Striving

I have a secret to share.

For months I didn’t tell anyone, but yesterday I spilled the beans to an old friend and it felt good to get it off my chest. While I was still struggling with it I was ashamed, but now that I am over it I can bring it to the light.

My apologies to those of you expecting something salacious but my secret is this: For a while a few months ago I considered not singing anymore. It’s not that I planned to take a vow of silence, I just wasn’t sure about the striving anymore. I thought maybe it was time to stop working so hard, to stop training my voice, so to speak. Maybe it was time to stop going to auditions and taking lessons and learning new rep and working so damn hard.

I was sick, stressed out, and overwhelmed. I was exhausted all the time and was giving what little energy I had to people, not to practicing. I was putting myself out there a little bit, and when I did the rejections came over and over. I was busy and beaten down.

The thought crept in: Maybe this is the end of the road for me. Maybe this is as good as I am going to get. Maybe I should stop striving. Like any good conservatory grad I pushed the thought aside – you don’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a degree and then stop, right? Besides, what would people say? Wouldn’t everyone look at me and see a failure? In truth, I know plenty of people who gave up the life and now just sing for pleasure or not at all. You know what, they seem pretty happy. But I was ashamed to even consider it.

Yet one day I knew (and I wish I could remember what prompted this) that I had to sit with this idea for a while. I had to bring it out of the darkness and think about what it would actually mean. I had to take it to God and ask for the truth, even if the truth would be something I didn’t like. And since that day I took it to God in prayer, I haven’t given it another thought. I wrote “I am working too hard in a fallow season” and accepted that this was just a season and got on with my life.

Perhaps the time will come for me to cease my striving but now is not that time. Not because of pride or pressure but because this is what I am good at. Whatever other gifts I may have, music was my first and foremost, always, and was such an obvious combination of my blessing and my passion that not to develop it would be more than shameful. It would be sinful.

So for now I’m still singing, still striving.

Five things for Ash Wednesday

As it always does, the liturgical calendar has wended it’s way back to Ash Wednesday and we are off again on our Lenten adventures. Because I have a busy day with a number of rehearsals (and of course, some church!) I am not sure if or when I will have time to write the words of wisdom you have come to expect (or I have convinced myself I am writing). So in lieu of that, here’s five things for your Ash Wednesday.

First and most important, T.S. Eliot’s poem Ash Wednesday. Yes, I know you’re tired of me talking about it. But it’s my favorite. Sometimes I read it out loud to myself.

Second, a song by a friend of mine inspired by the same poem. I’ve always liked Dann’s work, but this song really knocked my socks off.

Third and fourth, two old posts from me on Ash Wednesday: Our peace in God’s will (yes, inspired by Eliot. I’m sorry, I’m into the guy!) and Create in me. Both of them at their core are about trust and submission. Hmmmm.

And finally, a wish inspired by a loved one who was disappointed to get a bad ash-er at mass this morning. May your cross be distinct and your ashes be dark and lasting. Seriously, I should write greeting cards.

Seasons

This has been a tough year.

No, I’m not talking about 2012, we’re not far enough into it yet. I’ve never had a reason to get off the academic schedule so I’m talking about AY 11-12, since Labor Day when I capped off two weeks of nausea with a panic attack on a boat on Long Island Sound, holding an ice pack to the back of my neck while I hung over the side and wondering what in the world was going on.

I’m tough, though, so I didn’t really accept that what was going on was that I was getting beaten up. Life was getting harder. People only a few years older than me but infinitely wiser spoke to me of “seasons” and I didn’t want to listen, because most of my seasons have been pretty good and I didn’t want to admit that I was in for it, for a while.

My day job was stressful. I wasn’t getting as many gigs as I wanted to. I was gloriously in love, except the person I was (and am) in love with lived three hours away which meant part of my heart was always somewhere else. And then my insides exploded and I started vomiting copiously. I had to write a 35 page thesis. I had to read 500 pages on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Excuse me, I have to go read. Excuse me, I have to drive 150 miles. Excuse me, I have to practice. Excuse me, I have to vomit. Again.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
     to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
     to something unknown,
         something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that is made
     by passing through some stages of instability
         and that may take a very long time.

Teilhard de Chardin’s words do not comfort me here. I do not want it to take a “very long time”. I want to be there NOW. I want to kiss the anxiety goodbye and get on with my life, with the easy, comfortable life I knew not so long ago. I want to shout at God “I HAVE WORKED MY TAIL OFF TO BE WISE AND TO BE OVER ALL THIS SO LET’S GET ON WITH IT!!”

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
     as though you could be today what time
         — that is to say, grace –
     and circumstances
        acting on your own good will
     will make you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new Spirit
     gradually forming in you will be.

“Grace and circumstances acting on your own good will”. I love this description of progress. It’s the only equation that makes sense, bringing God, me and chance all into the same sentence in the right balance. Maybe there’s a new spirit forming. Am I brave enough to embrace it?

