pulling out the stops
let me start off by saying i am not an overtly religious person. being a cradle Episcopalian, i am not at all comfortable talking about God to people i don't know. but i pray every day, i go to church every week, and i understand that God does work in my life all the time. even when i don't ask Him to. and even when i least deserve it.
i've said before on this blog that i work at my church. and i love my job. it allows me to do everything i have learned in 30 years as a writer and even to learn a few things i didn't know before. and i love the people i work with.
people who don't work for churches might think that in every day there are moments when God is just about everywhere as you work. that may be true for some, but a lot of the time, i've found a day's makeup to be much like i imagine that of the secular office world — things like yelling at the office copier for not printing things right (ours is apparently post-menopausal) or not understanding how the phone system works. or having people stop by asking you to do things that aren't in your job description or emails about all the typos you make during a given week. (that would be a lot).
sometimes, though, you do find God moments, and not necessarily when you're sitting in the pews on Sunday trying to listen really hard to the message and not think about the mess you left on your desk just down the hall or the work you have to get started on the next day when you come back to work.
one thing that probably doesn't happen much in the secular world is having organ music waft down the hallways. real live organ music, not some recorded stuff, emitting from thousands of pipes that are just getting used to their voices. and it's loud and sweet and moving and oh, so, like you think God's voice would sound like, if you could actually hear it.
a God moment happened this week, and it began with music. my boss heard it first and wandered down the hall toward the church as if drawn by the pied piper, and i followed. we've recently installed a new organ in our nave, (well, i lifted nary a pipe) and it is not unusual for us to hear our organist, Kevin, practicing for Sunday. but this, well, this was different.
once inside the almost empty church, i chuckled as the theme from Star Wars shouted from the pipes. then my eyes moved toward a small cluster of women gathered in the pews. one sat in a wheelchair, and as i drew closer, i recognized her as one of our parishioners whose body is waging a battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease. i last saw her two years ago when she came to have her picture taken for the church directory. dressed in a sweater as blue as a bachelor's button, she was beautiful, and i told so. she tried to speak, but had clearly lost her voice, and i asked if she had laryngitis. she wrote on a pad and handed it to me, explaining that the disease was talking now.
today she can no longer walk, though she can grip the pad and as she sat next to the pew, she wrote down the music she wanted to hear Kevin play for her own private concert.
i sat in a pew across the aisle and listened, as Kevin played 'Silent Night' and 'Amazing Grace' — in ways i'd never heard them in all my years of listening. i pulled out the prayer book and said a few silent prayers for another parishioner and friend in the hospital. (and a couple for myself.)
and then Kevin said: now i'm going to pull out all the stops.
from the moment he played the first notes of Bach's "Toccata in D minor" (having no real classical music knowledge, i know it as the organ music from Phantom of the Opera) the change in the room was palpable.
i watched Kevin play, wishing i was sitting behind him so i could see the movement of his fingers and arms as he worked at the console, pulling out stops and playing keys and pedals, giving his new console a real workout. then suddenly i felt the music wrap itself around me, and i just closed my eyes, hearing each organ note, not only with my ears but within me, transported, as he played, to somewhere i had not visited before.
and he played on. and on, notes i had never heard, like a new parent coaxing this infant instrument to speak up, and clearly.
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| photo: graham rountree of rountreemedia |
when i did open my eyes, they were drawn upward, toward the pipes themselves, their powerful notes blending as they shouted, whispered, shouted again. i have not yet found the adjectives to adequately describe what i heard. but it was beautiful. |
finally i looked at the clutch of women gathered around their chair-bound friend, and they were weeping.
Kevin played more softly then, and my boss and i slipped quietly out and back to the work at hand, but the moment hasn't left me. Kevin's playing was meant as a gift for a woman who can rarely, if she ever will again, hear music played in the church she loves. yes, the gift was hers, but all of us present received it, too.
for the past few years i have reported on the progress as our new organ was being built. and in august last year, when the first pipes began to arrive, i started taking pictures — hundreds of them — to record this historic moment in the life of our parish. i've climbed up in the pipe chamber, learned that pipes are made of wood and steel and range in size from the height and breadth of a fledgling oak to some the size of a golf pencil. they are round and square. and the keys that make them work are crafted of polished bone and rosewood. i've listened as the organ builders refined the voice of each of those thousands of pipes to fit our space.
but in that moment, i came to understand just how an organ is so much more than a collection of pipes and wood. it's a breathing thing.
