Soulful Muse

It looked majestic standing proudly in my grandmother’s living room.  Its towering presence captured you as you entered the room.  (There’s a lot of towering things around when you’re ten years old.)  Four times an hour it announced itself to everyone in the living room that it existed and was worthy of your attention.  I think my grandmother appreciated it most because it alerted her when “As the World Turns” and “The Guiding Light” were to begin.  (No DVR or recorders back then, you miss one episode and you missed who was brought out a coma!)

When my grandmother died the marvelous clock made its way through several relatives while I sometimes remembered it and wished I had it.  Oh well, a remembrance from her was gracing the living room of someone else.

A family gathering brought us together which gave me the opportunity to check on the treasure that was still buried for me.  The relative who possessed the magnificent dark cherry wood grandfather clock told me that she’d be glad to give it to me.  She told me she thought I wanted it but wasn’t sure.  “No problem,” she said, “I’m glad that you want to have it.”

I brought it up to my apartment and found the perfect corner for the perfect remembrance of my grandmother.  Carrying and touching it seemed a bit odd to me because it was not the rich wood I imagined but only a half inch veneer not to mention the battery holder  behind it.  When I heard the first chime I smiled to myself because of its tinny, cheap sound.  My cherished heirloom must have set my grandmother back, at most, $20.00.

A wise person once told me that “you are who you represent yourself to be.”  Umm.  Curious.  I had always thought life’s goal was to “be yourself” and to uncover “who you really are” as though there are solutions and answers to any situation.  “Who do I present myself to be” has become an important mantra in my life.  It’s too long for a car’s license plate but I can let it live deeply in my heart and soul.  Who can say what is real, unreal or unsure in this magical, mystery tour we call life?  “Authentic” and “genuine” should be reserved for leather products and car parts, not for human identity.

We are too important and fluid; we are those folks that everyone around us thinks are rich cherry wood when we really only have a battery behind our half inch veneer.

One of my favorites themes is, “inbetween time.”  It’s supposed to be two words but it is always one event and it’s choked full of meaning.

Most of our lives is lived “inbetween.”  In between the yesterday event and the upcoming happening.  If you wish someone “Merry Christmas” the day after Thanksgiving, well, it just sounds awkward.  You are unable to say “Happy New Year” right after Christmas because people will think that you’re ahead of yourself.  (But if you don’t plan on seeing them again prior to January 1, then it is permitted.)  Or begin a new tradition saying, “Merry New Year?”  Nah, it’ll never catch on.  We’re stuck in the “inbetween.”

Some people hate the “inbetweens” of life.  Divorced and remarried within a year.  God forbid an inbetween-time-breather to weigh your life back into balance.  Going from one party to the next and you’ll end up in rehab.  Doing nothing can create an encroaching boredom.  Without something ahead there would be no inbetween time.

The Church says that our whole life is one big “inbetween” time.  We were with God before birth and return to His care after our death.  Suddenly our patience kicks in and we don’t seem to mind waiting for life’s parting so much.

And, how can you actually be “inbetween” time?  Am I able to crawl between the first minute and the second and live “inbetween” the two of them?

We can kill it, schedule it, race toward it, measure it, remember it, point toward it, generalize about it,  count it, pass it, be on it, repeat it, share, stretch and season it; stage, patch and trim it.  We’ve had the best of them, the golden of them and the prime, peak and length of them.  And, we can be and enjoy the “inbetween” times of them as well.  “Happy New Year,” I mean “Merry Christmas.”

St. John was definitely having a bad hair day when he wrote this.  “Do not love the world or the things of the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world.”

My advice to St. John: Leave the monastery for a day and visit someone, anyone!  Monastic life, by the way, is considered one of the higher callings in the Catholic Church.  It’s right up and close to the angels.

The rest of us schmucks (Yiddish, by the way) are stuck in this world, for better or for worse.  In my religious community there is an undercurrent that missionary work in a foreign country is second only to angelic.  The rest of us (schmucks, again) are stuck in this awful and sinful world as it erodes and rots away.

