Just like Salieri and Nacho

     Sometimes I know just how they feel.
     Antonio Salieri as portrayed by F. Murray Abraham in Amadeus, one of my favorite movies of all time: Salieri, the villainous and vain court composer whose jealousy of the brilliant Mozart leads him to plot downfall and ruin.
     And Nacho, the priest turned luchador (masked wrestler) of Jack Black's farcical Nacho Libre, who is lured by the fame and glory of wrestling into moonlighting as a particularly bumbling fighter to earn money to purchase better food for the orphanage.
     Because they are each drawn to a heart's desire, and then cursed by inadequacy and mediocrity. In a bitter monologue, Salieri scorns God for his fate: " All I wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing... and then made me mute. Why? Tell me that. If He didn't want me to praise him with music, why implant the desire? Like a lust in my body! And then deny me the talent?" His jealousy of Mozart's ecstatic talent and disdain for Mozart's immaturity and vulgarity lead to ruin and death, and result in Salieri's guilt and sorrow at being forgotten by the world.
     As for Nacho, at one point the wrestling friar, frustrated at yet another epic drubbing, cries out " Precious Father, why have you given me this desire to wrestle and then made me such a stinky warrior?"
    Dramatic tragedy or sarcastic comedy, each of these strikes a resonant chord in me. I know just how each one of these fictional characters feel.
     Let me tell you about me and my guitar.

     I have played guitar about thirty years now. Terribly.
     But enthusiastically.
     I can make a few chords-actually, quite a few of them. Anything with a # or sus4 or such always intimidated me, so I steered clear of those. If the song is primarily C's and G's and D's and E's and A's, I probably have made a stab at it.
    F chords-not so much. Those hurt, and it's hard to get a good tone out of them.

     Until last spring, I would play a little every couple of years or so, dust off my guitar, replace the strings  and tune it up,open my old Mel Bay or Guitar for Dummies books for a couple of weeks, do the exercises, maybe learn to play the melody or chords to some old song about telling Aunt Rhody that her goose is dead. Never could figure out why someone would write a song like that... After a couple of weeks of making no real headway on playing a real song from start to finish rather than five notes from Jingle Bells, I would give up until a new President was sworn in.
     Last spring, I decided to put my money where my mouth is and actually take lessons. I enrolled in weekly lessons at the local guitar shop. My teacher is a mid-20s metalhead with brilliant technique and feel and who possesses a talent for teaching. Since I've been adding glitches and bad habits into my playing since before he was born, he works on my rhythm and timing, my technique, my ear. He picks out songs and solos to practice based upon containing elements necessary to master playing. For instance, right now I am working on the solo to Frijid Pink's 1970's version of House of the Rising Sun because it is slow enough for a beginner and because it features vibrato, bends, slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs.
     I've been reinforced in the fact that I am NOT a natural musician. I am a terrible musician, I can play the same 4 or 5 notes twenty times and still not get them right. Or I can play it right 10 times in a row then forget how I've been playing it on the 11th time. My timing is always suspect, even with a metronome going, and tapping a foot, playing, and breathing at the same time gives me fits.
 
     So I ask, why do I have this desire to play guitar when I demonstrably have so little facility? Why have this burning desire then be such a stinky guitar player?

      According to my teacher, the answer is practice and lots of it. If 20 times on a riff doesn't cut it, try 100 and see what happens.
      Which all comes down to how bad do I want it? How much time am I willing to invest to be good, or at least better than crappy? I am encouraged by Bookends.
      When I was about 16 or so, I learned to play Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel. I learned to play it by sitting for hours practicing. Still to this day I can pick up a guitar and play it on the first try, without even thinking about it and without looking at the strings or my fingers. So it obviously can be done.

