There's a light breeze, the sun is dancing with the clouds, the water from the fountains is soft, steady.
I hear the tat, tat, tat of the percussion, and the bom, bom, bom of the bass even before I see the instruments. Sounds forming a loom, a frame for the jazz we have come to hear. The guitar, the keyboard, and the saxophone are both the shuttles and the yarn, weaving in and out, creating patterns, texture, design.
These songs they play, Bill Lancton and his band, The Coalition, they were composed by someone. They were written down and played before by these musicians and others. But tonight, it's like they play them brand new, too. This murmuring of this audience, the swishing of this breeze, the trickling of these fountains adding other layers of texture to their rich sound.
I like hearing jazz music, but I love watching jazz, love watching the bended knees as the notes go low, the tilted head and squinting eyes as the notes go high, the sway, the bobble, the rotating hips as the notes go up and down and every which way. And I love the way jazz musicians look at each other.
Musicality and collaboration are not unique to jazz, though they are performed in a degree that no other style seems to match. It's the improvisation, the syncopation, the return of themes, exploding again and again in surprise that make the musicality and collaboration different in jazz.
And again, it's the way those musicians look at each other.
Just a nod, it seems, and the guy on the sax knows it's his turn to shine. Just a step back, and the gentleman on the keys takes it from there, adding the "dubba, dubba, dubs" that are also unique to jazz. They turn, they look at the audience, they look at each other, they acknowledge the applause. They play together, they play alone, they weave in and out, creating something beautiful.
The melody I heard when I first arrived at the concert is repeated throughout the evening, at least once, maybe more. It's familiar, it's classic, it's jazz, though I don't know what it's called.
I actually don't know a lot about jazz. When they announced they were playing a Duke Ellington song, it sounded vaguely familiar. The name John Coltrane ran through my mind throughout the evening, though they didn't actually play any of his music. I heard bars that I thought sounded like Gershwin, but they weren't.
I don't know much about jazz, but jazz knows something about me. Jazz knows that I long to create beauty with other artists that way, to collaborate and work together, while having space to do my own thing at times, too. Jazz knows I need creative people stepping back and saying, "Look at her," but it also knows I can't do it without the nods, the turning, otherwise I'll come in too soon. Or too late.
Jazz knows I need other artists around so that we can look at each other.
The breeze was blowing; the sun shone dappled through the trees. I was sitting at a small cafe at a table by myself, enjoying the lunch special, drinking the iced African rooibos tea I heard recommended to the next table over. As I munched on sandwich and salad and nibbled the last crumbs of scone, I thought about the joys of being on vacation. Nowhere to be, nothing to do.
My entire week is being spent just lingering.
For the rest of the afternoon, I bought chocolates, tried on dresses, and marveled over the number of toys they make for dogs. I took in three or four art galleries, spending half an hour talking with one artist who spent years in business and politics before finally getting serious about her creative life.
"I'm so thankful that artists like you have time to paint and create," I told her, after she showed me her studio and explained her style of collecting and displaying others' artwork.
"Me, too," she said.
"Just think about what a horrible place this world would be if all the artists had to work in factories and couldn't do what they love," I said, kind of gushing.
"Oh, you're right," she said, agreeing with me. "I think about that a lot, how blessed I am to do this."
I ended my day in the park, reading a novel I had picked up at the library the day before.
To think, I was just 15 minutes from home. Just 15 minutes away from the house that usually needs cleaned, the job that causes stress, the bills that must be paid, the garden that needs watered. Just 15 minutes away from the meetings, the schedule, the lack of sleep. But really, not even that far.
I was basically being a tourist in my own backyard, and the change of perspective changed everything.
Patricia Hunter had this same type of transformation of perspective as she looked through the lens of her camera one recent morning. The fence she was photographing was old and rotting, but with a tight zoom and a wide aperture, she created something beautiful.
"The camera's focus (and my eyes) was on the ugly rotting fence post and barb wire, but the blur and colors of bokeh lights created interest and beauty that could not have been seen with the naked eye alone," Patricia wrote.
