I'm curious. I've been thinking a lot about the past lately as I work out ideas for a new piece I'm writing. It occurred to me that a preoccupation with the past could also be because the future is uncertain.
At times in life I haven't give the past much thought. Most of the time when I have delved into the past it was because of something that went wrong. Some trauma or trouble that I was facing in life that seemed to have roots in the past. Then I turned my thoughts to excavating past actions, plans, and relationships to uncover where the trouble began and how I might go about "fixing" the problem. When everything was going well, my thoughts were always on the future. Where I wanted to be or what I hoped to accomplish. I didn't have time to think about the past.
When I visit with my father and he starts to look more frail with age I can't help but thinking about the past. About the times that we threw the football out in the backyard as I was trying out for the youth football league. Times when we went deer hunting in Northern Wisconsin or Pheasant hunting in South Dakota. I was just a kid but I remember the late night poker games for nickels and dimes in the northern Wisconsin cabin with two feet of snow outside the door. I remember the farmers daughter in South Dakota and sharing my writing with her about my dreams for what I wanted to accomplish. Playing pool in the local tavern with my brother drinking cokes on a Sunday afternoon while my dad sat at the bar and watched the football games with friends.
At the family retreat weekend that I attended last weekend, all of the adults sat under the front canopy of the inn and talked and kicked back. I spent some time there too but found myself dragged off by my daughter and her young friend who were bored. I finally said okay go ide and I'll count to 20 in a game of hide and seek. I felt a little silly counting to 20 out loud but I have enough theatre ego to let go of the adult and enjoy the "kid" in me as well. My daughter is very good at hiding and is almost never found. I'm wandering out calling to Jade to and Jamie to come out and thinking how much part of me wants to be sitting under that front canopy drinking a beer. But then I think about how my daughter will remember me when I'm almost 80 years old like my father. Will she remember this weekend retreat when we went out in the canoe, roasted marshmellows by the fire and we played hide and seek?
As we enter parts of our lives that seem somehow less promising because of age and physical agility will I think more about those days of my youth- my childhood, high school, or college days, or should I focus more about being where I am right now. I've reached an age where I've accomplished some things in life and yet I feel like there is more left I want to do. I think that we have moments of transition. I seem to be in one of those at the present. I'm reminded of the book Passages that I read many years ago. Part of me is still striving to accomplish certain things in life. Part of me wants to take more time to enjoy the simple pleasures that life brings. A warm summer afternoon with a slight breeze and a nap out on the patio. My daughter doesn't let me rest for long. She is in continual motion and I struggle between trying to teach her that I am not her "entertainment" when she is bored and yet doing something that makes memories she will turn to when I become my fathers age. As my father struggles with his Alzheimer's disease he seems to be lost sometimes. Just staring into space. He can tell me a story with exact detail of when he was a kid...or a story about when I was a kid and he and I did something, yet he can't remember that I came to visit him the day before.
I never thought about most of this stuff when I was younger. I was always focused on the future. But now it seems I'm caught between remembering the past and creating a future for myself and one that can be remembered by my daughter. Creating moments with my father that he won't remember but that I will. What will my daughter remember from the summer of 2009. Maybe playing hide and seek with her father on a cool summer night...
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Rain
Last night after rehearsal as I was locking up all the buildings something made me stop and look down the street, stop and listen for a moment. My instinct was to run from the building to my car. Something was telling me to wait. Not to run. I found myself thinking of all the other rainy nights in my life. Times I've walked blocks in the rain at night. There is something about the rain that makes my senses come alive. The way the light catches the water as it drips from the branches of the trees and the way every sound seemed to come alive with sound of drops in the puddles. It made me think of this email from a friend the other day.
..something to think about... A guy with a baseball cap, black sweat shirt and a violin.. Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the till and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes:A3 year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly, as the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced them to move on.
45 minutes:The musician played. Only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace.He collected $32.
1 hour:He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be:If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ....How many other things are we missing?
Next time it rains... don't run to the car... stop and wait.
..something to think about... A guy with a baseball cap, black sweat shirt and a violin.. Washington DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the till and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.
10 minutes:A3 year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly, as the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced them to move on.
45 minutes:The musician played. Only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace.He collected $32.
1 hour:He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be:If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ....How many other things are we missing?
