we are all bombarded. two days before christmas and we wonder if we did enough, bought enough, wrapped enough, entertained enough, baked enough, decorated enough. we are surrounded by images – piles of presents under ornate christmas trees, horse-drawn sleighs on currier and ives backroads, families gathered at tables merrily chatting, churches full with congregations happily singing and the bells in the belfry ringing. the kind of images that nag you into thinking, “more. i must do more.”
the other evening, gathered around bowls of homemade hot thai soup, 20 said, “it’s hard to keep things simple.” the three of us share some profound times of conversation, of life’s changes and choices, of simple togetherness. he talked about soup and wine and chocolate and conversation, of appreciating each other’s company.
the catalogs arriving in the mail and the ads in the paper and the online streaming advertising all pander to the indulgence of our insecurity. of not enough. how do we respond and say no?
it’s hard to avoid. it feels like we have to say yes to everything. or we don’t quite measure up. we search for meaning. in things. we are searching outside of ourselves. holding ourselves to some sort of external standard of holiday-completeness.
how do we seek more centeredness? more connectedness? more moments held in the stillness of awe?
i distinctly remember designing this. for over a year i spent tons of time designing products: pillows, tote bags, cellphone covers, prints, beach towels, cutting boards, mugs, travel cups, coasters, cards, shower curtains, side tables, leggings. i would study david’s paintings and extract morsels and execute the process – with great joy – of the choosing of the product lines i wished to represent and the designing of those. it was our intention to sell these pieces. i would have absolutely loved to fill a brick and mortar store with these pillows and mugs and journals and tote bags, but the sheer outlay for merchandise and stock and the overhead for a physical store made that impossible. but online – at an online storefront called society6.com, which would manufacture the pieces as they were ordered – it was possible. it was a good premise. so we opened five storefronts online (listed below in case you want to stop by with a cup of coffee) to represent each day of our studio melange postings.
only it didn’t really work.
hundreds, literally hundreds, of designs and thousands of products later, we decided it was time to stop putting the hours of effort into these designs. we had some sales and it is truly a delight to see someone carrying a tote bag i designed or a laptop cover or to hear from someone who is enjoying their purchase. the sales trickle in still, $4 here, $2.10 there. the mark-up, as you would expect, lists mightily to the side of the host company, but we dreamed of great volume – so many pillows that earning a few dollars for each-one-of-many would be a big help to our working budget.
only it didn’t really work.
every now and then i visit these sites and am astounded at how actually cool the products are. the designs aren’t so bad either, if i do say so myself. (tee-hee) there are some really beautiful pieces out there, like this PEACE. EARTH. PEACE ON EARTH. morsel. simple and profound. timely. if you click here, you can see it as a pillow. if you scroll way down on that linked page, you can see all the other products that we designed and made available with this image. it was within the painting INSTRUMENT OF PEACE that i found this morsel.
even though it didn’t really work, i suppose it worked. because i can’t begin to tell you how much i learned. maybe that’s the point. maybe that’s always the point.
for more morsels of david’s paintings, click here:
hundreds of them. birds galore. all sitting on the wires. one by one they flutter and change places. but they all manage to sit on the wires together. they adjust. they move over. they change wires. they allow space. they allow other birds in. and they sit. (although technically, i suppose they are standing.) they don’t seem to be exclusive. they don’t seem to be judgemental. they don’t seem to be laden with agenda. they seem to be working it out – this being-in-community-together thing. refreshing.
and then it occurs to me. they are all the same kind of bird.
what would happen if a different sort of bird showed up and wanted to sit on the wire, to be in their community? would they react like people?
linda and jim were doing the swedish death cleanse. linda was determined to de-clutter their home of anything that could potentially burden their children one day. once on a mission there is no stopping her, so they were diligent about going through every corner, nook and cranny of their home, eliminating anything that was not needed, anything that hadn’t been used in ages or was just simply extraneous.
now, we all talked about that around the table. with the sun setting on lake michigan and wine in our glasses, our little neighborhood group discussed how hard it is to let go of things, especially things that have some meaning or are mementos of some sort. add to that the fact that many of us were raised by parents who had experienced the great depression and you have people who are pre-destined to keep stuff, repurpose it, re-use it, save it for sometime you might need it, save it for when it comes back into fashion so you don’t have to buy it again, etc etc etc. (that’s definitely my experience and my excuse.)