That's what this sabbatical week has done for me - allowed me to focus on the present, allowed the background to blur, and allowed me to see what is beautiful about this life God has given me. I don't always see this way, don't always look at my life through the lens of this grace. It's beyond me, something I need Jesus to show me. Patricia describes it like this:
And I am reminded that much of what I often see in crusty people and rotten circumstances is shallow and superficial, and how desperate I am for Holy Spirit vision that will reveal the beauty and hope I cannot otherwise see and that shines and sparkles just beyond.
It's just one week off. Just one week to stay up late and sleep in long and hang out in my pajamas til noon. Just 10 days of eating out and watching movies and reading light-hearted summer books. Just a brief space of time to sit a while with scripture and pray slowly in bed.
But it makes even the crusty, rotten parts of my life seem a whole lot better. Even beautiful.
Go THERE, (Patricia's Pollywog Creek Post: "Can't Explain It") and then come back HERE again!
Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.
Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.
She didn't know much about the world back then, the 10-year-old girl whose parents had split and whose world had turned upside down. It was 1981, and the fear of Iranians and oil shortages was still palpable. But the bigger fear was a family dividing.
A couple of years before, Rhonda, on the playground, had confided that her parents were divorcing. She felt bad for her friend, but in her heart she said, "That will never be my parents."
Now it was. Dad was gone; mom was doing her best to make ends meet, to keep a household together.
And sitting on the desk before her, a simple fifth-grade assignment. It was nearly the fall of the year, but it was the spring of life. Whatever you want, the teacher probably said. In your future you can do whatever you want. So what is it you want to do when you are grown up? Write about it.
And this is what I wrote:
My Future
When I am grown up, I am going to be a . . .
a housemother. I would like to go to college, but I don't think I will. for one thing I probably won't have enough money. I would rather start out like my mom did. She works now but she didn't used to. I would be a good mother to my kids. They would be fed good because I love to cook. I think I am a pretty good cook myself. I kind of like to clean house, but I wouldn't want to do it every day. I might work sometime, but I don't know.
It was 1981.
Things don't always turn out as we plan.
But if they did, would we be any happier?
Would we feel the hand of God wrapped firmly around ours if we spoke and it came to pass?
:: I was looking through some old boxes and came across this old essay, written as a school assignment. I received an S+ and "very good" even though the grammar and punctuation are atrocious, and the ambition was rather short-sighted. But one thing is certain, I adored my mom. And it was her love that eventually enlarged my world and gave me the vision for looking beyond myself and my circumstances. Thank God for mothers.
Though I marked the start of the break last Friday when I left work, announcing loudly to my coworkers still busy at their desks: "I'm on vacation!" I would have had Saturday and Sunday off regardless. So, technically, today is the first day. I have celebrated it by laying in bed an extra two hours, baking homemade blueberry muffins just because I wanted to, and reading the entire book of Ephesians out loud, with feeling, at the dining room table.
When my sister called at 11:13 a.m. to tell me about a job offer she received, I answered the phone and talked for 22 minutes even though it's a Monday. Because I'm on vacation!
I needed the time off. Really. The last few weeks at work, I have found myself hunched over my desk in a tighter and tighter ball, trying to meet deadlines that keep coming and coming. When I get interrupted, I'm annoyed, even though that's basically what I'm paid for. To get interrupted. When I come home, I sit balled up over my laptop at the dining room table, blogging and editing and emailing and Tweeting. My shoulders feel permanently curled into a knot.
But not this week. Because I'm on vacation!
Every time I mentioned my upcoming week off to coworkers and friends, they would ask, "Oh, what are you going to do?" To which I answered coyly, "Whatever I want to do."
They laughed.
"Seriously," I would say to them.
I felt like Napoleon Dynamite when the kid on the bus asked him, "What are you gonna to do today, Napoleon?" "Whatever I feel like I wanna do. Gosh!" Napoleon answered.
Just today, though, when I emailed my friend Judith, telling her about my vacation, she responded, "Sometimes, we forget vacations don't need to be about 'doing' as much as 'undoing.'"
And that is what I need this week. I need to undo the normal habits of every day. I need to give my body and my mind and my soul a break from routine. I need the Sabbath rest that God built into me when he made me.