Next time it rains... don't run to the car... stop and wait.
sore fingers
Last night I got a beer and got out my mandolin and guitar to try to work through some of the music from the new musical I'm working on. At tonight's rehearsal I'm supposed to help teach some of the actors to play guitar and mandolin. I went online and found a wonderful mandolin site for tuning the mandolin. Then with my instruments in tune started to work my way through the songs. My fingers quickly reminded me how long it has been since I played the mandolin. The guitar was only mildly better. I remember as a teenager when I played all the time my fingers got so calloused I could stick a pin in the end without feeling it. Last night I felt every string press. I could at least get through a couple of songs before my fingers were too tender to play. Trying to play chords on the mandolin with its double strings was almost impossible except for the easiest chords. But as I sat there drinking my beer and playing I was reminded of the countless hours I spent alone and with a band playing.
I've got several projects I'm working on at the moment and adding playing the guitar and mandolin to those projects while tempting isn't realistic. I'm at one of those moments in life when I have lots of ideas and wants and need to focus on just one or two. I've been writing a lot lately. How much do you draw from your own life without exposing whether good or bad those who have shared parts of it. I'm a strong believer that ever writer starts at a point that is within them and then transforms it when it moves into written form. I'm caught between wanting to write a play and write a story. I've spent my life in theatre which tends to draw me toward the immediate. The action part of the story. Long descriptive passages I love to read but can't seem to write without getting lost in the description. I remember a passage from Anne Lamont who said that most writers first drafts get burned because if anyone from the outside ever saw them they would think the writer had totally lost all of their talents. My draft are no exception. When I journal I write a stream of consciousness without any editing. When writing I do a certain amount of that but cut out the extra stuff that is irrelevant to the story.
Tonight is rehearsal and we'll see how much my fingers can remember. The beer will have to wait until after rehearsal.
I've got several projects I'm working on at the moment and adding playing the guitar and mandolin to those projects while tempting isn't realistic. I'm at one of those moments in life when I have lots of ideas and wants and need to focus on just one or two. I've been writing a lot lately. How much do you draw from your own life without exposing whether good or bad those who have shared parts of it. I'm a strong believer that ever writer starts at a point that is within them and then transforms it when it moves into written form. I'm caught between wanting to write a play and write a story. I've spent my life in theatre which tends to draw me toward the immediate. The action part of the story. Long descriptive passages I love to read but can't seem to write without getting lost in the description. I remember a passage from Anne Lamont who said that most writers first drafts get burned because if anyone from the outside ever saw them they would think the writer had totally lost all of their talents. My draft are no exception. When I journal I write a stream of consciousness without any editing. When writing I do a certain amount of that but cut out the extra stuff that is irrelevant to the story.
Tonight is rehearsal and we'll see how much my fingers can remember. The beer will have to wait until after rehearsal.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Secrets in the Dark
I'm in the midst of reading a new book by Frederick Buechner called Secrets in the Dark, -A life in sermons. I discovered Buechner's writing while reading Soul Survivor by Phillip Yancey. Buechner is a living writer who writes in style about the little things in life but doesn't pull any punches. It is not theological writing for the timid. The book is a collection of his sermons. Each morning I read a couple of the sermons and they are always thought provoking and challenging personally.
This morning I read a sermon about being called. Buechner used the Isaiah 6: 1-9 (which was also the scripture assigned for the day I presented my sermon on the occasion of the graduating class from Education for Ministry.) Buechner makes the point that we have so many voices calling us to action that it is hard to decide sometimes what is the voice to listen to. When we are young we tend to be idealistic and we are called to a vocation to do the things in life that give us the most pleasure. We can be seduced by other voices which call us to success and to wealth. We can be seduced by many of the other things in life as well. He tells of playing a sad and dangerous little game when we reach a certain age. It is a form of solitaire. It really struck a chord with me because when I was on vacation, visiting my parents in my home town, I played a form of this game. I went to my high school class website and looked up many of my old classmates. I remembered them and myself in high school and thought about the great things that we wanted to accomplish. I thought of some of the people who I had known since the first grade. Many of them did not have a profile so I wondered how their lives turned out. I found profiles of some friends who seem to have lived a pretty good life- children, even grandchildren. Many of them were employed in regular occupations. There were a couple of my old classmates who seemed to so full of life and promise back then- I was certain they would be high power lawyers, or successful business people. I was somewhat shocked to read a couple bios listing their vocation as drinking. I hope they were joking but I couldn't tell. (Not that I'm against drinking. I love a cold beer or a good bottle of wine. It's just not my vocation.)I looked at the faces of those who had posted photos and tried to remember them as they were.
