacre in Connecticut. The idea of a new epoch feels hopeful instead of apocalyptic to me—a sense of a new epoch rather than utter destruction. Thank you for that. I carry that hope into the new world.”

Then, led by camp counselor Rita, we sang songs. I didn’t know the words to most of them, so I mostly listened. I sang along with, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…” and “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

At the end of the night, strangers before, we hugged one another and some of us planned to see one another before the next Solstice.

Like the tulip bulbs that rest in darkness, nurturing their strength until the time for spring’s bloom, I feel blessed, resting, revitalizing. I am preparing to bloom, but for now I can rest.

“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun: A time to be born and a time to die;
 a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
 a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to weep and a time to laugh;
 a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
 a time to lose and a time to seek;
 a time to rend and a time to sew; 
a time to keep silent and a time to speak; 
a time to love and a time to hate;
 a time for war and a time for peace.”

This is my season for rest. 

The Stable as a Cave

My friend Kathy came to church on Sunday. It was great to see her and to hear her. (She has an amazing soprano voice, and she sat between us, so we got to hear her.)

Kathy belongs to our church, but she’s been going through breast cancer treatment since this fall, so she's only been able to attend once or twice.

I know she feels crummy a lot, but she looks beautiful as her now whitish hair is beginning to grow back in. It was such a gift to see her!

When the infant twins were up front for the Children’s sermon, Kathy said, “I can’t believe how big the twins are! They’re like little people now! I feel like I’ve been living in a cave.”

Sunday was supposed to be a joyful day: it was the third Sunday of advent, so we were to light the candle of joy, and our gifted choir was singing its Christmas music.

Friday’s deaths in Newtown, Connecticut, however, sobered our joy. How can a person kill so many small ones and teachers, his mother and himself? How can our country not care for people with mental illness? How can our country continue to allow automatic weapons in our homes?

As my 92 year-old neighbor Annabella mourned: “the darlings…”

The NC Baptist church where I grew up postponed the candle of joy and lit instead the candle of love. I thought we might do something similar at our Seattle church, but we didn’t.

Our minister, Karla, delivered just the right sermon. She began the sermon with words of mourning for the deaths, giving language to our sadness. Our friend Lori, who has cerebral palsy and cannot talk, wailed a painful cry that reverberated with our sadness.

Then Karla reminded us that Jesus was born into a violent world, and that he was born in a messy stable. “God is in this mess,” she said to us, “in this chaos, in this stable that is a cave.”

Karla’s description of the stable as a cave echoed Kathy’s earlier comment and surprised me. There’s no way that Karla heard Kathy, but the echo made the message that much more powerful for me.

God is with us. We are not alone. God is in the darkness.

Earlier this month,  before this massacre, Ann and I celebrated the light in the darkness with our annual solstice party, and we will celebrate the light again with other friends on the actual solstice, the darkest day of the year.

Saturday night, we celebrated the miracle of Chanukah with other friends, and delighted in their telling of the story, lighting the many Menorah , and singing.

Soon, there will be a time for action and for change, but now, as I seek solace in the darkness, this is a time for lighting a candle and saying a prayer: God be with us.

 

 

Poem as Prayer

Keeping Quiet - Pablo Neruda (trans. Alastair Reid)

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

 

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve,

and you keep quiet and I will go.

Je ne sais pas quoi

Especially for the community in Newtown, Connecticut
 
Geneviève, a practicum yoga teacher, has been working in my yoga classes this month, and I've been trying to figure out what makes her so excellent, but (in the Frenchie spirit of her name), je ne sais pas quoi.
 
Wednesday, she helped me stretch into the Lord Voldemort pose (the pose whose name shall not be spoken). With her help, I found new space and flexibility, gifts that I can use independently now that she has shown me the way.
 
Last week she led the class in a sort of kneeling side bend that challenged my balance at just the right place…just enough so that I felt about to fall but didn’t.
 
Now I do that pose every morning, and I always almost fall but never do. I do other poses that she’s taught me, too. And every morning, I thank her.
 
Geneviève is new to teaching, but she’s clearly gifted.
I’ve thought a lot about what makes a teacher gifted.
 
Throughout the last decade, I worked to help high school teachers improve their craft. I only worked with teachers who wanted my help, and working with me cost them extra time for planning and reflection, so the teachers with whom I worked were a dedicated lot. This collaboration was a sign, but not a cause, of their excellence.
 
Some teachers were brand spanking new; others were at the end of long careers.
Some were clearly gifted and improved quickly; others, I struggled to know how to help.
 
The work got me thinking about what makes an excellent teacher and if it’s possible to teach excellence, or if one must simply inspire it.
 
For starters, the teacher needs to be knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. Some people don’t think this is important: they say that building relationships is the only thing that’s really important in teaching. I disagree. Friends might not need knowledge and passion, but teachers do.
 
There’s more, though: a certain je ne sais pas quoi. It’s that je ne sais pas quoi part that I’ve been thinking so much about.
 
I think about another brand spanking new teacher with whom I worked: Sean Riley. He was an excellent teacher from the start. Of course : his teaching improved dramatically with just a few years of practice, but something about him was excellent from the beginning.
 
I remember visiting him in his classroom after school many days when his student LaJoy was there. LaJoy seemed not quite to be able to believe all that Sean expected of her. As they talked, she would whine and roll her eyes, and he would laugh. It seemed like a game to determine whether or not she was really going to rise to her best self. I don’t know if she did, but I know she was thinking about it. Otherwise, she wouldn't have continued showing up in his classroom after school.
 
What was it that made Sean so excellent from the start ? There’s that je ne sais pas quoi part again.
 
Both Sean and Geneviève know their subject matter: Sean, literature and writing, and Geneviève, the body and breathing. Both show respect for their students and joy in the connection. Both laugh easily.
 
But that’s still not quite the je ne sais pas quoi. In their teaching, neither is ego-driven.
 
As the poet Rumi says, "All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; and those whose gaze is fixed upon the pointer will never see beyond. Even let him catch sight of the moon, and still he cannot see its beauty."
 
These excellent teachers see that they are guides, that the teaching is not about them. Both Sean and Geneviève build independence rather than dependence. Maybe I'm getting closer to understanding excellence.
 
I don’t know if they’d use this word or not, but both teachers convey a spirituality that embodies the sacredness of learning and teaching.
 
Maybe that’s the je ne sais pas quoi: sacredness in the learning, the teaching, and the connection. The sense that together, teacher and student connect to something larger than themselves.
 
What is that something? A new je ne sais pas quoi. Perhaps it’s what Rumi calls the moon, some call God, others call the divine, and still others call beauty or truth. Maybe it's what yogis call satya, or perhaps it’s what Robert Pirsig’s schizophrenic protatonist in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenancetries to tease out as he searches for Quality.
 
Perhaps, it's what Anne Lamott called "Howard," as in "Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name." Corny, but amusing. And true.
 
Maybe like the band Motorhead sings, there are a thousand names for God. But maybe the real name cannot be spoken because the spirit is really too big for a word.
 
Maybe excellent teachers help us connect to the divine, whatever you call the divine.
 
It's an excellence that cannot be quanitified. No interview question will capture it (and if a question did, it would be illegal anyway).
 
And perhaps it’s the blasphemy in a school, a sacred place that must be safe and hopeful, that makes yesterday’s massacre at Sandy Point Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut, even more disturbing.
 
The sacredness of our children in a sacred space now desecrated. It breaks my heart.