     I think my teacher is right. It's all about practice and about not giving up, about doing it 100 times as best you can so that on the 101st all of a sudden it comes together. Every now and then I close my eyes and just listen to the music in my head while I play and suddenly what I hear and what is actually coming out of the guitar are the same. That is when the pieces of the puzzle come together and I realize with a rush WHY I am still trying.
    Maybe a lot of things in life are about practicing, both the simple and the sublime. Making bread. Marriage. Fatherhood. Folding fitted sheets. Christianity. Driving. Blogging.
     But for today, I'm just thinking about spending another 1/2 hour running through some scales on the guitar. Teaching my fingers to move without having to think about it. So instead I can pay attention to this music I hear in my head.

Bacon, biscuits, and Bonhoeffer

      Waving a bony finger vaguely in my face and looking down at me from his imposing height, his face angular and keen-eyed over a bushy Prophet Ezekiel Old Testament beard, Bill Yon told me that I needed to come to the church the next Saturday morning. Somewhere between a command and an invitation, this summons to join the table at the Men's Prayer Breakfast resulted in my showing up the following Saturday, bleary-eyed and confused, to St. Francis' parish hall.

     Where I was hooked.

    Physically and metaphorically, I took my place at the table that day years ago and never looked back again.

     I had previously attended several different churches, and out of each one I extracted some measure of comfort or teaching or spirituality, but I never clicked. At all the churches I attended as an adult, I felt vaguely dishonest and uneasy. Church, after all, was for nice  people, who pretended nothing ever went wrong, spoke only vaguely of challenges either personal or faith-based, and generally behaved as if they were constantly on display at a grandparent's house. Everyone was just so....generic. Like Flanders on the Simpsons. Wishy-washy. Even boring...

    When we moved to Birmingham, Stacey got us into going to a type of church new to me, an Episcopal church. We had always gone to Methodist churches, and switching to liturgy and weekly Eucharist and traditional church music and the Book of Common Prayer was an adjustment for me. I remember I was confused with how to juggle prayer book, hymnal, and service music leaflets all at once. I was nonplussed with the different music.  And with the structure of the liturgy, which relied upon centuries-old prayers and instructions that changed but little from season to season. So many simple things were even said differently: we didn't have a pastor-we had a rector. We weren't a congregation-we were a parish. But, since Stacey's heart told her this was the right church for us, I resolved to make a proper go of it, and  after 6 months or so I got used to it all, to celebrating the Eucharist or Lord's Supper every Sunday, to the hymns that went back sometimes to the 7th or 8th centuries, to the priest's formal robes and the incense and chanting at special days.

     And it grew on me. Always an Anglophile and always steeped in history, I gloried in being a modern American representative of the Church of England, of following in forms of worship laid down centuries ago. The liturgy or rules of worship, far from restraining the free flow of praise, gave me a grounding so that I knew what was to come at all times of the service. Many times in the past I had been subjected to cringe-worthy extemporaneous prayers that went something like "Oh, God, you are so holy and you send your holy Son just to be holy and save us, so just let us be holy too, God" and which made me think the preacher was just closing his eyes and saying whatever was in his mind. Compare that with "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen." 

       Just typing that and reading it over in my mind right here in the present moment just sent a thrill coursing up my spine, made my heart swell and my eyes mist. The message and the language are so beautifully blended to set my heart to yearning to be instructed, to prepare myself, to surrender my human pride and arrogance, to take my rightful place in the universe.

      Yowza. I just had what I call a St. Francis moment.

      A St. Francis moment is what I call my personal epiphanies, when mind and heart and soul converge and reveal a greater truth to me. An inchoate epiphany, not fully formed but still embryonic. Bill Yon, a retired priest at St. Francis, was the catalyst for one of my more memorable ones when he invited/threatened/summoned me to join the men for breakfast. I had been attending the church for several years, and I was drawing a lot of spiritual sustenance from the Sunday services and the occasional study groups I went to, but I was not socially engaged with the people in the parish.

     When I showed up for breakfast, I was not sure what to expect but I was pretty sure it would not be exciting or memorable or interesting. Maybe something like having breakfast with-well, with a preacher. Don't put your elbows on the table!!

