Jazz and soccer

I found this great analogy in an article on whether soccer matters in America on ESPN.com: 


There's a core constituency there holding the game in trust only for themselves. Holding it hostage, like a priesthood. These are the same kind of folks who loved jazz to death in this country, and smothered it with the same "You can't understand the beauty of this" condescension and obsession. 


Come to think of it, that's another strike against soccer in the American mind, too: It's too much like jazz. Too improvisational, too fluid, too ungoverned. Maybe that's why jazz as a going concern fled this country to Europe all those years ago. We tend to prefer games and melodies that keep us thinking inside the box. - Jeff MacGregor

Wow, this is so right.  Indie music is probably headed the same place.

Best in a very long time

Yesterday was as great as the rest of the weekend!  Fabulous reunion with Ken, great message at Mass, afternoon nap and relaxing around home with Teri, and then a great evening of music with several independent artists (including the sister-of-the-bride's duo, Unearthed) among great friends.

What a fabulous weekend!

What a great weekend

Unfortunately, it hasn't left me much time to write!

In a pleasantly unexpected reversal, I was invited to help out with the rehearsal dinner our friends hosted on Friday night, which another friend was catering for 60-70 people.  So Thursday after work I found myself cutting vegetables and fruit, glancing over a couple recipes I would unexpectedly end up in charge of on Friday, hanging out and being useful where possible - squeezing lemon juice for the trifle, cutting the chicken breasts into tenders.  Oh and sampling some fabulous sangria, which I'd end up serving to the guests on Friday evening.

Friday I took a half day off of work, and after that rather hectic morning there getting a report out that needed to be done, headed back out to our friends' house.  After putting together a grilling glaze (that we actually didn't end up using), I dove into what turned out to be a great black & cannellini bean dip, that was one of the hits of the party.  I also tended the last of the roasted vegetables and helped with getting things gathered together and presented, mopped the kitchen floor while most everyone was out at the rehearsal.

At that point I got dressed for the party and served at the sangria bar throughout the evening while monitoring the soft drinks in the coolers.  It was a grand time, a really wonderful chance to serve a family that has been a great blessing and to participate in a really fabulous young couple's marriage festivities.  Speaking of which, as great as the rehearsal dinner was, the wedding was even more wonderful.  The ceremony itself had fabulous music, a presider who really knows how to draw non-Catholics into even the most theological part of the Mass, and a great gathering of family and friends praying together.  The reception was first rate, in a facility I haven't visited in decades out at the base, with more great food and drink

Today I get to cap the weekend with a visit from a high school friend I haven't seen in over a quarter-century, who is coming to sing with us at Mass since he's in Columbus for the weekend.  We'll then find brunch somewhere.  I can't really say how excited I am to be meeting up with him again.  He played a crucial role in my reconversion so long ago when we unexpectedly met up in Biloxi.

Hopefully after that I'll be able to borrow a lawnmower and fix my half-done front lawn (bent a blade yesterday - actually, I probably started to bend it the last time I used and finished the damage yesterday without enough time to get a new one before the wedding) before going to hear one and possibly two bands this evening, including the sister of the bride's jazzy duo from Chicago.  Her partner in music is a talented guitarist, and the two of them work very well together.

Prayer time

Lord, You are more precious than silver.
Lord, You are more costly than gold.
Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds,
and nothing I desire compares with You.

Let me never be unaware, Lord, that what you desire of and for me is always what is best for me and for all of your precious sons and daughters.

Purify my heart.
Let me be as gold and precious silver.
Refiner's Fire, my heart's one desire is to be holy,
set apart for You, Lord.
I choose to be holy,
set apart for you, my Master,
ready to do your will.

Lord, please finish putting to death the carnal parts of me, anything that believes that this world's perspective has anything of value to offer.  There's another song that says

Holiness, holiness is what I long for.
Holiness is what I need.
Holiness, holiness is what you want from me.

Yet I believe, Lord, that holiness is what you want for me.  You know that I don't have it to offer; all I have is my will, Lord, which so often is stubborn and so easily deceived.  Help me conform my will to Yours, precious One.  Help me to be less self-centered.  You are my only hope, yet help me to believe in You, to keep my eyes on You, not for the sake of my hope, but for true love of You.

I'm really tired of being perpetually sleepy!

And I don't completely get it.  Last night I was in bed by 10:30, which was a half-hour later than planned due to a (welcome) phone call from Deb, but still should be plenty early enough.  Woke up briefly around 4, but went back to sleep.  I think I'm not resting soundly, for some reason.  My last really good night's sleep was Friday night, as T & I both slept in on Saturday.  Sunday morning was short because of the early morning ride, but I had a brief noon nap to make up for it.  Sunday night I should've slept better than I did, considering I broke my usual alcohol limit (though only mildly).