i've written and rewritten that last sentence a dozen times now. it just sounds so over-the-top, clichéd to call a musical instrument a living thing. well, it was an over-the-top moment for me. it felt to me like God's voice got down from the lofty place we often put it and sat in the pew with me. and with the woman in the wheelchair. i don't know how she feels about her disease, but i can imagine how i would feel. I would want to roar as loudly as those pipes, saying 'can't you hear me? i am angry!', and then i would probably cry softly for a little while.
if you think about it real hard, maybe what happened on monday of this week, was that our new organ gave God a voice to speak to a woman who won't ever have a voice again and He said i am angry too. and i am crying with you. but despite all, there is still great beauty in the world. and she — we — all understood what He was saying.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
our light has come
ok, so i haven't written daily during december, at least not here at writemuch. but i have been writing a lot in my job and in my head. why just a few days ago, in the wee hours of the morning, i dreamed that i had found the characters and plot to the next harry potter (well, HP wannabe)... literally dreamed up the world and had actors taking parts in the screen version, even setting it up for the sequel.
if only i could remember it. in the middle of the dream i dreamed that i was thinking now this is a great story, so great in fact that it is unforgettable. apparently not so unforgettable that when i woke just minutes later, the whole thing had vanished more quickly than dear ol' harry under his invisible cloak.
and so i have vowed that i will wake myself up from a dream of this sort again and write the whole damn thing down (even if i can't read my own handwriting, which is hard to do in the middle of the day, much less in the wee hours with the lights off.)
sometimes, though, it's not about my writing at all. sometimes the joy of words comes through the people i love writing and reading their own stories — stories i admittedly helped pull out of them — but their words, their dreams, beautifully rendered on the page.
today was that kind of day.
each sunday during Advent, i've had the privilege to mentor a group of writers who share the pews with me at my church. we've been gathering for years, off and on, during sunday school, to put ourselves into the stories of the Bible and write our way out. i think we are in our 8th year, though we've departed the text and written about Lent from time to time.
it's been a remarkable journey. and i have grown to love and respect all the people who sit at the table with me, churning out their personal stories with great enthusiasm and humility. some of them have been with me for years, others new to the table, but all are searching for the role God plays in their daily life, in their struggles to be good people and parents, to work through their grief, to accept life when plans go awry. you can't know how much i admire how they put it right there on the table, when too often their instructor is not yet ready to do the same. they have written about their marriages, children and siblings they have lost, riffs in families and the struggles and joys that come with this busy season. they've written with humor and with grace, and we have made good use of the box of Kleenex that sits in the middle of our table.
and today, this group of writers shared their stories with the larger congregation. i felt like a mother watching her child perform, take her first steps or riding away from me with her back to me as she peddles away on her bike. in the words these dear friends read, i saw growth, too, as writers and as Christians who have come to understand that God is there, even in the middle of sadness.
it's funny. we set out each season with a set of readings and no idea what we will write about or if our stories will connect in any way to each other, as any good collection should. and every single year, as i begin placing the stories in our collection, it's a goosebump feeling, because stories set apart by circumstance, gender and generation are woven together as if from the same cloth.
this year's collection is all about light, the aha! kind of light that comes when we finally understand we are on the right road.
advent: noun. "coming into being or use."
i'd say that's what this year's collection is all about. but why don't you see for yourself? our light has come, and you can read all about it here.
but that's not all. this afternoon i sat in the audience to hear my mentor, poet Sally Buckner, read from her collection, Nineteen Visions of Christmas. i was sally's student almost 40 years ago at peace college, and one of the joys of the season throughout the years has been to receive a Christmas poem from her as her card. she has collected some familiar to me, and many not, and listening to the cadence and clarity of her words today reminded me of why i want to be a writer, and how much she has taught me about the craft. i can only hope i have taught my own students half as much.
what a joy, in the midst of this season, to be both teacher and student in one single day. but come to think of it, shouldn't every day be just like that?