     Bill had a fine idea that what the men's group should be was not a Men's PRAYER Breakfast but a MEN'S Prayer Breakfast. His goal was that we should learn about each other's lives between Sundays. Far from "Well, I'm just glad to be here with the group today", the guys around the table opened up about themselves, their families. Their struggles. Their crises. Their doubts. That morning and all the subsequent 3rd Saturday morning breakfasts I attended over the next six or seven years we shared real conflict and real struggle, real pain and real joy. Far from being a group of too-nice bland-itos, these men were vibrant, authentic, conflicted, supportive, flawed, passionate, and loving.

       The group, the community into which I subsequently immersed myself, began with this men's group and extended soon to the whole church. The parish life of St. Francis must be similar to what medieval parish life was. A group of people who worship together, work together, play together. Church became where I spent my social time as well as Sundays from 11 to noon. Cooking 70 boston butts for a fundraiser over a weekend, sitting around Buzz Palmer's pull-behind smoker "telling white lies and drinking dark liquor" and bundled up against the 40-degree cold. Cleaning up Bill Yon's house and grounds in the annual Habitat for Yon project. Gathering to cheer on Jessica Lingle win a "battle of the bands" contest at a local coffeehouse. Hosting dinner parties. Sharing weekends at the lake, grilling out and boating and watching football.  Feeding God's people at the Firehouse Shelter in downtown Birmingham.

     The inspirational words, the form of worship and liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer provided the framework, but it is the personal connections started at that Men's Prayer Breakfast so long ago that made my experience of worship so powerful. Communion, the Holy Eucharist, is celebrated in a circle at St. Francis. Prior to and upon receiving wine and bread, you are intensely aware of the others clustered in that circle, those you know and love and work shoulder-to-shoulder with. Of the children of friends you have watched grow up. Of those that have died, whose presence is sorely missed. 

     How much better is faith when it is celebrated in community. With friends.

     Out here in Houston, I've joined a church that I am really enjoying. I noticed that on its website it listed a men's group. When I contacted the parish secretary I found out that this group has been defunct for a time, that they used to get together and hang out, cook and go to ballgames, even toured a local brewery once. I called up the fellows that used to be in charge of it, told them that I would like to offer my assistance to get it started again if there was any interest.

    Last week we had our first meeting. We met on Saturday morning. Andrew and I cooked a big breakfast. Before we got down to the agenda of the meeting, we all took a couple of minutes to introduce ourselves. To say who we are. To say what we do "between Sundays". 

     I'm sure this group will turn out to be different from my old group, but it sure feels familiar starting out. I was taught well to get folks talking about themselves. I sure think Bill Yon would approve of the way we've begun. 

    Here's Bill Yon's traditional close of Men's Prayer Breakfast, found on page 836 of the Book of Common Prayer:

 Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have
done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole
creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life,
and for the mystery of love.

We thank you for the blessing of family and friends, and for
the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

We thank you for setting us at tasks which demand our best
efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy
and delight us.

We thank you also for those disappointments and failures
that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on you alone.

Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the
truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast
obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying,
through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life
again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.

Grant us the gift of your Spirit, that we may know him and
make him known; and through him, at all times and in all
places, may give thanks to you in all things. Amen.

     

Backwards-Sideways-Dig! Dig! Dig!

     It must have been a helluva sales pitch. I don't remember what was said, but I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Both a momentary lapse of caution and a collapse of my instinct for self-preservation.
 
    How else can I explain the whitewater rafting trip I took a couple of years ago on the Ocoee River in Georgia with the youth group at St. Francis? I had been on the Ocoee previously, on another trip almost 20 years before, and knew EXACTLY what to expect, so I can't claim optimistic ignorance. Consider the facts as I knew them. Probability of being unseated and falling overboard during the rapids? High-and since it had happened on the first trip, I knew already exactly how unpleasant it is when the boat runs over you. Constantly soaked with 50-degree water the entire length of the trip? An absolute, teeth-chattering certainty. Probability of aches and soreness following the run? A virtual guarantee, since the most common posture is an uncomfortable kneel braced against the side of the boat for the entire two or three hour trip.
     I don't remember who sold me on the idea of going on this suicide mission, but whoever it was MUST have been astoundingly persuasive. Not only did I go, but I also talked Sarah, my youngest, into going as well. Sarah, who is neither suicidally adventurous nor particularly outdoorsy unless a campfire and 'smores-a-plenty are involved.