I am saddened that those who are not of this world (Mork, Mindy anyway?) missed out on:

• Mozart’s Violin Concerto, number 3
• witnessing a baptism as a godparent and hearing the baby softly cry
• taking a friend out for a drink after being terminated
• attending a surprise 50th birthday party for a friend in remission from cancer
• congratulating a friend who found a job after a year’s search
• losing an evening through a mystery novel
• tucking in your son in bed singing a song that your mother sang to you
• laughing at a funeral for a long time friend who wanted you to laugh
• getting up in the morning and anxious to return to work
• a Mexican sunset, a Tucson sunset
• a Milwaukee sky in October
• an unexpected “thank you” note
• writing a handwritten letter to a friend in 2011
• meeting three foster children who’ve been rescued from a neglectful mother
• wishing luck to the first college graduate in their family
• saying “goodbye” to a good friend as he moves south
• having a cat jump on your lap after having a tumor removed

Perhaps St. John woke up the next morning and continued a more balanced account of this world of ours after an evening out with good friends.

Grace.  Not easy to define but easy to spot.  The Catholic Church tried to define grace and does it by dividing it up but both end up in the Church’s usual clinical way, stale and unemotional.

Grace

–wholly touching a new baby’s foot with your pinky finger
–hearing summer’s thunder rustle through your home
–first day of school and your mother’s hand is withdrawn
–getting the job that everyone said you’d never get
–waking up two hours before the alarm for your first day at work
–when she said “yes” when you thought she’d say “no
–new car smell (I had to throw that one in)
–leaving 40 degree and arriving to 78 degree
–returning to your seat when you know you’ve said something in a sermon
–person you don’t know says person you don’t know referred her to me
–the first of many colorful scribbles that adorn the refrigerator door
–the holy water blessing before falling to sleep
–that email from someone from 40 years ago
–your sports team wins in the last tens seconds
–“Beach Boy” leader Brian Wilson, fifty years later, walks on stage in darkness and everyone gives him a standing ovation before the first note is played (you had to be there)
–falling asleep and smiling to yourself after a long but meaningful day
–the moment I stand up before the Gospel and my sermon and wonder why I am the one doing this
–the conversation before the over-priced meal is served

It’s a delicate subject because it places ourselves in a personal place where no opinion other than our own is appreciated but just think how much of your life is a series of diversions.  A redirection from something or someone; a distraction, so says the dictionary.

We now have the luxury of diversions because we will not get polio, fluoride’s been taken of, the black plague becomes a Jeopardy question and we now get to live these luxuriously extra human years looking for the next diversion.  (Yes, one ends and another needs to replace it, and quickly!)

My sister knows more about Kim Kardansian than she does me, perhaps my fault for not pushing my life upon her as much as her inquiring into mine further than the standard, “How are you?” and now let’s move on to the Kardansians.  (I’m not even sure who they are while she tells me of the wiles and willies of their adventures.)

I swear (apologies) that Wisconsinites know more about the Green Bay Packer players than they do their neighbor, much less the person they sleep with every night.  (Stats included!)

Third world country folks end one meal only to clean it up and begin to plan the next meal.  (How sad for them that the Kardansians have escaped them!).  Third world people’s thoughtful preoccupations is upon the new iPhone which replaces a perfectly working iPhone, back and forth whether you should marry the woman you’ve been living with the past three years, what debt can be transferred to this company to further place you in further debt, along with dutifully following your favorite football team (seasonal taste), your favorite television program, or the antics of a fellow employee. (tongue is in cheek.)

We, humans, need stimulus and we will find it anywhere or in anyone that we can.  The richer you are the more we will follow and analyze you from your choice of wives to the car that you drive.  We even, if I dare use a strong word, “thrive” on it.  We feed upon it because we need the diversion from our freed-up First World existence that has provided us with a more years, a deeper self development and more opportunities to volunteer and share time with others.

I wonder what my sister thinks that I or Kim are doing right now?