Category: religious/spiritual

Visiting chapel and Beth’s tree

Mary, Tricia, and I with Beth's tree next to Helen Hills Hills Chapel, Smith College
Mary, Tricia, and I with Beth’s tree next to Helen Hills Hills Chapel, Smith College

After the Alice Parker concert at Sage Hall, Mary, Tricia and I proceeded up the hill near Paradise Pond to Helen Hills Hills Chapel.

Our first priority was to visit the winter-flowering cherry tree planted beside the chapel that is dedicated to the memory of Beth McBeath, another class of ’82 Glee Club member, who died as the result of an airplane fire during October break of our senior year.  Her funeral was held at the chapel and Glee Club sang Bach’s setting of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” through our tears during the service.  Later, I attended the planting of the memorial tree, although the tree in the photo is not the original tree but a replacement for the one we planted that day, a weeping cherry that was unrecoverably damaged in an ice storm years later.

Beth was a light-filled, infectiously joyous person. She served the Ecumenical Christian Church (ECC) at Smith as a deacon and liturgist.  She participated in the Smith choral program in all her years there, serving as an officer as well as lending her alto voice to our choirs.  In the best tradition of the liberal arts, she studied with both breadth and depth, including taking a course in the art department on bookmaking.  She was always friendly and interested in other people.  Like me, as we entered our senior year, she was engaged to be married.

Her loss, along with another classmate who died from lung cancer later in our senior year, taught us not to take time for granted.  Her memorial tree is something that I try to visit every time I get back to campus. I make donations to the Smith Fund in her memory, which puts me in touch with her mom, who still survives.  Mary sent the photo, which we took with her phone, to Beth’s mom.  I hope it made her smile.

After visiting the tree, we went into the chapel.  None of us had seen it since the pews were removed, although we had seen a photo in the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.  Despite that, it still was a bit of a shock to walk through the front doors of the chapel, which was modeled after a traditional New England Congregational style church, and not see the rows of white-painted wooden pews with the red center aisle carpet down which I had walked as a June bride a few weeks after our commencement.  Instead, there were heavy, boxy wooden chairs, arranged in circles over a wood floor.  Given that there are no longer regular worship services in the chapel, a fact that still makes me sad, I do understand the impetus to remove the pews to make the space more versatile for concerts and other events, but I wish that the wood floor had been a traditional New England hardwood and the chairs had been more elegant and in keeping the architecture.

Still it was better than the last time I had visited chapel in May 2012, when I wrote this poem that touches on both the chapel and Beth’s tree. chapel at reunion  (Sorry for the pdf embedding, but I didn’t have time to fiddle with the editing settings to get the indents and spacing to work correctly.)

After walking through the main body of the chapel, we went upstairs to the gallery and visited the organ, which was a memorial gift in honor of Helen Hills Hills’ husband James. I spent so many hours on that bench, practicing, having lessons, accompanying for Choir Alpha, playing for Mass, prepping for my junior recital with Mary and Natalie, preparing for and playing preludes or postludes for ECC services, and additional hours standing beside the bench turning pages for other organists.  It’s moments like this when it feels odd that I haven’t played for years…

We also walked to the basement where the offices are. Almost every room has a different occupant or purpose than when we were there.  I thought about the series of Marc Chagall prints that used to hang in the hallway.  I think the art museum took custody of them so that they are in a better protected environment, but it used to be so cool to have original artworks in an everyday space. The Bodman Lounge is still there, with shelves of spiritual and religious books and couches and comfy chairs.  Mary had given me a bridal shower there and it was the room in which I dressed for my wedding.

I felt reluctant to leave. Even with all the changes, the richness of the memories will always draw me back.

doing and being

Among the things I have done so far this week:
* cooked healthy meals and a not-quite-as-healthy gingerbread bundt cake that smells and tastes amazing
* tackled the backlog of physical mail – the email/social media backlog, not so much
* gone to the doctor’s office for diagnosis of an MCL strain in my knee and started daily exercises to address it
* made a series of phone calls to help arrange for occupational therapy for my mother-in-law in her home, as she continues to recover from her collapsed vertebra
* visited in person and/or by phone/skype with her, with my parents, and with both daughters
* run errands for our house and for my mother-in-law
* facilitated the spirituality group at my church, which is studying Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond
* raked leaves
* wrote comments about fracking
* did laundry
* attended poetry workshop
* talked with B. about his work, the news, his mom, etc.

But, as Richard Rohr and so many other spiritual teachers tell us, we are human be-ings, not human do-ings.

We are loved and valued for who we are. I am fortunate right now that I am able to be active and to do things, but the do-ings are important only because they are expressions of love and care – love for family expressed through caretaking but to an even greater degree by spending time with them, caring for my own body, caring for creation, honoring artistic expression of myself and others, connecting with God and reflecting on spiritual matters in community.  This is expressing who I am. This is what is important.