many times i have entered the basement storage room and gazed at the bins. in years past, we have eliminated most of the boxes and traded them for these bins, throwing out some things, giving away some things, donating items that are useful, so we have made some progress. now there are bins with christmas ornaments, bins with artwork and stories and projects created by The Girl or The Boy, bins of things my sweet momma felt too guilty to give away, bins of sewing paraphernalia, bins of art supplies, bins of old music (for everyone gives the musician they know all the old sheet music they come across in their own basement and then that musician, who feels like it’s a mortal sin to throw music out, is compelled to keep it all in file cabinets or, yes, bins.)
from time to time i get a wild hair and go through a bin or random remaining box or pile in the basement workroom. sometimes i am pretty successful at eliminating clutter. trust me – i have been in peoples’ homes who have been hoarders and just seeing that makes me want to get rid of everything and live in a tiny house (well, one that would fit my piano.)
this winter perhaps we will tackle this once again. one more layer of cleaning out. it is possible. it’s just tough for me to be ruthless. i am too thready to be ruthless. touching memories or seeing them around me is reassuring and fills my heart.
one day in more recent days i went upstairs to look for something in the closet in the hallway. on the top shelf sat these slippers. stored here, they are my sweet momma’s and my poppo’s. they kept them here for when they would visit.
i know that they won’t visit our home again. noticing the slippers stopped me in my pursuit of whatever-it-was-i-was-looking-for. all the moments of having my parents present in my home swirled around me, the finality once again a reality. i struggled with what to do. i took them out of the closet and brought them downstairs to show d.
laying them carefully on the floor, i took this picture so that i could look at it and remember. and then, i placed them in a bag so that someone else – a woman with smaller feet than mine and a man with bigger feet than d’s – could have slippers. slippers with a bank of memories. slippers worn hugging my children as they grew. slippers worn around the christmas tree. slippers worn in the cold winter sitting by the fire or in the summer drinking morning coffee on the deck. slippers that lived here, just waiting for their owners, my beloved parents, to put them on. slippers with big heart. slippers with profoundly good juju.
i found a note the other day, tucked inside a book. it was a jotting-down-of-a-memory and was a quote from The Boy. he was five and he said, “look at how i can snap (my fingers). at 5 years old!! i could become a snap teacher and teach everyone how to snap!” never too young to dream.
jen is zealous. she is reallyyyy zealous. i don’t think i have known anyone who is as zealous a learner as jen. it is invigorating and inspiring to be around someone who embraces all she does not know with questions and a hope for understanding, as opposed to resistance or suspicion. she actively seeks out ways to learn the new, the unknown, wholeheartedly jumping in and swimming. she knows that vitality comes with opening yourself to new things.
pantene recently ran a new video series. it’s referencing the holidays and in it transgender people talk about what it’s like to go home. it’s breathtakingly sad the number of LGBTQ women and men who are not welcomed at home because someone cannot learn, ask questions, try to understand. instead, resistance and suspicion and a whole lot of judgement fiercely reign and the dream of being all together celebrating is devastatingly dashed. squelching another’s dreams is not the ultimate job of our job as humankind.
yesterday i conducted a christmas cantata. ahead of time, i had, for hours and hours on end, researched songs to find the pieces i felt would resonate with people, the pieces that would be generously bestowing of spirit and not off-putting. i looked for the language i thought would tug at their hearts and remind them of the light, the miracle of the season. when one song didn’t quite fit for me after i had chosen it, i wrote a new one. they were labeled ‘contemporary’ songs, with melodies, rhythm, chords, years of copyright differing from the hymns in the hymnals. over thirty people participated: a choir, a ukulele band, a worship band, a violinist, a violist. the result was truly beautiful, the message clear and the music gorgeous. our little church – a church that proudly purports to be reconciling and all-embracing – had moments truly holy in that service.
h is 93. every week at rehearsal he is ready and willing to learn something. he is steeped in traditional – after all, he is 93, his year of copyright long ago. and yet, those new melodies, harmony, challenging rhythms he has learned to sing have brought a freshness of life to him. never too old to dream. he knows that vitality comes with opening yourself to new things.
but back to yesterday. i remain unfulfilled in one way. because the sad part about yesterday? all the work and time that these dedicated volunteers had put into this cantata – with my careful choices based on over thirty years as a minister of music – was not seen by the first service folks. the word ‘contemporary’ made it unfathomable for that service to host without complaint, relegating it only to the second service. the spirit of camaraderie, the support of the efforts of others in their own church, the truly beautiful music that was made was lost on this first service. i try to understand their dedication to traditional music, to choice, and i heartedly honor it in selecting music for every other week of the church year. but i fail to understand their unwillingness to even try to embrace something else, something ‘new’. i fail to understand any reinforcement of ‘different’, of divisiveness. especially as simply one day and a festive community celebration of the holiday. especially when churches are constantly looking for relevancy and vitality is one of the necessary ingredients. they do not know what they missed. closing off. what they are missing.
jen and h would like each other. they both openly embrace new. they both openly embrace others. they both dream dreams, happily engaging in life, snapping. what a gift to be around.
this is at least the 30th christmas. the 30th one that i was responsible for making sure that other people – in various congregations through the years – feeeeel it. the 30th one where i have chosen music to reflect the season, the love, the light…and to be certain that it was all accessible to the people listening, to be certain it touched them, to be certain it made them think and celebrate, to be certain it spoke to their faith.
i am pretty picky. i don’t like kitschy. i don’t like trite endings. i don’t like certain chord progressions. i don’t like when songs, in an inane effort to be interesting, modulate up in key (the kind of modulation where you expect bubbles to be released into the air). i don’t like certain kinds of lyrics or songs that are preachy. i don’t like songs that imply elitism in any way, including any kind of religious denominational dominance.
i have reviewed a zillion cantatas through the years. (a cantata for a church is a combination of narrative and song, telling a story, embracing a theme, usually anywhere from 30-60 minutes in length. the more traditional cantatas are oftentimes stunningly beautiful but are difficult for volunteer choirs to sing and, frankly, for congregations to sit through.) many more recent cantatas are like buying a record album…many of the songs are really good but there’s always one or two that are throwaways. i have revised every cantata i have ever purchased for a choir. ask any choir director and she/he will tell you that they are revising and improvising on the fly. if they aren’t, well, i just don’t even know what to say about that.
one year, in particular, back in the late 90’s, i was particularly displeased with the cantata samples i had been sent. so i sat down one night and started writing my own. it was the beginning of november and, because we published the actual faxes that went back and forth between me and my producer, you can see that i composed all hours of the day and night and he arranged all hours of the day and night. i had the choir working on drafts that were printed out in the wee hours of the morning, as we continued arranging and re-arranging. the pieces pretty much dropped out of the universe to my hands and i loved conducting this cantata THE LIGHT IS HERE! that year and a few more times through the years since, honing the narration and revisiting the language in an attempt to keep it contemporary. after all, surprisingly, the late 90’s were two decades ago now.
a few nights ago at band practice we were running through the pieces i had selected for this year’s special music schmear (my word instead of ‘cantata’ which is sorely outdated and makes people stay away.) one song, though well-intended, was just plain wrong. so i pulled it out.
the next day i reached for paper and a pencil and wrote a new song for that slot. it’s a solo so at least the choir and the ukulele band don’t have to learn it at this late date (although they are used to having to go-with-the-flow).
in my position as a minister of music, it’s not my job to just play any old thing or direct any old piece, dis-regarding how it speaks to the listener, ignoring whether it is accessible, whether its message is relevant or timely, whether it invites someone in. instead, it’s my job – as i see it – to open listeners’ minds and hearts, to wrap them in music and lyric that resonates, that challenges, that reassures.
someday i will no longer be a minister of music. i will sit on a mountaintop or at the edge of a lake or on a riverbed and i will listen to the sounds of this beautiful earth in celebration of every season. i will not be responsible for making sure others feeeeel it. i will just sit quietly, all the music i could ever need surrounding me.
in the meanwhile, i will be picky. it’s a curse. and i guess a blessing, as they say. picky.
because i have this thing about everest, high-mountain-climbing tales and the arctic, we have a propensity to seek out movies we can view that tell these stories. we stumbled upon an explorer series that followed the adventures of an arctic explorer at the north pole. the photography was stunning. so much white. and then the blues. a turquoise aqua that you just can’t accurately describe. the explorer described the north pole as elusive, as theoretical, since it continually moves and the longitude/latitude is never constant, always fluid. he is there at the exact north pole and he is not. both.
this painting BLUE PRAYER feels like there. sitting at the very top of our mother earth, the deep night sky behind her, she prays. for our planet, all people, tenets of goodness, generosity, peace. she is quietly still and bowed in fervently verbose prayer. she is praying for the elusive, the theoretical. she knows it is all out there and she knows it is not. both.
this could get ugly. it could also get too honest. and maybe too personal. and too detailed.
this is the week. i’ve been dreading it for months. it is the final week to select health insurance for 2020. sometime this week i will wait online for probably hours to take my turn, to take my turn to sign up for a plan on healthcare.gov. i have been awake all night on and off for weeks.
we are artists. both of us. neither of our jobs and none of the other work that we do provide health insurance or benefits. we live in the state of wisconsin and have four options of healthcare companies on healthcare.gov. an insurance agent pointed out that we could opt for short term health insurance (up to 360 days) instead of a regular policy, but those do not cover any pre-existing conditions, do not provide for physicals and most preventative care and are basically catastrophic plans. hmmm. as a grown-up who has been working my entire grown-up life, i would really like to have grown-up insurance.
so. four companies. bronze, silver and gold plans in each. none of these companies provide nationwide coverage and a couple do not even allow for emergency room coverage out of network. two of those companies do not cover our doctors, professionals with whom we have established relationship through years; last year (2018) our coverage did not allow us to go to our own doctors, so we didn’t. we paid for coverage and never visited the doctor’s office at all.
so let’s get more mealy here. there are plenty of arguments about healthcare out there and plenty of naysayers and supporters -each- of the affordable care act. are you even familiar with it? if you would prefer not to know, i would stop reading here. but if you really want to know more, please read on… but keep in mind, i love math and research.
we are 60 and 58 and healthy. these four companies on healthcare.gov presented bronze, silver and gold plans that will cost between $1600 and $2800 per month out of pocket, which is a total of $19,200-$33,600 per year. the $1600 options have deductibles between $14,000-16,000. in many cases, this is what you must satisfy before the company even begins to pay a portion. that would mean you have paid in the neighborhood of $33,200 a year for you and your spouse to be treated on a bronze plan, without figuring in the actual cost of the treatment.
let’s explore an example for example’s sake.
let’s say you make a combined salary of $70,000. let’s assume a meager (and understated) tax bracket of only 20%. $70,000-14,000 = $56,000. now let’s assume you own a house or pay rent and your mortgage plus escrowed real estate taxes are about $1200 combined (also underestimated in most cases). $56,000-14,400 = $41,600. add to that your utilities bills; let’s just estimate that at a lowish $250 per month, which is $3000 year. $41,600-3000 = $38,600. now subtract out for cellphones, home phones, cable, wifi again lowballing at $250 per month, $3000 per year. $38,600-3000 = $35,600. at this point you have not included any of your outstanding student loans or parent plus loans, nor have you subtracted out for home insurance, car insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, any kind of retirement savings or a car payment. nor have you even considered food, clothing or gas for driving to and from work, even if you don’t drive anywhere else. any outstanding rotating credit card debt or medical related costs that you are paying on installment are not subtracted. but you are sitting at $35,600 usuable income.
so. if you take the bronze plan you must assume that you have approximately $16,000 in the bank for the deductible and you must subtract $19,200 (27% of your gross income) from your $35,600 leaving you with $16,400 to cover all the aforementioned items we hadn’t subtracted and maybe perhaps saving a little to cover the percentages of medical expenses you need to cover post-deductible. OR you can take a silver plan, which is in the neighborhood of $2200 per month or $26,400 year (38% of your gross income) leaving you with $9200 to cover loans, home insurance, car insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, car payment, food, clothing, gas, etc. you clearly can’t even consider a gold plan at $2800 per month (the most grown-up plan) because that would cost $33,600 a year, leaving you with a mere $2000 to spend on the rest of life (as listed above). again, that’s assuming a meager 20% income tax rate and not considering state or local income taxes as well.
i’m sure you are beginning to see my point.
and then there are the subsidies. yes. if you earn below 4 times the poverty rate in your state, you are eligible for subsidies for this healthcare insurance. naturally, the more you earn, the less subsidy you are able to receive. that makes sense. it feathers out as the numbers go up. and then? there is a dollar level – one dollar this way or that – that a granted subsidy would drop from hundreds, even more than a thousand or fifteen hundred to – ZERO – . for instance, if you are granted a subsidy because of your level of income and sometime in the year (as you have worked hard to earn more to live a little better) you go over the healthcare cliff by ONE DOLLAR, ONE dollar, you will owe back the entirety of the insurance plan. in the above case, that would be anywhere between the difference of what you paid in and the plan total of $19,200 or up to $33,600.
we are the poster children of this so-called sweet spot in the healthcare crisis of our country. a bit older, working hard, multiple jobs, no job-provided healthcare. not making enough to scoff at spending say $29,000-$33,000 (silver or gold plans) or even $19,200 (bronze) for one year of health insurance, nonetheless be able to actually budget that, but making a bit more than the cliff. no ropes. no guardrails. just a cliff.
the professional insurance agent on the phone said she had “a lot of people your age in that circumstance.” she suggested considering short term health insurance, the kind i mentioned above that precludes pre-existing conditions etc etc. etc. that doesn’t sound like grown-up health care to me. and the deeply disappointed, frustrated cynic in me asks this question – when will breathing be considered a pre-existing condition?
something needs to be done. is the health of the people of this country important or not? it’s a basic question. with an obvious answer. where do we place value?
some things just stop me in my tracks. strolling through school days antiques mall i turned the corner and screeched to a halt. familiarity swirled around me as i stared at this painting – a paint-by-number. my breathing slowed. the scene, the hues…all made me feel like i was embraced. by my sweet momma. i texted a picture to my sister, to check in, to see what she said. she texted back that it, indeed, felt familiar and we tried to remember what happened to this painting of my mom’s. every time i look at this photo on my phone i feel ‘home’. even right now.
this wasn’t the first time this happened. back a couple years ago ON mother’s day we were tooling around an antiques store in woodstock, illinois. we had taken a ‘sunday drive’ (i am turning into my parents!) and looked for antiques stores to visit. as i turned the corner from one booth to the next it was there, staring at me. the paint-by-number-jesus that my mom had painted. i photographed it and called everyone that day. this painting was hung somewhere in our growing-up house that we can’t all agree on. but we know it was there. i turned the painting over looking for my mom’s signature on the back, but didn’t find it. i studied the frame, one that was identical to a frame that my sweet poppo had made on a paint-by-number-nude (yes, it’s ok to laugh aloud here) my mom had painted and hung in their bathroom (which i know i have written about before). i pondered how it might have gotten to woodstock, if indeed this painting and truly-identical-wooden-frame might have been my mom’s paint-by-number-jesus. it wasn’t likely. our growing-up-house was on long island and then my parents moved to florida so illinois was a bit off the mark (unless she had given the painting to my brother a million years ago and he “generously” donated it, which would make me laugh aloud.) we left and went home and a few days later drove all the way back, just to study it a little more, to touch it again. i thought holding it in my hands might tell me if i should buy it and bring it home and, well, i had no idea what to do with it then. i mean, what does one do with a paint-by-number-jesus? i didn’t buy it. i left paint-by-number-jesus in woodstock and i gratefully welcomed my mom’s embrace from afar.
so the other day, in the midst of the stresses of life, we took a stroll in one of our favorite antiques stores, chatting and reminiscing and laughing about all the stuff we used to have growing up and all the stuff that we still have in our cabinets that are now considered antiques.
we tried not to talk about the things that were nagging us, the things we are worried about, the things that seem insurmountable.
frank made sure to bring us the dvd. our favorite of the hallmark christmas movies, a season for miracles was scheduled for tv viewing at a time we were not available. and he knows. frank knows how much we love this movie during this season. we, i have to admit, spend just a little bit of time watching hallmark christmas movies, despite their obvious indulgence to happy-endings-aficionados. a season for miracles is such a story, but there are these lovely lines spoken by patty duke toward the end, that inevitable-anticipated-yet-yearned-for end. she wisely advises one of the stars of the movie, giving him something to consider, “i forgive you. there’s a lot of power in those three words. they can change the world.”
yesterday i sang these lyrics, “all these pieces broken and scattered, in mercy gathered, mended and whole. empty handed but not forsaken. i’ve been set free, i’ve been set free.” (broken vessels – j. houston, j. myrin)
in true cliche, i would, indeed, say we are all broken by pieces we need to forgive, things for which we need forgiveness. we carry these burdens like heavy luggage, dragging them day by day, place to place. nary a moment goes by without our minds summoning up a reason to be dismayed or disgusted with someone, disappointed in ourselves. we are not free.
is it pollyanna-ish to believe that the world would be changed if forgiveness were paramount? is it an irrational, unreachable panacea for all the divisiveness and turmoil? is there just too much purity – too much hallmark – in those words, in that kind of peace-seeking?
if you could, who would share the third seat in a room with you and forgiveness? with whom would you seek forgiveness from? who would you forgive?
is it better to be mended and empty-handed than holding-on-tightly-burdened with sharp, broken pieces that pierce your heart? where is your free?
reverse threading 