::
During the recent Stefan Sagmeister lecture that Ann and I attended, we marveled to hear of his philosophy about sabbaticals. He showed us a line representing a life. Then, he divided it up. The first 25 years or so are spent in education, he said; the next 40 years in work; the final 25 in retirement. Sagmeister's theory is to take 5 of the retirement years and intersperse them among his work years.
So, every 7 years, he takes a sabbatical. A complete year of closing down his design business and doing whatever he wants. During the most recent sabbatical, he spent a good amount of time in Bali. He also launched his happiness experiment in which he used himself as a guinea pig to see what makes people happy and began filming a documentary about it.
We, the audience, were obviously surprised. Sagmeister knew it, too. He told us he was scared before the first sabbatical, fearing that it might ruin his career. But the ideas and creativity that were generated from a year away from his normal work fueled the projects he did for the next six years. The only change he made as he prepared for his second sabbatical was to have a better plan. Taking a break from regular work didn't mean doing nothing. It meant doing more of what he wanted to do and less of what he didn't want to do.
It meant doing what made him happy.
As I let the Sagmeister Sabbatical principle bounce around in my head a few days, it hit me.
Sabbatical, sabbatical. Where have I heard that word before? Sabbatical?
Oh yeah.
SABBATICAL: (from Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew shabbat, i.e., Sabbath, literally a "ceasing") is a rest from work, or a hiatus.
What Sagmeister is doing is nothing new. It's actually quite old, built right into Creation order, the day after man was placed on this old earth.
By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.- Genesis 2:2-3
It's what I needed, there balled up in a knot in front of my computer, feeling like I was trapped in my 6x6x6 foot cubicle. I needed a Sabbatical from all my work.
::
Sunday, in an effort to step outside "normal," I attended another church in our city that has always intrigued me, always felt inviting.
So, justifying the week off from my own church by imagining I had traveled for vacation and was instead attending a church, in say, Florida, I got in the car and headed South. The church I visited is in downtown Indianapolis.
I pulled up to Redeemer Presbyterian Church and found a parking spot right in front of the door. Surprised, I checked several times to be sure I had not missed a "No Parking" sign or a parking meter that was running even on Sundays. Seeing no such thing, I chalked it up to Providence and headed inside.
The building was constructed in 1900, the stained glass looked original, and at least some of the communion cups contained actual wine - all very different from my young church with Baptist roots in the wealthier Carmel community on the Northside of the city.
The pastor, Jason Dorsey, was finishing a series on justice and mercy, preaching that day from the whole book of Philemon. He used Paul, and his relationship with Philemon, a wealthy slave owner, and Onesimus, his slave who had escaped to Rome, to talk about the need, the people, the strategy and the power for justice.
When he talked about standing in solidarity with those who are experiencing injustice, I felt guilty that when this service was over, I would leave 16th and Delaware and head back to the Northside, not what I would consider a hotbed of oppression. But he had another point: "We are called to do justice where God has put us . . . I am called to bring shalom to the fractured places I go."
The message ended with a beautiful summary of Jesus' work on the cross, the ultimate bearer of justice to the disenfranchised, and even as we were preparing for communion and singing a closing hymn, I began to think about the area where I live. Sure, I am just a couple of miles from some of the largest mansions and estates in the city, but I also live just blocks from a dozen or so apartment complexes where gang activity and unemployment are rampant.
And even as I romanticize living downtown and bringing light to dark places, I remember the For Sale sign in my yard, there in part because my neighborhood seems to be getting rougher, more of the houses being abandoned. An idea begins to form as I get in my car, and as I drive toward home.
This morning, even though I am on vacation, even though I am taking a brief sabbatical, I spend half an hour or so researching the Mayor's plan for adding sidewalks to places in the city where there are none. I write a letter asking that my street be added to that plan, because though there are no sidewalks and the speed limit is 40 mph, many people, including a young mom pushing a stroller on Saturday, walk that road because they can't afford a car and they have to go to work or buy food or just get out for a while.
When I hit "send," it feels like solidarity -- writing this letter on behalf of others, and it feels like sabbatical rest -- kind of like pulling a son out of a well even though it's the Sabbath, and it feels a lot like something I want to do, after all.