     All the trips down the Ocoee, with its thunderous Olympic-class rapids, are led by a guide. These are incredibly fit and incredibly skillful daredevils who take group after group down the river daily, and the common rule is that the guide is the absolute and unquestioned dictator of the run. The Czar of All the Russias held less control than the typical guide; since they protect your life-or at least can keep you from being tossed out of the raft at the drop-they command instant attention and obedience.
     During the run, we sat in the boat, either perched precariously on the seats or the sidewall, or we knelt in the bottom. When the guide/Emperor bellowed out "DIG!" we paddled as hard and as furiously as we could until the order came to stop. If the paddlers followed the commands as indicated and were more or less in rhythm, and kept on pulling even while dropping five or six feet, we would pull through with only a moderate soaking. If the instinct for self-preservation made us quit digging in and cluster in the boat like lemmings suddenly come to our senses, we would lose our momentum and either founder or flounder or capsize.

      Here's the thing-it is so wet, so foggy, and so humid that your glasses become useless within the first 1/4 mile. The boat spins round and round, so that you quickly lose orientation and don't know quite whether you are facing forward or backward. Blood pounds in your ears, and the roar of the spray fills your senses and deadens your hearing. All you can do is wait for instruction, for the command. "Dig left" or "dig right" or "dig two" or "dig three". All you can do is suspend your own need to process what is happening, to make your own decisions, to be in charge.
      All you can do is TRUST. I know the phrase "blind trust" is overused, but in this case, BLIND TRUST is the only term that fully describes it. And then you have to REACT. Immediately. Without interposing your own will or your own understanding or your own judgement. You just react, because to wait means you are lost. And not just you, but everyone else in your boat.

       I'm always seeing metaphors in everything that happens to me, and this whole episode struck me as a grand one. What does it mean? I'm not totally sure, but it speaks to me on whole lot of levels. Of trust in God to call the shots even if I am blind. Of trust in each other to do the deep digging in we have to do every day to move the world along. Of trust in ourselves to keep to the task even if we cannot even see what is going on around us, even if we can't be sure that everyone else is digging in too, or if we are alone.

     So I try to take my lesson with me in times of doubt, when I can't hear anything over the thunder of the river and the blood pounding in my temples, to listen intently through the chaos for some sort of life-saving instruction:

     DIG! DIG! DIG!




     
   

One armed tackles and backpack handles

     Contrary to initial impressions, bus drivers must do a lot more than just keep that big yellow monster between the center line and the ditch on the right-hand side, stop kids from sticking gum all over the seats,  and intimidate drivers of subcompact cars. I have learned that they must also  have cat-like reflexes and quick wits. In particular, they have to master the Kindergartner Grab.
     You see, there are different rules for kindergartners and first graders on a bus. You can only let the youngest riders off of the bus at the stop if there is someone waiting there for them. So ya gotta know your kids, know who they are, know their parents and big brothers or sisters or anyone else who waits at the stop for them. And since the littlest ones are the most excited of all, excited to come home every day bearing those big pictures of impossibly yellow suns beaming down squiggly rays on unbelievably green grass and smiling stick figures to tape on the refrigerator, they forget and try to run down the steps and off the bus as soon as the door opens: So you grab them with a one-armed tackle that would impress a pro wrestler or an NFL linebacker. Or you snatch them back by using the First-Grader Handle, that little rubber loop on top of the backpack that allows you to yank fleeing charges back with a quick jerk.
       And you don't let them go until you have identified and acknowledged the specific person who you are releasing the kid to. This is a rule than can't be broken, and any bus driver can tell you horror stories entitled The Day School Let Out Early Due to Bad Weather and Half the Kindergartner Parents Were Not There and its sequel Driving Little Kids Back to The School To Wait on Parents to Come Pick Them Up (In 3D). Safety is sacrosanct, and if it is not safe to let them go YOU CAN NOT. Regardless of how much they may want to leave the bus, no matter how much you hold the line of other kids up, you can't do anything else except match them up one by one.
     