Mind? What mind?

The top of JC's mind, or at least, the top of JC's head
The top of JC’s mind, or at least, the top of JC’s head

I’m up in the middle of the night again. Theoretically, I could write a post from the backlog of things I have queued in my head or draft folder, but I don’t have enough sustained focus to do so. Instead, what follows will be (part of) the swirl that constitutes the “top” of my mind at the moment.

* I wonder if I will get my pre-election open letter to Governor Cuomo written before the election. It would be about the fracking moratorium, of course, the emerging science, the threat we feel here of being a sacrifice zone, the need to chuck the current outdated and corrupt draft SGEIS, etc.

* Ebola.  Seriously, people in the US, get a grip!  Other than a few dozen people, your chance of exposure to ebola is non-existent.  If you want to do something useful for your health, get a flu shot – and catch up on any other immunization you might need.  Millions of people have died from flu complications around the world over the years.  It is easy to catch and transmit. Flu vaccine works partly by having lots of people immunized, creating herd immunity to help protect people who can’t be immunized and the percentage of people who will develop flu despite being immunized, who will generally have milder cases because they were immunized than if they had not been.

* So much war and violence.  I don’t actually know if I could write a post about this.  People are – and should be – so much better than this by now.

* The confusing muddle of the synod of the family and evangelization, which will be continuing at least for another year.

* The comfort that the beauty of a glorious Northeast foliage season has been in these past few weeks of dashing about on caretaking duty.

* The rest of my planned follow-up to Smith Alumnae Chorus event posts.

* More chapters to My (Feminist) Story.

* Poetry, which is the one thing I have committed to making progress on, despite the swirl going on in my head.  Truthfully, I’m not doing everything I had intended to with it, but I have made all three meetings of the poetry critique group I have joined and where I have found welcome, help, and acceptance, begun the five-week fall semester of Binghamton Poetry Project, and may even attend, though probably not read at, my first ever open mic next week.  I don’t have the time to do the research I need to figure out submissions, I owe a thoughtful email to a poet friend, and I wish that I had time/brain to write and edit more, but I am giving myself a pat on the back for making some progress.

* At some point, I really will get some of my Hawai’i photos – from May! – in shape to post FB albums and to re-post blog entries with some photos added.  I hope to do this before our next visit to the Islands…

* Spiritual matters.  There is so much going on  – experiences with our elder and younger generations, a recent parish mission, studying Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond, missing contact with my spiritual mentor/companion and other friends with whom I can share soul-conversation.

* An update to my empty nest post.  Something along the lines of when the sandwich generation goes open-face…

Maybe I should attempt some more sleep before dawn.  Or attack the mounds of mail that arrived this week…  At least I attended vigil Mass yesterday so I don’t need to drive about and try to be attentive for church this morning.  And B. promised to make us a nice Sunday breakfast this morning.

54

Today is my 54th birthday. Not usually considered a milestone birthday, but it is a poignant one for me. Fifty-four is the perpetual age of my friend Angie.

Angie called us “October babes.”  She was born in 1950 and I in 1960.  It didn’t feel like we were ten years apart in age because we had children in the same grades in school, although – bonus for me – she also had a child who was two years ahead of my elder daughter in school, which meant that I had a preview of coming attractions.

We were different in a lot of ways. I’m 5′ 1.5″ and Angie told people she was 5′ 12″ because she thought it sounded less daunting than saying she was six feet.  Angie was raised in New York City and thought of our mutual home now as small.  I was raised in a New England town of 200, so our current hometown of 20,000 was as large as the city I traveled twenty miles each way to attend high school.  She was a trained artist and skilled in decorating and entertaining, with a great and quirky personal style, which included rocking her signature look – overalls. (Trust me – it was amazing.) I am not known for any of those things.  She had a great talent for storytelling, complete with different voices and accents for the characters.  I am better with the written word than the spoken word.  She had a vast array of friends in various circles of the community and was well-known, while I had far fewer friends and was more comfortable working behind the scenes.

We were, however, both personally dedicated to volunteering, and met when I joined a site-based decision-making team at our district middle school.  Angie had already been serving as one of three parent representatives and we quickly became friends.  She helped me navigate the surprisingly intricate educational world and introduced me to a lot of new people and ideas.

Even though she had many friends, she was near and dear to all of them.  She was a wonderful listener and a wise advisor. She was unfailingly kind and generous.  The kind of person everyone hopes to have in their life.

Because her husband was a doctor, she had many friends in the medical community, but had a heightened awareness of the possible health calamities that happen to people of various ages.  She talked about being worried about turning 50, because she had known so many people who succumbed to medical problems in that decade.  When she turned 49, I gave her a box with a penny from every year of her life, which meant that I gave it to her with fifty pennies in it, and the promise to give her a new penny each year on her birthday. I thought already having fifty pennies in the box might help ease her into her next birthday.