Shouldn't there be a degree

of equity of effort?

Arguing with lyrics 3: Time and Tide

Here we go. This is probably the big one that fits both bills: it's full of inaccurate thinking and was also huge for me emotionally in the same context as We Belong. From Basia Trzetrzelewska (yes, I can pronounce it, and I used to know how to spell it but had to look it up now; she primarily goes by her first name), I'd never even have heard of this song if it weren't for her:

It's hard for me to stop my heart love never knows when the time is right I don't want to hurt anybody but can't help loving you I never felt like this before I know this is passion worth waiting for let love take take its course hat's the only thing for us to do

Refrain: We've got time, oh baby, there's no rush gonna be a better day for us hang on and I will wait for you our love will always stay as good as new 

Time and tide nothing and no one can stop us now for better for worse this time I'm sure it's gonna last How can I stop my heart? Love never knows when the time is right don't want to hurt anybody don't want to make them cry don't want to make them cry

Refrain 

Time and tide nothing and no one can stop us now for better for worse
this time I'm sure it's gonna last gonna last forever 

We've got time, oh baby there's no rush gonna be a better day for us  hang on and I will wait for you

I'm sure I embraced this song well outside of the artist's intentions. Now I find I must approach it by examining the difference between the worldly conception of love and the Christian one, as best expressed 1 Cor 13. The world treats "falling in love" as an uncontrollable force, an event that simply overwhelms the participants in spite of themselves. It ignores the role that our decisions and actions play in nurturing romantic love, and exalts romance at the expense of complete, lifelong love, of which romance is also an important element, but only one!


It is hard to stop the heart, and the degree to which we've nurtured the habit of acting out of our feelings rather than in careful consideration of everyone's best interest will determine just how hard it is for us. But love always knows when the time is right, for love never rejoices in wrong, but always rejoices in the right. I knew then that the time wasn't right, but so desperately wanted it to be anyway. And while maybe I didn't want to hurt anybody, what I wanted more was what I wanted. I could've helped loving her in ways that weren't appropriate given our respective marriages. I just wanted to love her more than I wanted to love my wife, and that was very unfair to both of them.

Passion may be worth waiting for, but more importantly, it is worth nurturing in the marriage relationship to the same degree we nurture it in a new romance. But on this the song was right: the right thing to do would have been to let life take its course, rather than try to put my feelings in charge.

And there's no way I could be the husband I'm called to be, that I could love my wife as she and I both deserve, if I were always looking for some unknown better day when I could be with her instead. I've long since figured out that my wife deserves better than to be looked beyond, as if she were some Dora I must survive to be with the person I really should have been with all along (I never should have read David Copperfield, though perhaps I should read it again now that I have the proper perspective on my life). My better day is each one I spend devoted to the one who is my partner for life, and that's what I'm to hang onto.

Arguing with lyrics 2: We Belong

The thing about arguing with lyrics is that everyone can do it, because no song is going to agree with everyone and no one agrees with every song.  It's a far more important exercise to address those I connected with emotionally in a way I may need to finish letting go of, rather than the vast wealth of those that I simply disagree with.  This great song from Pat Benatar is one of the former, for me:


Many times I've tried to tell you 
Many times I've cried alone 
Always I'm surprised how well you 
Cut my feelings to the bone 
Don't want to leave you really 
I've invested too much time 
To give you up that easy 
To the doubts that complicate your mind 

CHORUS: 
We belong to the light 
We belong to the thunder 
We belong to the sound of the words 
We've both fallen under 
Whatever we deny or embrace 
For worse or for better 
We belong, we belong 
We belong together 

Maybe it's a sign of weakness 
When I don't know what to say 
Maybe I just wouldn't know 
What to do with my strength anyway 
Have we become a habit 
Do we distort the facts 
Now there's no looking forward 
Now there's no turning back 
When you say 

CHORUS 

Close your eyes and try to sleep now 
Close your eyes and try to dream 
Clear your mind and do your best 
To try and wash the palette clean 
We can't begin to know it 
How much we really care 
I hear your voice inside me 
I see your face everywhere 
Still you say 

CHORUS 


And about this I simply need to remind myself that, no, we never did belong together in the way I convinced myself we did.  Perhaps it's true that we belonged as friends, and there's no doubt that in the long run there was good that came into my life out of my inappropriate attachment, forgiveness that I was able to offer that has made all the difference in my life.  I'll always be grateful.  But even then, she belonged with him, and I with her, and the only reason I mention any of this is to finish letting go of the warm nostalgia that has filled me on hearing this song over the past 20 years.  

