Today I offered up "Send in the Clowns" by Stephen Sondheim as a prayer. It mostly worked - except for the bridge. I ended up re-writing it because I could not figure out the piano transcription for guitar chords. That is often a problem when piano music includes guitar chords. More often than not, the chords are technically right. They get ALL the right notes. But the guitar has six strings played with four and five fingers while the piano has 88 strings. What usually happens is that a piano player writes the chords as the sheet music is prepared and puts in too many chords. They are all correct, but too many changes for most guitar accompaniment.
In the Mexican folk song, "De Colores," for example, the New Century Hymnal (#402 for the church musicians) starts out in A (it should be C), immediately adds a 7th and then goes to an Em for the second measure. That fits, but it isn't standard Mexican folk music form: that would require an E7 (the five chord in a I, IV, V set up.) Then in the middle, the arranger throws in another A7, A9, A7#11, before ever getting to the D (the IV chord.) And NEVER resolves it with the essential E7. All I am saying is that pianists make guitar charts too freaking complicated. That's one problem.
The other is that the passing notes played on a piano require different chording on a guitar - and are usually written wrong. That was my problem figuring out the bridge for "Send in the Clowns." (Ok, I blew the timing a little, too and made it more squared off than necessary. Something I resolved later in the day and will address next week.) No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the suggested guitar chords work - so I rewrote the bridge with some jazz chords, changed the melody (not for the better), and was able to get back to the turn around that let me restart the melody for the closing. It wasn't always pretty but it mostly worked.
This afternoon, Di and I spend 90 minutes working through the odd Sondheim timing - not a problem - and the weird chords in the bridge - a REAL mofo! By the end we got it but not with a lot of wrangling, experimentation, and careful listening. I hope to rework it more tomorrow when the snow storm hits so that I can do it justice. And maybe get Di to join me sometime on key board so I can lay down and upright bass track, too.
Here's the link from this morning's livestreaming reflection. More soon.
Reflections on living as a sacred clown in this era of cynicism and chaos: how the spirituality of Jesus celebrates feasting and relationships vs. the way of John the Baptist's harsh asceticism
I've been absent from this forum since the inauguration: three Wednesday's in a row tore me apart, filled me with angst, and then started to knit me back together again with cleansing and grace. God was present in them all - but that exhausted me - so I checked out for a time. Today I am back rejoicing in the birthday of a friend and finishing my work for tomorrow's reflection. I came upon this poem too that is sublime.
Phase One: Written by Dilruba Ahmed
For leaving the fridge open last night, I forgive you. For conjuring white curtains instead of living your life.
For the seedlings that wilt, now, in tiny pots, I forgive you. For saying no first but yes as an afterthought.
I forgive you for hideous visions after childbirth, brought on by loss of sleep. And when the baby woke repeatedly, for your silent rebuke
in the dark, “What’s your beef?” I forgive your letting vines overtake the garden. For fearing your own propensity to love.
For losing, again, your bag en route from San Francisco; for the equally heedless drive back on the caffeine-fueled return.
I forgive you for leaving windows open in rain and soaking library books again. For putting forth
only revisions of yourself, with punctuation worked over, instead of the disordered truth, I forgive you. For singing mostly
when the shower drowns your voice. For so admiring the drummer you failed to hear the drum. In forgotten tin cans,
may forgiveness gather. Pooling in gutters. Gushing from pipes. A great steady rain of olives from branches, relieved
of cruelty and petty meanness. With it, a flurry of wings, thirteen gray pigeons. Ointment reserved for healers and prophets. I forgive you.
I forgive you. For feeling awkward and nervous without reason. For bearing Keats’s empty vessel with such calm you worried
you had, perhaps, no moral center at all. For treating your mother with contempt when she deserved compassion. I forgive you. I forgive
you. I forgive you. For growing a capacity for love that is great but matched only, perhaps, by your loneliness. For being unable
to forgive yourself first so you could then forgive others and at last find a way to become the love that you want in this world.
(Now we'll feast on pizza, beer and watching "Rent" for the first time. Thanks be to God!)
Today, once again, a light snow is falling. We can safely say that winter is truly here, as each day brings a bit more snow and the temperature will not climb beyond 30F for the next few weeks. I know that not everyone loves falling snow. Oh, perhaps they can savor it from a distance - or appreciate it's beauty in a film - but so many have moved away from north country because they hate the cold and the snow. I have come to cherish the whole experience as sensually clarifying. There is silence and cleansing in the snow, obscured vision along with an invitation to take care, too. I still hate driving long distances in a relentless snow storm, but while still in town with no place to go, I appreciate the snow's call to slow down and pay attention. It awakens me to the nuances of the day.
On Saturday morning, we woke to four inches of new snow that showed up over night. It was a surprise. Sadly, the sky soon turned to sleet and the purity of that surprise became a freezing mush that had to be cleared. And, damn, if those four inches didn't quickly become a heavy, sloppy mess that strained our backs. I felt the legacy of that storm yesterday while shoveling two new inches from the deck and driveway. I kept thinking, "There's nothing like aching arthritis to remind you of your mortality." I was grateful that today's coating was refreshingly light - even as it continues to fall gently.