Within weeks of her 50th birthday, a nagging cough turned into a diagnosis of stage 3 lung cancer.

It was a shock.  Angie had never smoked, but through some combination of factors – growing up in a congested city when vehicles still used leaded gasoline? lung damage from infections? genetic vulnerability? secondhand smoke, as she was growing up before anyone had even thought of smoke-free rooms? – here she was with a frightening diagnosis.

Treatment was aggressive and achieved a remission. There was a big 50+1 birthday party, which served as a charity fundraiser.  But, as we all feared, there were metastases that developed and more treatment with some short breaks but then the next problem and the next round of radiation or chemo until finally around the time Angie turned 54, there was nothing else that could be done.

After the new year started, I began searching for a 2004 penny for her box.  We knew she would not live to see her 55th birthday and I hoped to get the penny to her while she was still able to realize it, but even the coin shops did not have them available so early in the year. Angie died in March.

When I found the penny later in the spring, I sent it to her husband to complete Angie’s box.

I still miss Angie and honor her memory. One of the ways I do that is by donating to the fund set up in her memory which raises money for scholarships and for the LUNGevity Foundation, which supports both lung cancer research and patients and their families.

Another way is to spread as much love as possible and to dedicate as much time as possible to caring about and serving others.

And for this year, Angie and I will both be 54.

The magnetic force of hope – Global Sisters Report

The magnetic force of hope – Global Sisters Report.

I had to re-blog this post from the Nuns on the Bus Tour on Sister Simone Campbell’s acceptance of the Pacem in Terris Award. She is such a powerful advocate for peace and the common good.

good news from K

I wrote and posted this poem in February and re-posted it recently when it was accepted for publication.  Today, I have the best possible follow-up. I saw K this morning and she shared that her recent CT scan revealed that her tumor has not just shrunk, but disappeared. This winter and spring, she had been treated aggressively with simultaneous chemotherapy and radiation, until she nearly died from side effects and the treatment had to be halted.  She has been in a rest/recovery phase over the summer, but it was a huge and wonderful surprise that the tumor was gone. Hallelujah!

One-Liner Wednesday: Richard Rohr quote

“Soulful people, invariably humble and honest about themselves, are also risk takers: they both know the rules and how to break them properly.”
– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond (page 20)

Join in Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays:  http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/one-liner-wednesday-self-consciousness/

One-Liner Wednesday: Hildegard of Bingen

“The earth which sustains humanity must not be injured, it must not be destroyed.”
~~~ Hildegard of Bingen

I chose this quote for today because this is the feast day of Saint Hildegard of Bingen and because of the upcoming People’s Climate March in New York City on Sunday.

Join in with Linda’s One Liner Wednesday:  http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/09/17/one-liner-wednesday-sleeping-in/

 

Sunday New Normal

For the second week in a row, I met my parents at church for 8:30 Mass. It’s great to have them back out and about after working through all the health stuff of the summer.  I’m hoping that I will be able to meet them for church most weeks through the fall, until the cold and snow make it too difficult for them to get out that early in the morning.

Today was the first time this season that Genesis Choir sang. This was the choir with which my daughter sang during her last two years at home.  Last June, I wrote about the impending end of her singing and ringing handbells at church near home; today was the first time I heard the choir without her in the front row.

The sound is different. The vast majority of the choir is 30+ years older than my daughter and her younger voice helped to smooth out some of the vibrato of the older soprano voices.  Besides her voice, I know they miss her energy, caring, and helpfulness.

For prelude, the choir sang “Servant Song” by Richard Gillard. This hymn is inextricably tied in my mind to the last weekend my daughters and I particiated in liturgies at the parish we lost in 2005.  That June Saturday, we provided music for the diocesan ordination at the cathedral in Syracuse. My older daughter cantored, my younger daughter rang handbells, and I helped with the conducting duties.  On Sunday, the choirs combined to sing for the first Mass of one of the newly ordained priests, who was from our parish.  “Servant Song” was one of the requested pieces that weekend and holds a lot of personal meaning for me.

The circumstances that led to our leaving our parish home were very painful, so difficult that it still hurts nine years later. For the first several years in our new parish, I would cry every time I heard “Servant Song.”  I couldn’t sing it at all. Eventually, I got to the point where I could make it through singing it part way, although the line, “I will weep when you are weeping” would always make me choke up.  In the last couple of years, I’ve actually been able to get through the whole hymn dry-eyed.

This morning, with an empty seat in the front row of sopranos where my daughter used to sit, I admit that I did brush away a few tears.

Poem – September 11, 2002

In commemoration, I am sharing a poem I wrote about the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

September  11, 2002
~~~ by  Joanne Corey

Last year
sky
clear
blue.
Today
wind
swirling.
Bells
ringing.
Names….
Names…..
Names…..
New York
Arlington
Shanksville.
Their dust
spiraling
heaven-ward.
Soul-wind.