I couldn't help but think about all those plans we talked about when we ended that Senior year. They had such gifts when I remember them. Yet like Buechner, I couldn't help but think that some of them had spent their life in vocations that didn't call for many of those gifts. As I thought about my own life I felt that I had been given a gift. I've spent most of my life engaged in what I set out to do that final year in high school. To create theatre and to do the things that call on the talents that I treasured back then. It gave me great gladness to do what I loved to do. And yet the thing that has sustained me all these years is that for the most part I didn't do it for myself. I found out years ago that I was being called to bring that gift out of others. I didn't plan to be in community theatre. I planned a solo career. But the call to go where others needed me has allowed me to continue to use my talents and to increase them. I wasn't called to feed the hungry or to heal the sick. I was called to bring joy in peoples lives through story and art. For that I am grateful to God for the richness of my life.
Buechner finishes the sermon with a prayer:
Oh thou, who art the God no less of those who know thee not than of those who love thee well, be present with us at the times of choosing when time stands still and all that lies behind and all that lies ahead are caught up in the mystery of a moment. Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices. Help them to know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory and failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world may bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to them alone who, sometimes with tears in their eyes, commit themselves in love to thee and to others. Lead them and all the world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all people are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ's name we ask it and for his sake. Amen.
This morning I read a sermon about being called. Buechner used the Isaiah 6: 1-9 (which was also the scripture assigned for the day I presented my sermon on the occasion of the graduating class from Education for Ministry.) Buechner makes the point that we have so many voices calling us to action that it is hard to decide sometimes what is the voice to listen to. When we are young we tend to be idealistic and we are called to a vocation to do the things in life that give us the most pleasure. We can be seduced by other voices which call us to success and to wealth. We can be seduced by many of the other things in life as well. He tells of playing a sad and dangerous little game when we reach a certain age. It is a form of solitaire. It really struck a chord with me because when I was on vacation, visiting my parents in my home town, I played a form of this game. I went to my high school class website and looked up many of my old classmates. I remembered them and myself in high school and thought about the great things that we wanted to accomplish. I thought of some of the people who I had known since the first grade. Many of them did not have a profile so I wondered how their lives turned out. I found profiles of some friends who seem to have lived a pretty good life- children, even grandchildren. Many of them were employed in regular occupations. There were a couple of my old classmates who seemed to so full of life and promise back then- I was certain they would be high power lawyers, or successful business people. I was somewhat shocked to read a couple bios listing their vocation as drinking. I hope they were joking but I couldn't tell. (Not that I'm against drinking. I love a cold beer or a good bottle of wine. It's just not my vocation.)I looked at the faces of those who had posted photos and tried to remember them as they were.
I couldn't help but think about all those plans we talked about when we ended that Senior year. They had such gifts when I remember them. Yet like Buechner, I couldn't help but think that some of them had spent their life in vocations that didn't call for many of those gifts. As I thought about my own life I felt that I had been given a gift. I've spent most of my life engaged in what I set out to do that final year in high school. To create theatre and to do the things that call on the talents that I treasured back then. It gave me great gladness to do what I loved to do. And yet the thing that has sustained me all these years is that for the most part I didn't do it for myself. I found out years ago that I was being called to bring that gift out of others. I didn't plan to be in community theatre. I planned a solo career. But the call to go where others needed me has allowed me to continue to use my talents and to increase them. I wasn't called to feed the hungry or to heal the sick. I was called to bring joy in peoples lives through story and art. For that I am grateful to God for the richness of my life.
Buechner finishes the sermon with a prayer:
Oh thou, who art the God no less of those who know thee not than of those who love thee well, be present with us at the times of choosing when time stands still and all that lies behind and all that lies ahead are caught up in the mystery of a moment. Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices. Help them to know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory and failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world may bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to them alone who, sometimes with tears in their eyes, commit themselves in love to thee and to others. Lead them and all the world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all people are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ's name we ask it and for his sake. Amen.
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