Danger Sign: Holidays Ahead

I was looking through some old posts and discovered I had one entitled I Wish I Had A River . . .

I still wish. And wouldn't you know that, while I couldn't find a performance by Joni, I did find one by Allison Crowe, she of my favorite Hallelujah cover.

Hallelujah

I was surprised, I admit it, by the positive response to yesterday's post. The lyrics to Hallelujah are disturbing, regardless of which version you're talking about. (One website says there are 15 verses in total, appearing in various recordings.)

I think I first heard Hallelujah at the end of the season finale of the third season of West Wing. C.J. Cregg, the White House press secretary, and Simon Donovan, the secret service agent assigned to her in the wake of a series of threats, have fallen in love; to their mutual astonishment and relief, the perpetrator has been arrested, meaning that they are finally free to pursue their relationship. The President is attending a theatrical production in New York, from which he withdraws to discuss with Leo the decision he is making to assasinate a foreign leader. And presidential advisor Josh Lyman is arguing with his girlfriend, women's rights activist Amy Gardner, who has just lost her job due to White House machinations.

The clip below opens with Simon's murder. It's quick and it's violent, but I'm going with this version because the speed and power of the violence reflect the experience of sudden and startling death so well. The important part for me, though, lies in about 1:00-2:45. I've always been very fond of the character of C.J. Cregg, who is tall and elegant (I wish) and whose last name sounds exactly like mine (even though it's spelled differently), but in these scenes, with her response to the news of Simon's death and the images of the investigative scene where she is not present, there are mirrors to my own life that go far beyond the elusive personal qualities and last name. Our son did not die from a gunshot wound, but almost all suicide deaths involve police investigations of the scene and body, and almost all sudden deaths involve notifications to loved ones who are plunged into a state of numbed shock before the first spoken sentence is complete.

And the song? Some of the lyrics are a mystery to me, some are overtly sexual, and all of them blend the human longing for others and for God that becomes so potent in times of bewilderment and loss. I hear so many voices in this song, layering over one another through a phrase here, a verse there: the voices of David and Bathsheba, of Samson and Delilah, of men and the women they love, of women and the men they love, of brothers and sisters who love one another, of mothers and fathers and the sons and daughters they love. To me it's a song of lament for a time when loss and love crash against one another in a sudden and violent cataclysm of destruction. "And love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah" ~ the words could be Zosima's in The Brothers Karamasov, which I've quoted repeatedly in the past year. "Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing in real life as opposed to love in dreams."

It's a Cold and It's a Broken Hallelujah

Has The Moon Lost Her Memory?

In my other blog, I've written about my experiences yesterday, one of which centered on what I can only identify as memory trauma.

One of the things that happened yesterday was that, just before I preached it, I glanced at the manuscript of the sermon I was supposed to produce from memory, and realized that it was gone. I had practiced for ten days, and I had had it earlier in the day, and the morning before ~ but, not at the moment I needed it.

I suppose that by this time people think that I am merely offering excuses -- it's been eight months, after all, and now I refer to this particular incapacity casually, as if I expect it.

Here's what it's like:

I am taking a class on the Gospel of Matthew from one of the world's great Matthew scholars. I routinely fill 10-12 pages with notes each class. But as I am writing down some brilliant nugget of information or interpretation about a verse to which few people have given much thought, an image from last September pops into my head. I am still listening and still writing, but what I am seeing is quite distinct from what is taking place in the classroom.

Is it any wonder that my short-term memory is impaired?

If I sound casual and dismissive when I seem to be making excuses for myself, it's simply that the one thing I have become accustomed to is that, without warning, I forget. Pretty much everything except what I would prefer to forget.

And you know what? I'm OK with this.

I've had a lot of people in the past months make reference to the strength others have evidenced in desperate situations. I have no idea whether I have an ounce of strength in me. What I do know is that I have been the first hand witness (and victim?) of the outcome of the kind of strength I think they mean ~ the forge-ahead-and-and-refuse-to-acknowledge-this-shit kind of strength ~ and I don't buy it. The damage it inflicts, internally and externally, goes on for decades.

SO I am trying ~ not to whimper, but to be honest. And so I'm not trying to pretend that I can do things I can't. It's OK not to be able to do everything, or even much of anything. It's OK to have to look at manuscripts, or google, or notes. It's OK to let your bruised brain heal.

Amd ~ my long term memory is fine. Hence the arrival of the lyrics from Cats just as I needed them this morning! (And here on youtube.)

(Barbara Henson image here.)

Re-creation

Wayne has three friends who have recently suffered the deaths of young adult sons. I am one of those friends. He asked about the next one: should he share this blog with her? I told him to go ahead, but that he might want to mention it again in a few months, as she will probably remember little of what he says right now.

I leave out a lot, of course. This is only a little blog, and I write because writing is one way that I process things. But I don't want to scare people with the fierceness of grief. Someone commented on Kat's blog recently that she has never experienced a major loss. Oh, I thought to myself, she lives in such a different universe. When she sees the moon, or the sun, or a dragonfly, it looks completely different to her than it does to me.

I had known that before. My brother and I talked the other day about how our basic orientation, formed as the small survivors of the automobile accident that took the lives of others, is toward a universe of chaos and treachery. But the last months have been a reminder of just how much courage one needs to muster for the daily encounter.

I am rather musterless. I cannot listen to Vivaldi anymore. I tried Tschiakovsky's Fifth Symphony the other day ~ that's gone, too. At least as I used to understand it.

But (rousing myself again), I did think, after Wayne posted about the most recent death in his circle of friends, that I might share this. This has helped. A Jesuit friend sent me a bookmark a couple of weeks ago. The sculpture is The Creation of Adam, from the north portal of Chartres Cathedral (which he knows to be my favorite place). Think of your son resting on the knees of a loving God, he wrote. Another Jesuit looked at it and said, And you can also think of God re-creating your son. Yes, I said, that occurred to me, too.

You do not have to see it as the re-creation of a young man. You might see instead the re-creation of a young woman, or a baby girl, or a mother or a husband or a sister or an older parent ~ all of them represented by the links on my sidebar.

I don't know whether it helps. I don't pretend to know what might. But to does seem to me that the gentle caress of a loving and infinitely creative and hopeful God is a possible response to the chaos that threatens to engulf us. And so: the Chartres portrait, sculpted by an unknown artist 740 years ago. It's what I have to offer today.