Arguing with lyrics 1: Never Give All the Heart

I find myself arguing with lyrics that I may have agreed with, at least to a degree, in the past.  Here's the latest, if not most significant, example, in a Yeats poem that the Chieftains arranged on their Tears of Stone CD:

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

I'm not sure I can count the ways in which I now disagree with this.  For starters, no passionate woman I've ever known would ever be satisfied with receiving less than all the heart.  That isn't to say to give away one's very personhood, but giving any less than all the heart is not love at all.

Yeats must've been deeply hurt, spurned by someone whom he felt was merely playing a game with him.  Yet, there is truth here, too, for some are more interested in being swept off their feet than in being truly loved.  I think of programs like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, and the way all the participants treat love as a game and themselves and one another as a commodity.  I watched this show with Teri the other night, sad to say.  I can't believe we entertain ourselves with people's lives like this.

And yet, I don't agree with Yeats' conclusion either.  Certainly many of us fail to requite the Maker's love, but this He knows: giving all the heart is a gift - to the giver - beyond telling.  In doing so, we never lose.  Loving is its own victory.

Some of the other lyrics I've taken exception to lately are probably more important to understand clearly, because of the emotional investment I've misplaced in them.  More to come . . .

Reality check

The other day I saw a "like" on FB along the lines of, "The most common lie is 'I'm fine.'"  At first I nodded my head in agreement, but now I've reconsidered.  


I think I'd still agree if it said "I feel fine," though we rarely express it that way.  For me, it's often true that my current emotional state isn't very much in harmony with the unobtrusive "I'm fine" by which I spare others the details of whatever my current angst may be. 


Yet for me the greater truth is this: even when I don't especially feel fine, when I feel depressed or dissatisfied with my life in some particular or in a myriad of them, I'm far more blessed than I'm realizing at that moment, and simply have my attention on the wrong thing.  The truth is, I usually really am fine - my fundamental needs are usually met, I'm not starving or homeless or seriously diseased or near imminent death - even when my attention is more on my current troubles than my many blessings.

Indicted by a man I've never met

Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability. - John Wooden

This is beyond me

But it is the will of God that Christ both did and taught. Humility in dealings with others; steadfastness in faith; modesty in words; justice in deeds; mercifulness in works; discipline in morals. To be unable to do a wrong, and to be able to bear a wrong when it is done; to keep peace with the brethren; to love God with all one’s heart; to love God because he is a Father but fear him because he is God; to prefer nothing whatever to Christ because he preferred nothing to us; to adhere inseparably to his love; to stand faithfully and bravely by his cross; when there is any conflict over his name and honour, to exhibit in discourse that steadfastness in which we proclaim him; in torture, to show that confidence in which we unite; in death, that patience in which we are crowned – this is what it means to want to be co-heirs with Christ, this is what it means to do what God commands, this is what it is to fulfill the will of the Father. - St Cyprian's Treatise on the Lord's Prayer


If Christianity is a new standard, I am hopeless.  I'm unable to even avoid being jealous of the gifts my Father pours into the lives of others.  Rather than rejoice for them, I look at my life and see my shortcomings, my longings, my failures, rather than God's providence, God's blessings, God's grace.  I long, rather than simply be.  My time in prayer, in reflection, in Scripture, rather than draw me into the Lord's presence and peace, reveals my stubborn, stupid, selfish pride, shows me how far I am from living as I am called.


Yet I know that in all circumstances and at all times I am to rejoice in the Lord.  So thank you, Lord, for showing me how far I have to go.  Thank you for letting me know that it isn't up to me to get there, but only to participate as you bring me the whole way.  Thank you for giving me this new day in which to be drawn by your grace more deeply into the abundant, joyful life you desire for me.  And, if I may be so bold as to now ask something, Lord, please heal those whom I love and draw them more deeply into your love and your presence.

Seeking only what is of our Father

And so, beloved brethren, we should know and remember that when we call God our Father, we must behave as children of God, so that whatever pleasure we take in having God for our Father, he may take the same pleasure in us.

Let us behave like temples of God, so that it may be clear that God dwells in us. Let our doings not fall away from the Spirit, but let us, who have begun to be heavenly and spiritual, consider and do nothing but heavenly and spiritual things . . . - St Cyprian's Treatise on the Lord's Prayer

The greatest obstacle to holiness in my life has always been my own will.  I suppose it is always so, for everyone.  My faith in God is so small, sometimes I just want to turn my back on the whole effort.  But the part of me that would leave is not really someone I like very much. 

Tired.