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
if only i could remember it. in the middle of the dream i dreamed that i was thinking now this is a great story, so great in fact that it is unforgettable. apparently not so unforgettable that when i woke just minutes later, the whole thing had vanished more quickly than dear ol' harry under his invisible cloak.
and so i have vowed that i will wake myself up from a dream of this sort again and write the whole damn thing down (even if i can't read my own handwriting, which is hard to do in the middle of the day, much less in the wee hours with the lights off.)
sometimes, though, it's not about my writing at all. sometimes the joy of words comes through the people i love writing and reading their own stories — stories i admittedly helped pull out of them — but their words, their dreams, beautifully rendered on the page.
today was that kind of day.
each sunday during Advent, i've had the privilege to mentor a group of writers who share the pews with me at my church. we've been gathering for years, off and on, during sunday school, to put ourselves into the stories of the Bible and write our way out. i think we are in our 8th year, though we've departed the text and written about Lent from time to time.
it's been a remarkable journey. and i have grown to love and respect all the people who sit at the table with me, churning out their personal stories with great enthusiasm and humility. some of them have been with me for years, others new to the table, but all are searching for the role God plays in their daily life, in their struggles to be good people and parents, to work through their grief, to accept life when plans go awry. you can't know how much i admire how they put it right there on the table, when too often their instructor is not yet ready to do the same. they have written about their marriages, children and siblings they have lost, riffs in families and the struggles and joys that come with this busy season. they've written with humor and with grace, and we have made good use of the box of Kleenex that sits in the middle of our table.
and today, this group of writers shared their stories with the larger congregation. i felt like a mother watching her child perform, take her first steps or riding away from me with her back to me as she peddles away on her bike. in the words these dear friends read, i saw growth, too, as writers and as Christians who have come to understand that God is there, even in the middle of sadness.
it's funny. we set out each season with a set of readings and no idea what we will write about or if our stories will connect in any way to each other, as any good collection should. and every single year, as i begin placing the stories in our collection, it's a goosebump feeling, because stories set apart by circumstance, gender and generation are woven together as if from the same cloth.
this year's collection is all about light, the aha! kind of light that comes when we finally understand we are on the right road.
advent: noun. "coming into being or use."
i'd say that's what this year's collection is all about. but why don't you see for yourself? our light has come, and you can read all about it here.
what a joy, in the midst of this season, to be both teacher and student in one single day. but come to think of it, shouldn't every day be just like that?
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
My mother lost her hearing in an accident about 15 years ago. Falling on the back of her head on a curb, she cracked the inner-ear bones in both her ears. She was headed with my dad, a physician mind you, to visit my sister in Iowa. I wanted her to cancel the trip, but they would have nothing of it. I reluctantly put them on the plane, calling my sister to say best of luck. It would be an interesting visit. Diagnosed while there, she came home. (Can you imagine flying with broken bones in both ears?) And when my husband picked her up at the airport, she told him the radio was dragging like an old 8-track tape.
It was not that bad with me. I didn't break anything, just in the last few years, my hearing apparently has faded somewhat, like my vision, but unlike my vision, I didn't know what I wasn't hearing. My children mumbled, and well, don't all twenty-somethings mumble? I had to turn the tv up loud, but well, doesn't everybody, except for the commercials?
Last Christmas, when our family gathered, the stories flew, as usual. My sister admitted that she had had a hearing test, and that hear aids were recommended, to which my husband and children said: Susan can't hear anything. I will admit I was having trouble understanding the low talkers during staff meetings, the people who whispered to me, all the time. But I was not deaf, not by a long shot.
As part of my self-improvement plan for 2010, I went to the doctor with a series of complaints, including bunions and by the way, I have trouble hearing. He did a test, and I didn't believe he was actually pressing the little button that buzzed, because I could not hear it at all. On to the ENT, and to the audiologist. My mother admitted she was losing her hearing before she lost it completely.
And so, I got hearing aids. At Costco. COSTCO! I love Costco. But I wasn't sure I wanted to get my hearing aids there. But my husband, who is frugal, suggested it. And so I reluctantly visited their hearing center, taking my test, which showed I had lost much of the high pitched sound and some of the low. Women's voices, birds (though I swear I can hear them fine in the morning,) voice recognition, which explains why my children were mumbling (I stand by my statement above, however.)
They retested me, and the results were the same. Then they turned on a hearing aid with my prescription. Oh my, the world is much, much louder than I thought. The first time I put my own hearing aids in my ears (weeks later), I was upset. One more sign that I am getting older. And when I walked out, I could hear the clap of my shoes against the cement, the jingle of my keys in my hand, the traffic, and when my little friend Cheyney whispered to me, I could finally hear what she was saying. One wise decision indeed.
So now I hear, and though I am a few thousand dollars poorer, I am richer in hearing the world again, not having to tell people to speak up, to listen to the whispers I was missing. How can you listen, when you can't hear?