Like many physical tasks - washing dishes, sweeping floors, scouring toilets - I find that shoveling snow often takes me into prayer. Not liturgical prayer, mind you, but the quiet awareness of once random thoughts making connections with their kin. Yesterday, Carrie Newcomer posted this on her Speed of Soul site:
The snow is coming down in enormous fluffy flakes. I lift up my purple mittens to catch a few on the back of my hand. Even with the naked eye I can see each crystal wheel with their individual arms and legs of ice. There is a solitary stillness in the ravine back by the creek and few sounds beyond the occasional hammering of a pileated woodpecker and intrepid jingle of my dog's collar tags. It is so quiet I can hear the soft hissing sound of those large flakes landing on the tree branches and forest floor. It is that still. It is in these quiet moments that I sense the expansiveness of time beyond my own life. I sense there is an abiding wellness even in these bruised and troubled times. What is whole is still whole. What runs deep still runs deep. Even our troubles seem transient when the falling snow lands on the ground like the most tender kiss - and you are truly there to hear it.
She taps into what I have come to trust, too: the presence of a small but salvific assurance that "what is whole is still whole." I felt this while walking with my children and grandchildren on Sunday as well. For three hours we hiked through the woods and fields of Poet's Walk along the Hudson River. Anna loved "drawing pictures" in the md with her new boots. Louie and I marveled at the way water runs to the lowest point in a meadow to pond into pools of fragile ice resembling ancient panes of glass. The adults rejoiced in being together. We spoke of how the pandemic has been exhausting but clarifying, too: a simple walk in the woods is now filled with blessings. As we were schlepping back through the woods to our cars at twilight, barely able to see one another as the light fled into the night, our daughter mused that "it's been at least a decade since I walked through the woods at sunset." Me, too, I realized and and drifted back to something the late Macrina Wiederkehr wrote that I caught my eye earlier that morning:
Slowly She celebrated the sacrament of Letting Go… First she surrendered her Green Then the Orange, yellow, and Red… Finally she let go of her Brown… Shedding her last leaf She stood empty and silent, stripped bare Leaning against the sky she began her vigil of trust… Shedding her last leaf She watched its journey to the ground… She stood in silence, Wearing the color of emptiness Her branches wondering: How do you give shade, with so much gone? And then, the sacrament of waiting began The sunrise and sunset watched with Tenderness, clothing her with silhouettes They kept her hope alive. They helped her understand that her vulnerability her dependence and need her emptiness her readiness to receive were giving her a new kind of beauty. Every morning and every evening she stood in silence and celebrated the sacrament of waiting.
Within the quiet assurance of sacred nature, among those I adore most dearly, in a gentle flurry of quiet snow, I let go of my fretting for a spell - and slept like a child again that night.
I pass a woman on the beach. We both wear graying hair, feel sand between our toes, hear surf, and see blue sky. I came with a smile. She came to get one.
No. I'm wrong.
She sits on a boulder by a cairn of stacked rocks. Hands over her heart, she stares out to sea. Today's my turn to hold the joy, hers the sorrow.
The poet is Jeanie Greensfelder, an artist I know nothing about, who hails from San Luis Obispo, of which I know precious little, too. Apparently SLO lies about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I have lived in both of those cities - and visited many of the mission towns in-between. SLO is one of the oldest California communities to be inhabited by Europeans but historians say that the Chumash people have been on the land since about 7000 BCE. Our daughters are "California girls. One was born in LA and the other in SF; one while working with Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Union, the other while I was a student at SF State University. I rarely think of them as Californians, however, as they both carry a Midwestern countenance from our days in Saginaw, MI and Cleveland, OH.
My heart was awakened (again) after spending a little time with "Taking Turns." It so neatly summarizes what it means to be a sacred clown: smiles and stillness, careful listening and sharing reality without ceremony. The clue comes in the line: by a cairn of stacked rocks. One is grieving and is respected while she silently rests in her sorrow. The other holds the mourner in her heart without interrupting or imposing: beyond sound, a sacred sacramental moment is shared.
Later in the day, during lunch, our mail arrived bringing us two packages. In one there were new masks to wear while engaging the world during the contagion. In the other, the annual calendar one of our daughters shares with the wider family linking her photographs to the march of days including birthdays and anniversaries. For so many reasons, the month of May spoke to me of the Spirit praying for us all with sighs too deep for human words.
Two recent insights about living as one of God's sacred clowns or holy fools spoke to my heart. The first is found in an old text from 1979 by Fr. Henri Nouwen entitled, Clowning in Rome. I have had this book for a long time but never spent any time with his reflections on the sacred but small nature of living as one of God's sacred clowns. Nouwen had accepted an invitation to spend five months living in Rome where he shared four lectures to a variety of English speaking communities. In the introduction, Nouwen cuts to the chase: "Slowly, I started to realize that in the great circus of Rome, full of lion-tamers and trapeze artists whose dazzling feats claim our attention, the real and true story was told by the clowns.