Actually, more like something I want to undo.
Even though I'm on vacation.
Photo of the beaches of Cancum by Krystal International Vacation Club, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License. Just to be clear, I am not there.
Vaguely do I remember sitting with my mom at the age of four, reading. Sometimes, a flash of an illustration will emerge from my memory, just that one picture of a jeep filled with sheep driving through the desert. I think it was one of the first books I read. Sheep, jeep, some of the first words I remember seeing on the page.
When I was in second grade and attending a new school, I was awkward and lonely, and the librarian named Bette Killion took me under her wing. Over the years, she introduced me to Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time series and pushed me to read every red-covered biography on the shelf. She also was a poet, and while we were learning about poetry in class, Mrs. Killion encouraged me to read and write poetry on my own.
Words became lovely to me as I learned about rhyming words and homonyms, as I wrote haiku and simple verse. I didn't fancy myself a writer back in those days, I just wrote, playing with words as I tried to make sense of growing up and becoming me.
Though I write very little poetry now, I still immerse myself in the form in all kinds of ways, reading it, singing it, finding myself captured so clearly in the choice words of others. If writing is food, poetry is like candy, fanciful and frilly, unexpected and delightful. But it's also like water, essential, base, life-giving.
Poet Joel Jacobson uses a different metaphor to describe poetry. He likens writing verse to playing baseball, a game which measures success using a very short stick. "You can get in the hall of fame for having a 70% failure rate," Jacobson writes.
But the real similarity to poetry is in what he calls, "the head game." In other words, he's thinking too much about it.
I’m finding that I’m trying to force my poems, trying too hard to be poetic. I won’t hit a five-run home run with every poem. Some are simply destined to be pop flies and strikeouts, especially when they are closed down. Open them up, Jacobson, and relax. Here’s to worrying less about the long ball and more about making each poem open, and as strong as it can be.
Ironically, I find the same thing to be true of my prose. I'm over thinking it. Trying too hard, at times.
The solution for me and my writing lies somewhere along the line of what Joel is preaching to himself: relax! (A Sabbath theme which God is weaving through my entire life.) But I think it might also mean going back to the beginning, back to the time when words were toys not tools.
I think I need to write a little poetry.
Words
Words running through my head,
words,
forwards, backwards,
somersaulting their way
to my lips,
down,
down,
down go the words to the tips
of my fingers,
rolling away towards you.
::
My poetry appetite is whetted day after day when I open my email and find "Every Day Poems" delivered there from TS Poetry Press. Just like the name promises, every day I get a poem -- a beautiful, insightful poem -- to help launch me out of bed (they come early!). There are also writing prompts, visual art, and links to online projects that you can participate in, whether you are a poet or a wanna be like me.
POETRY BONUS: Visit a few fellow High Calling Editors who have recently posted original poems on their blogs.
Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.
Each Thursday, consider going "There and Back Again" yourself. It's simple.
I walked around work last Thursday like I owned the place. I swished around corners, twirled when I sat down at my desk, even flounced a little on the way to the break room.
I was wearing a new dress.
I buy dresses about as often as I vote for President, not counting primary elections. And if one of my coworkers is correct, I wear dresses to work only about half as often as I buy them. I have worked in my present job more than 8 years, and she said she had NEVER seen me in a dress.
"But I wear skirts sometimes," I told her.
"Mmmmhhhhmmmm," she said. "But not dresses. I've never seen you in a dress."
So, maybe she was right.
The CEO of our company saw me in the breakroom, and after complimenting me, she asked, "Is there a special occasion?" Back when our dress code was more casual than it is now, the only reason someone would wear a dress to work was because she had an interview for another job on the way home. She was trying to be subtle.
"No, I just wanted a new dress. So I bought it and decided to wear it to work," I told her.
"I love it," she said.
"Yeah, and I thought I ought to step it up a notch."
She laughed.
I sashayed back to my desk.
Just a couple of weeks earlier I was at church surrounded by women in the cutest dresses. Most of them were casual, loose, made with knits and cottons they could wash and dry at home. Suddenly I was in love with dresses.