Give our Lord the benefit of believing
     that his hand is leading you,
     and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
         in suspense and incomplete.

Accept the anxiety…I often wonder if that line was written by someone who was deeply enlightened, or by someone who didn’t quite know the depth of anxiety that some of us can face. If Teilhard de Chardin was a neurotic Italian would he have been singing a different tune.

Anyway, that’s where I am. Anxious, in suspense, incomplete. I am starting to believe my friends who said that this is a season, that on the other side of this there is a relatively normal life not lived on the edges of panic. I don’t think it is a sign of faithlessness to say that I wish I were there right now, on the other side.

This is what my Lent will be: an act of submission. I submit to the here and now. I vow to find the beauty in the stress, the purpose in the chaos. To paraphrase Jeremiah 29:11, there is a plan here for a future and for hope. I can’t find it on my own. But it is there, off in some distant future, waiting for me in a loveliness even more striking than the glint of the sun off the water, the rays that enthrall me even when I’m puking off the side of the boat.

I really do love the water, even when it's chilly.

Ashes at Starbucks

Let’s get one thing straight: I am not anti-ashes.

I know people who get all worked up over Ash Wednesday, because it is a popular liturgical holiday which is not a Solemnity, and conjures more excitement from the faithful than, say, the Feast of the Assumption. People make a big deal out of “getting ashes” even though it’s not obligatory. So some people see Ash Wednesday as another sign of those “greedy” cultural Catholics who will only come to church when they are going to get something. I do not share that sentiment.

People want signs, and ashes are a fine one. Mimicking our baptismal anointing, the ashes form a cross on our forehead proclaiming to whom we belong. So all the people, even those who haven’t given much thought to practice or theology during Ordinary Time, line up to “get” them.

I say this all to make the case that I am pretty laissez-faire about the practices of Ash Wednesday – most of our Lenten practices are customary, that is, there are few rules about how they must be done. No rule says ashes can only be distributed during mass. No rule says you have to go to mass on Ash Wednesday. And as the practice is common in many Christian churches in addition to my Catholic Church, there are as many ways to celebrate the rite as their are Christian communities.

But still, this was just too much: Celebrating Ash Wednesday outside of Starbucks. Isn’t it natural, on a day of fasting and repentance, to catch people after they’ve grabbed their morning indulgence and ambush them with ashes?

Forgive that one cheap shot. I really do respect the energy behind their ministry. But I think the practice is misguided. No matter how pervasive the movement of American individualism is, I refuse to believe that faith is something you do on your own. That’s why we come together in faith communities to practice. Sometimes our faith requires us to show up. If we want to participate in this custom that marks us as Christians (and that is not obligatory!) then the only way to express that desire is by showing up.  But my belief in the value of community isn’t my only hang-up.

What is often forgotten is that ashes are a sign of repentance. It’s not just that we are sporting our Lenten forehead fashion out of Christian pride: this smudge should also be a sign that we know we are sinners and we have committed ourselves to turning our lives around. For the sake of those in Starbucks, I hope that encountering an ash-er on the sidewalk will inspire them to “repent and believe in the Gospel”, but I fear it will only increase complacency.

Yes, as the article mentions, Jesus went out among the people and ministered to them. But when he did that he made great demands of them. His demands were not judgmental or pushy but manifested his high expectations. I think he truly believed that people could “go and sin no more”, give away all that they have and follow him”.  Yes, grace is free, but it’s not easy. It calls us to discipleship and repentance, not to skip off sipping our latte. I’m not convinced we do people any favors by making it easy to do something that is supposed to be difficult.

 

Mind over Matter

Nothing influences my mood more than the weather. On a gloomy day I can barely open my eyes. When October rolls around with its early dusks I am cloaked in sadness. When summertime is here and the days are long I feel satisfied. This is normal, I suppose.

This weekend I went running on an unseasonably warm morning and enjoyed the sun on my face for an hour or so. By the time I was done I felt like I could conquer the world. Everything was sun-filled happiness. Even the things that had me sobbing and depressed earlier in the week were nothing to me! I realized this as I wrapped up my run, and because my mood was optimistic I didn’t really mind that it was all caused by something out of my control.

The scene of this weekend's incredible perking-up

During the long fall and winter I am a little less sanguine about my connection to nature. Winter’s lethargy feels like weakness, and my morose pensiveness becomes obnoxious even to me. I should be able to put mind over matter, I tell myself.

I reflected on that voice this weekend, when my mind was all jazzed up on matter and I was ready to wrap my arms around the whole happy world. The truth is, I don’t think I want to put mind over matter.

We weren’t enfleshed by accident. This isn’t some mean joke or some waiting period until we get to the good stuff. This is the good stuff, and there’s more good waiting for us beyond. This should be harder and harder for me to proclaim, as it has felt in recent months like my body is falling apart. But learning the ins and outs of my body has made me love it even more, realizing how precious it is and how grace-filled.