Am tired of being tired.  Tired of being the only one who wants to do the right thing for the right reasons.  Tired of being in conflict.  Tired of being stressed.  Tired of being older.  Just tired.

Still, better not linger here to watch the snow.

"The sword shall never leave your house"

Even though David was forgiven his sin, this prophecy was not revoked.  The lives and deaths of his sons and grandsons through numerous generations bore out the consequences of his sin, the division that David engendered by embracing adultery and murder rather than holiness.

We tend to embrace a sort of immature grace.  Since Christ has paid the price for our sins, when we repent and receive forgiveness we think that's the end of it, and seem surprised when the consequences of our own actions echo well beyond what we ever foresaw in the course of our self-focused choices.  Our sin will always have consequences.  The moral restrictions on our behavior are neither the sadistic whims of a controlling God nor the primitive superstitions of an unsophisticated people.  Certainly our moral code must change to take into account our technological savvy, but not in a way that discards what either was instilled within us or has developed through painful experience over the millenia of our existence.

When we choose sin, the consequences often extend beyond the immediate ones we consciously disregard.  They are more manifold than we dream, and often go on a long time, some for decades or even for generations.  Maybe we won't see most of our children wiped out in war, or see them fight against us - though I've seen skirmishes of other sorts.  But these consequences are not the end of the story.

And the reason that is so is because of God's forgiveness, perfected as this prophecy of Nathan's is fulfilled  in the piercing of Jesus' side.  The sword shall never leave David's house, for David's pierced descendant remains on the throne of grace for all eternity.  The sword shall never leave your house, yet it has become a sword of reconciliation and boundless grace.

So let us choose to die to our desires with him, to have our own selfish will put to death by the sword.  And when we fail, let the blood and water of the pierced one wash us clean and restore us, and allow his grace to carry us and our loved ones through the painful consequences that may ensue.

My first fifties post

So much has happened since last post.  I was still really down when I wrote it, feeling isolated and rejected and hurt.  We'd had a wonderful Sunday, but I was feeling that t's affection for me that day was rooted more in the occasion than in our relationship.  Before I left for work I asked her about that, and she assured me that wasn't the case.  Later in the day she left me a very encouraging and affirming FB message, which was really what I needed, and also really when I needed it.  Last week would have been too soon, would have kept me from seeing clearly all that I needed to about things, left me less determined to work on them in a new way.  And our hectic weekend had afforded no opportunity.  But I'd reached the point where the lack of affirmation was dragging me down, and it actually took me some time to be able to receive what t was trying to give me.

It has led to some really open discussion that has been important for me and has helped us to grow together as a couple.  We've reinstated some old environmental controls about which I'd grown too lax, and I now feel that I have the partner I need in living the life I'm called to in this area in which I've struggled on my own for so long.  I was trying to go it alone, or even just "me and God," and in truth I must admit that was partly due to not detesting my sin and weakness sufficiently.  Now, the two of us are determined not to just go it alone, either.

I feel I've received a 50th birthday gift from God.  I know it's a gift that he's been offering me for a long time, but I haven't received it as of yet.  It is a gift of new grace and holiness, and of growth and transformation, and I am determined to treasure and nurture it.

My actual birthday yesterday was a mixed bag.  I had a beater of a day at work, and t was sick so couldn't make dinner.  But that worked out well, as I ended up picking up a nice steak to grill for us, along with some garlic mashed redskins and some leftover salsa from Sunday - which just gets better for the first few days afterwards anyway.

Another tough workday today, and tomorrow will be no better.  I need another of me there.  But it will be okay.  And the bike ride with my friends tonight was great. Now, to bed; Lord, bless my rest.

Holding on

Today is back to new normal, I guess, after a really nice yesterday and a weekend too busy to think much.

Our joint 50th birthday party was fabulous yesterday.  There were several close friends we were hoping would be there who couldn't be, some we knew of in advance and some we didn't.  The absence that hurt worst was due to our oldest daughter's boycott.  I figured weeks ago that she wouldn't come, though, when T told me she'd laid an expectation on her, and my suspicions were mostly already confirmed by her inaccessibility all week.

That's pretty much the least painful of the present reality.  I need to do some research today . . .

I hope I never forget . . .

. . .  how I feel now.

status quo . . .

 . . . is restored, finally.  yet, somehow, it isn't the same.

at least there's no more deception.  i've been pretending for too long to want to follow the way of obedience while tolerating the one undeniably sinful area that i've been unwilling or unable to pluck out of my life.  maybe now that i'm not so inclined to self-hatred i can find a healthy way to deal with this.

Getting old

Well, this was going to be a crotchety post, but I've decided against it . . .