Clowns are not in the center of the vents. They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, and make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes we came to admire. The clowns don't that it all together, they do not succeed in what they try, they are awkward, out of balance, but... they are on our side. We respond to them not with admiration, but with sympathy, not with amazement but with understanding, not with tension but with a smile. Of the virtuosi we say, "How can they do it?" Of the clowns we say, "They are like us." The clowns remind us with a tear and a smile that we share the same human weaknesses … The longer I was in Rome, the more I enjoyed the clowns, those peripheral people who by their humble, saintly lives evoke a smile and awaken hope, even in a city terrorized by kidnaping and street violence.
Nouwen then names "four clownlike elements" of the spiritual life: solitude, devotion (or celibacy), prayer, and contemplation. "My growing love for the clowns in Rome made me desire to clown around a little myself and speak about such foolish things as being alone, treasuring emptiness, standing naked before God, and simply seeing things for what they are." He added that within the bustle of Rome's grandeur, he discerned another desire within, a creativity that "wants to play, dance, smile, and do many other 'useless' things." And by 'useless' Nouwen means profoundly personal acts of compassion, companionship, creativity, and community-building like the students "wasting their time with grade-school drop-outs."
The Medical Mission sister dedicating all her time to two old women who had become helpless and isolated... the young men and women who picked up the drunks from the streets during the night and gave them a bed and some food. The priest forming communities for the handicapped ... women and men of all ages offering their lives to others with a disarming generosity.
I found myself returning to one of Alana Levondowsk's songs that gave shape and form to Thomas Merton's comments about St. Theresa of Lisiuex: "Little Flower."
I can't fully explain why this song grabs me where I live. Beverly Lanzetta writes that the sacred can only be hinted at poetically and evocatively: it is too sublime to confine to linear explanations. On my journey, her words - and Alana's song - come as close as possible in this realm. First, there are the "useless" little flowers and clowns who live for tenderness rather than recognition, power, or productivity.
Then there was what Fr. Richard Rohr wrote about spending time with those in the community of Mother (now saint) Theresa of Calcutta. Serendipitously, his time in that community came to a close on October 1, the feast day St. Teresa, who is one of Rohr's all-time favorite mystics! He observed that for the first time he:
... finally met a “conservative” yet fully contemporary form of religious life that I could trust. The sisters were not rigid; rather, they were simply devoted women. They did not need security, answers, and order, as we see in most traditionalist movements in the West. In fact, they were willing to live without security, with very few answers to their questions of mind and heart, and amid almost total disorder. All in union—hour by hour—with God. They lived that amazing and rare combination of utter groundedness and constant risk-taking that always characterizes the true Gospel. The sisters didn’t waste time fixing, controlling, or even needing to understand what is wrong with others. Instead, they put all of their time and energy into letting God change them. From that transformed place, they serve and carry the pain of the world, which they are convinced is the pain of God. This is the synthesis on a communal level that I am always seeking. I have encountered it in many individuals, but hardly ever in public and social form.
And when asked why this order did not engage in the social powers that create so much of the suffering they attend to, Rohr was calm told that:
Mother Teresa felt that if... she played the firebrand she could not be what Jesus had told her to be—love to and for all. She said that if she started correcting and pointing out “sinners” she could no longer be an instrument of love and reconciliation for them. Humiliated and defensive people do not change. Like her patron Thérèse of Lisieux, “her vocation in the church was to be love.” She knew that her primary message had to be her life itself, not words or arguments or accusations. She had found that “third something” that is always beyond the calculating and dualistic mind.
In my journey of faith, this simplicity resonates with me at this stage of life. It celebrates the way Nouwen describes sacred clowns as "useless" to the world but so vital, too. And, it does not negate the importance of organize against social injustice. Rather, it acknowledge, as St. Paul insisted, that the Holy Spirit gives to us various gifts and each individual does not carry all the Spirit's charisms. I know that at other times in my life I have been an organizer. An advocate. An activist ally. But not now. Today, as an old, straight, white male intellectual, I am much more of a holy fool who simply lives and shares small and often seemingly insignificant acts of love. Period. Well, ok, I still do some advocacy online and am allied with the Poor Peoples Movement. But my life, in person and online, is much more "useless" as the charism of the clown fills my soul.
As I write this confession, the political realities of my nation have become absurd as well as dangerous. The current regime is acting out ugly threats to subvert the recent presidential election as it hunkers down into conspiracy theories. Its allies are both the lunatic fringe of American right wing ideology and crass opportunists positioning and posturing for elected office in 2024. That they care little about the short or long term consequences of their hatred is irrelevant right now: they are going to do everything short of violent insurrection to advance their cause - and some less stable souls will inevitably spill over into acts of violence, too. In a nation saturated with weapons and hellbent on selfish individualism, you can see disaster coming. It is sad, frightening, tragic, ugly, and raging towards a full blown confrontation that few seem willing to avert...
... all the more reason why the charism of the foolish and useless clown takes on a new urgency...