The next week, I went shopping and tried on 10 dresses, none of which I was in love with, and none of which ended up fitting me. Those women made dresses look easy. But when I couldn't find a dress, I decided to buy a pair of shoes, and for the first time ever, I found a pair of wedges that didn't make me limp. Or trip.
The next week, I was back at it, and eventually found a dress, THE dress, that I wore so proudly. There's something about a dress that reminds me all day long that God made me a woman, reminders I need when I live an otherwise androgynous life. Not that I want it that way. But with no husband or no children to remind me?
I came home that day and changed into shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers so that I could take Tilly for a walk. The dress is still hanging where I left it. I don't want to wear it too often, don't want to ruin the feminine magic I felt when my clothing for the day came all in one piece. One beautiful, flowy garment. Men only get to wear single item outfits when they are wrestling, or in jail.
But if I can't wear that dress too often, maybe I need to buy another one.
We scarfed down lasagna and raced to the art museum Thursday night, running a few minutes late for the evening program we were to attend. Ann and I were going to hear a lecture on design and happiness. We had no idea what to expect.
We took longer than usual finding a parking spot at the museum because there were cars everywhere. As we raced to the will-call desk, we noticed lots and lots of people milling around, picking up tickets, sipping wine. When we saw people carrying around books by the speaker, we speculated about the fame of the man whom neither one of us had heard of before.
Finally, it was our turn to be helped. "I'm here to pick up tickets for the Stefan Sagmeister lecture," I said.
It was an open invitation to play along with photos. theHighCalling.org hosts PhotoPlay every few weeks to encourage community involvement and artistic endeavoring.
I don't usually participate.
It's not that I don't like community involvement and artistic endeavoring, it's just that I don't have a good camera and I'm not very good at taking pictures.
I drove through Chicago during rush hour and across miles and miles of nowhere watching the corn grow to get there. I brought my own bed and food and drinks, and I carried cash in greeting cards from other relatives. I had a dress dry-cleaned that I didn't even wear, and I sat on an aluminum bench for an extra hour so I could have a front row seat.
I did all this and more so I could watch my oldest nephew graduate from high school. And it was worth it.
I'm of two minds when it comes to men treating me like a woman.
I don't like to be whistled at, but I do like to be noticed.
I don't like to be talked down to, but I do like to have things explained.
And though I am happy to stay far away from the world of cars and car repairs, I hate the feeling I get each time my oil needs changed or the engine serviced. I don't want to be taken advantage of, but I do want to feel like I am making the right decision.
Last night, I just finished watering my garden when the temperature dropped and the rains swept in. Tilly and I both nearly jumped out of our skin as the thunder cracked so loudly it shook the windows. The television meteorologists with their maps and teleprompters were tracking the weather system passing over my area not by wind speed or rain volume but by the frequency of lightning strikes.
It’s just a regular Wednesday morning, and I’m hurriedly completing a few month end reports when my phone rings. It’s our CFO. Anytime I run into him, I know I’m in for a laugh.
“So, here’s the deal, Char; my column had babies,” Phil tells me, apparently setting up a joke.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“My column, it had babies or something,” he says, like it’s a punch line.
“I don’t know what that even means,” I tell him.
He has to explain: he’s having a little trouble with a spreadsheet. One column is now two columns. He doesn’t know what he did. I can practically hear the “blah, blah, blah” in his voice.
And I know what he’s thinking: it was funnier his way. “I’ll be right there,” I say, humorlessly.
I’m horrible at banter.
Read the rest of the story over at theHighCalling.org where this piece is being featured this morning.
Photo by odolphie via flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.
Last year during a trip to China, we arrived just in time for the annual Ching Ming festival, a day to honor the dead.
Families who could barely keep food on the table bought paper decorations and offerings of food and drink to leave at the graves of their departed relatives.
Also known as "Grave Sweeping Day," Ching Ming is the time when families clear away the debris that winter weather may have left near the family shrine. They plant flowers and hang banners in a spring-time festival of their heritage. They also leave willow branches to ward off evil spirits.
Seeing the Chinese people praying to their dead and buying good luck with chickens and crepe paper nearly broke my heart driving through the city that week. But seeing the way an entire culture remembers their dead with such care and interest made me shed a tear for my own country.