  I know that I need to remember this for my own life, that sometimes I may feel stifled in reaching a goal or frustrated in not getting something I need or want. It is then that I need to recall that sometimes I am in the same situation as those kindergartners; it is not safe, it is not time, or it is not right yet. Although I want to bound off the bus and dart across the intersection without heed for anything other than my need to get home and show off my new popsicle-stick sculpture, someone else is holding me, restraining me, yanking me back by the handle on my backpack or throwing a blocking arm across my way. It may not be safe, or the time may not be reached yet, or it may just not be right for me, or I simply may not be able to understand the real situation any more than those kids can understand the true danger of impulsiveness.

     One of my favorite images of God is that presented in Luke 13:34 and Matthew 23:37. In the midst of condemning Jerusalem for its killing of prophets and its unwillingness to obey God and let itself be taken care of, the verse presents God not as a stern-visaged, bearded patriarch casting thunderbolts like Zeus in a Greek myth, but as very motherly:

How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.

     Hmmm...God as a mother hen gathering her chicks under her sheltering wing..yeah....I like that. That's how it feels sometimes, just let me remember that when I feel His hand yank me back onto the bus.

Auld Lang What??

    Another year has closed, and another one stretches out in front of us like a blank page. This year began quietly; still overstimulated and drained from our whirlwind Christmas travels back to Alabama, we celebrated the holiday in our own tradition-sleeping in, doing little to nothing all day other than reading, watching movies, and playing guitar... This year a cold cleansing rain drummed on the roof all day, making futile even a half-hearted attempt to walk the dogs or otherwise get out of the house. I'm not sure, but I think I did change out of my pajamas that afternoon just in time to cook dinner-the Southern staples of blackeyed peas and turnip greens accompanying baked ham, macaroni and cheese, and cornbread.
    Of course, this year like any other there were countless news stories explaining New Year traditions, and the obligatory explanation of Auld Lang Syne. Mixed up in its nostalgic melancholy for old times past there is a secondary allusion of "old land's own". Of being in exile from one's own land and heritage. Of being a stranger in a strange land. The migration of Scottish people all over Europe and the New World referenced by the longing for old times long ago apply to any of us who may feel displaced or lost.
    Having living in Texas almost a year, I feel the melancholic homesickness for past and for homeland resonate within whenever I visit Alabama. I enjoy Texas,with its vast prairies under a sky that goes on for ever and ever, and the excitement and pulse and diversity of Houston with its millions of residents, and of its cowboy culture and earnest artiness and parks and walking trails everywhere. But my pulse quickens when I travel back to Birmingham, to Clanton, to Opelika, and see the familiar rolling forested hills of Alabama rather than the scrub prairie so common here. When I see Auburn tags on cars,or when I drive down narrow country Alabama roads that weave between valleys and forests...
    It just feels right to go home.
   Back home, the landscape looks lush and fertile and verdant in a way that nowhere else other than the Southeast looks. Unrealized to me, the rolling hills and plains of Alabama have become such a part of my environmental outlook that I search for them everywhere. Traveling eastward on I-10, I drive discontented over miles of Louisiana's swampy bayous and scanty scrub forest, only relieved when Mississippi's vistas, so similar to Alabama's, appear.
      It is a shock to realize how much I miss the state of my birth. Although the people in Texas are friendly, their drawling accents almost identical to those I grew up with, the wide-open sky offers endless possibilities each day, and the opportunities are boundless, this place does not fit me like a second skin like Alabama does.
     So this New Year I raise a "cup o' kindness" to my old home and my new one. To Texas, my adopted home, land of my future. But also to Alabama, which holds within its clayey red soil and its rushing streams all of my yesterdays. To everyone I know, I remember you in this season of new birth and blank slates:

      Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
      Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
      For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne
      We'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne.