Serenity

 

After having chosen Serenity as my word for the year, I asked my friend Wayne to make a piece of stained glass for me.  He finished it yesterday, as anyone who's been to my FB page knows (!).  I'm so looking forward to hanging it in a window ~ and waiting for the sun to shine in Cleveland, sometime in 2015 or so.

 

Wayne's timing was excellent.  Last evening turned into a perfect storm of grief, but I awoke this morning reminded that serenity hardly matters if we cannot apply it to the difficult times. 

 

Living to an old age is not a goal of mine.  But should it happen in spite of me, I would like it if people could say, "She was serene in the face of it all." 

 

I suppose that makes this a word for the next couple of decades. Hardly something that one can accomplish in a year.

Magis

It's an Ignatian word, magis.  Literally, it means "more." 

 

Ignatius was often one to speak in terms of heroics, of doing great things for God.  Last fall I spent a day at a retreat, a tenth-anniversary event sponsored by the Ignatian Spirituality Institute, my training ground for spiritual direction.  The questions upon which we were invited to focus were. "What have you done for Christ?  What are you doing for Christ?  What will you do for Christ?"  Magis questions.

 

Not very Reformed Protestant questions, in the purest sense of the latter.  Whatever.  During my miserable three terms of Greek, I used to write "AMDG" (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam - from when the word magis comes) ~ "For the greater glory of God"  ~ at the top of each page in my notebook as at  way of forcing myself through class after class of torment and confusion.  Maybe it worked.  (If nothing else, Greek is now but a faint memory.)

 

A few months ago, my spiritual director mentioned, in an offhand kind of way, that magis doesn't just mean "more" in the sense of numbers, or amounts, or other quantifiable possibilities.  It means "more" in the sense of more style, more elan, more flair, more flouish.    Quality, not quantity.

 

That's how the word "style" made it onto my list of words to accompany "serenity."  It's not that I have an abiding passion for Vogue magazine; I don't. 

 

But it seems to me, approaching sixty, that magis defined as "flair and flourish," is a laudable approach to life.  In concrete terms, I am unlikely to hike up to a mountaintop with much in the way of energy or finesse these days.  (And in another decade, even less!)  But a bottle of wine and an excellent cheese at the top ~ that would be a way of reaching the summit in style.

 

This affinity for magis probably explains my preference for hIGH church over low, and for the Cleveland Orchestra over a grubby rock band in a bar.  (Not that I didn't love Led Zeppelin being honored at the Kennedy Center last month ~ rock with style!)

 

I wonder how it might be applied to nursing home visits, where the battered linoleum floors and limp curtain room dividers cry out for magis.

 

Or to meetings in which Robert's Rules and the Presbyterian Book of Order prevail.

 

Or to a life in which, some days, every moment is still a struggle against which Greek pales by comparison.

 

Worth pondering, I think.

 

And for the record, I've been writing a sermon, and so I'm sitting in the living room in my pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt, contemplating the need to wash my hair.  I have a way to go before style becomes second nature.

 

 

 

60 and Serene ~ Perhaps

I can't claim ever to have attached much significance to milestone birthdays, but I'm most definitely aware of the one bearing down upon me this summer.  (Although I think that what's most unnerving to me is that the next big one will be seventy!)

 

I've chosen my word for this year, which is as difficult to live into as I had imagined it might be.  I've also been playing around with a few alliterative companions, words which might light the pathway through the next couple of decades.

 

I harbor no illusions about certainty or control.  The phone could ring at any moment.  Five years ago I was a seminary student, a little startled by the dramatic changes in life that I'd undertaken, but relaxed and confident about the future.  Why ever not?

 

In those five years, I've earned an M.Div, and a certificate in spiritual direction, been ordained to ministry and begun to pastor a church, developed a small spiritual direction practice, led some retreats and participated in some other events and presentations, seen my three children graduate from college, lost one of them to suicide, and dealt with breast cancer.

 

When I list it all, I'm somewhat surprised.  To put it mildly. 

 

No wonder serenity seems a worthwhile objective.

 

I feel just a tad silly, writing down what I perceive to be the challenges that lie ahead for the next couple of decades.  As I said, the phone could ring at any moment.  But, pretending that it won't, here's what occurs to me:

 

Family: It will change, and it will never be what I dreamed of for 25 years, as one of the main players is gone.  But the rest of us are still here.  My husband will retire eventually, and then what?  Will my other children marry?  Have families? Continue in the work they've chosen, or make other decisions entirely?  Where will they live?  What about us; will we stay or go?  How will my father's post-80 life proceed?  Will my brother retain his health and energy?

 

Work: People raise possibilities with me but, on the whole, my major internal task these days is to hunker down, settle in, and do what I do.  Those seminary years were directed toward the future,  filled with uncertainty, and then  completely shattered by Josh's death, and by the strenuous effort required each moment to survive into the next one ~ but the future is here, and I did survive, and now I have to live what lies right before me.  This stage requires a completely different mindset. 

 

Health: My breast cancer experience, and a bit of a scare some months later, made their point.  Oblivion is no longer an option.  (Or is it, perhaps? ~ said hopefully.)  I'm not thinking so much of health issues themselves, but of how to cope with them.  I came across some reading recently about childhood trauma and its residual effect on adult challenges, which went a long way toward explaining the intensity of the physical pain I experienced last winter, as well as the bewilderment (oh, let's just call it by its name: denial) of the medical professionals involved.  I'd prefer no repeats.

 

I get it. Life is difficult, and sad, and filled with loss.  And beautiful as well.  Beautiful and terrible.  And time is short.  So, some words:

selectivity   

sensational  

strength  

spacious    

savor        

sixty                                     

solitude  

stretch   

sacred 

 sea

substance

style

 

The final word comes from Mr. Carson, who said a couple of weeks ago, "To misquote Dr. Johnson: If you're tired of style, then you're tired of life."

I was very much disinterested in style ~ in that sense ~  after Josh died.  But now, it's possible that I feel a bit of a resurgence.  A bit of an inclination toward magis.

We'll see.



 

N.B.

 

 

Re that sermon yesterday:

 

I forgot all about serenity!  (My word for the year.)

 

So I'm posting a serenity picture.

 

Cedar Key FL, New Year's Eve 2010

Serenity 2013

My choice of a word for 2013 began with three observations I made during Advent.

 

The first was that many of my friends were busy, rushing from store to meeting to Christmas tree lot to extra worship services to children's pageant rehearsals to end-of-year reports to extra choir practices to work deadlines to wrapping gifts to hospital visits to  . . . insert your own.

 

The second was that I wasn't.  My church committees and council cancelled all meetings for December.  Everyone who was already healthy and injury-free stayed that way.  Some of our choir members sang a cantata with another church, but it was they and not I who had to rehearse.  

 

The third was that the Newtown school shootings sucked the wind right out of me.  I remain plagued by clear, detailed visions of what happened in that building and continues to happen in that community.  It's a bit of PTSD, I know; once you have held your own child's broken body in your arms, those of other children you do not know and will never see leave their own imprint.  It becomes a sort of neighbor who inhabits your head and never leaves, and was already rattling its chains as friends gleefully prepared for the holiday return of children living in distance places.  I don't know how I could possibly have managed additional, rather than less, work in December.

 

"All will be well, and all manner of things shall be well, " said Julian.

 

I rather doubt it.  But she did say it in the midst of the ravages of the plague.  So I do consider her words on a fairly frequent basis.

 

I began to wander down a "less is more" pathway of thought.  I did not imagine that all would be well, but I had no trouble seeing that I could be more attentive to others and to what did, in fact, call for my time and attention, when there were fewer of them and less of it.  I wondered whether I might be resolute in a "less is more" approach to life.

 

And so I decided that my word for the year would be "less."  But when I looked it up in the thesaurus, I found that the synonyms listed are almost entirely negative, and do not reflect what I intend at all.  I was not, for instance, seeking to promote  "deficiency" in my life. 

 

The same sort of results accompanied the word 'small."

 

And then, gradually, the word "serenity" emerged.  Closer to what I had in mind.  After all, I cannot always do less, and there are many things which by definition cannot be accomplished in small ways.  But: more or less, huge or tiny, beautiful or terrible, they might all be accepted with serenity.

 

It's only the second day of the year, and I'm already facing two situations that pose major challenges to any likelihood of serenity.  But I am getting older, and these kinds of things are going to happen regardless of my personal preferences, and I am sick and tired of the word "anxiety."

 

364 days remain to practice serenity.  We'll see how it goes.

Serene New Year's Neighborhood Walk

 

Even on the most bleak and dreary of days, color and texture proclaim their distinctive identities.

 

A hundred-year-old brick wall, its hues and striated textures dimmed and stained by the decades.  A newly painted fascia, gleaming free of flakes and cracks.  And H2O in the form of snow and ice and liquid drips.

 

My word for this year?  Serenity.  More on that tomorrow.