So too the created world. In the very beginning of “in the beginning”, God came up with the first recorded catch-phrase: “And it was good”. I’m with God on this one. It is so, so good and so good that we can taste and touch and see and smell and feel it, that we can be in it with others, embodied and loved into being and proclaimed just as good as the moon and the stars.

God was not enfleshed by accident. In case we couldn’t figure it out from Genesis, the Incarnation of Christ tells us that our created world is sanctified. When at the end of his life Jesus took simple bread and wine and announced they would become him, he made holy the simplest fruits of the earth. That same earth and the rest of Creation are what make me happy and sad, what make my body work, what feeds and sustains the people I love in their messy, enfleshed grandeur.

I should want to be in control of all of this, to put my mind over matter, but I don’t anymore. Instead, I see in it one more example of the Paradox that runs the universe, the one that says weakness is strength, and that in giving we receive. Because only a God who became like us in silly, broken body could come up with this: our fragile flesh is sign of Love, is earthly glory.

The Bargain Women Make (or why my heart won’t let me diet)

I have always been unhappy with my weight.

Maybe always is a strong term. Until I got to college I didn’t think much about it, and happily porked out during high school with no one giving me much grief about it, God bless them. When I got to college I turned to a lot of unhealthy ways of trying to punish myself for not being skinnier (which, in what seemed supreme unfairness, didn’t work. If I was going to abuse my body couldn’t I at least lose weight?!?!). My first year working full time I dropped 10-15 through race-training and more-sensible eating, and that’s been about where I’ve stayed. Not-quite-skinny. Not-quite-fat. Not-quite-happy.

Because I know what to do to lose the weight. If I really wanted to, I would, I suppose. I would stop eating, more importantly stop drinking, and work out even more than I already to.

Except I want to have a life.

And that’s the bargain we all have to make. If women want to live a life in which they can eat a piece of birthday cake, have a glass or four of wine, eat the chocolates we get for Valentine’s Day, and go to happy hour at four on a Friday instead of to Pilates, then we don’t get to look like the people in the magazines (we probably don’t get to anyway, but that’s another post).

This is more than just whining that I don’t want to give things up. It’s that I don’t want to do what I don’t want to do. I have a lot of healthy habits. I chug water all day long. I limit to a half-cup of coffee. My diet is primarily veggies and whole grains. I run half-marathons. But I do those things because they enrich me, not because they limit me. In the real world people have to make real sacrifices. I’m not going to come up with other ones just for fun (except during Lent. Again, a different post).

Why am I writing all this? Because I need to tell myself again that it’s OK to have an extra helping of pasta primavera on a cold winter night. It’s OK to sleep through a workout during a busy week. It’s OK to give myself a Guinness mustache at the end of a long week.

(Or at least it would be OK, if I lost a few pounds.)

Whitney, Adele & Me

As someone who sings plenty, and someone who sings classical music and who also is not too proud to listen to pop, I have often been asked who my favorite female pop singer is. I have always chosen Whitney Houston. So it was upsetting to hear this weekend that she had died – even more upsetting than the realization a few years ago that her glorious voice was trashed.

There were a few reason I admired her so much. It wasn’t just the beautiful voice, it’s that she knew what to do with it. You never got the sense that she was foolishly pushing her limits. Unlike a lot of singers I hear, who try so hard to sound a particular way that they lose their own unique voice, Whitney always sounded just like herself. She was doing what her voice was meant to do.

In the same vein, her voice was not meant to shout. She sang, exploring different colors, different mixes of head and chest registers. She sang instead of shouting, and she sang every note. It is so tempting only to focus on the money note, the one that makes the highlight reel (think “and the rockets red glare” of her legendary Super Bowl Anthem). But she really sang every note, the high and the low, the long and the short.

I was really interested to hear Adele sing last night after her vocal surgery. In addition to doing proper rehabilitation, she appears to have rebuilt her technique as well. With all admiration for her previous powerhouse performances, I love this new style.

Once again, I admire the lack of shouting. Rather than muscle her way through every single note, it now sounds like she is finding more of a balance of lighter and stronger production. This is difficult to do: it means a choice on every single note, a choice of balance and mix. It means relinquishing the mark of overwhelming force with which many voices are branded, and behind which many artists can hide.

Regular readers have probably already recognized the extended metaphor here. We get one unique voice. I am not immune to the desire for someone else’s voice (if only I could belt a little higher! If only I had that stupid high E!). Sometimes it’s not the physical voice I want but some other combination of traits and gifts (if only I were quieter, or politer, or more diplomatic, or not me). But this is what I got, and this is what I’m made for. This is the voice I was meant to sing with.

And there are subtleties and colors throughout my one unique voice, and I do myself a disservice if I just muscle through all the time, trying to find the power and the expense of the beauty.