The Song of Simeon and Visions of Johanna

When Simeon was born the idea of naming him after a wizened old man didn't seem so strange. He frowned, had a mole with a black hair squarely in the center of his head, and a double chin. He looked world worn and wise. We had just experience a mesmeriznic Christmas and this grand, post Christmas Saint was on our mind. Moreover, I truly have always loved the story of Simeon and Hannah who in the context of a Lukan account where no one seems to understand nothing--they get it! Moreover, I was reading the works of T.S. Eliot and loved his poem "Song of Simeon." But, to look at him now. Well, it just seems absurd. He is the most joyful, boyish, squirrel-ly little squirt. It is hard to imagine him growing into a name with such gravitas. But, there are times when I realize that there is more to Sim than meets the eye and that he has this deep, inner life that is hidden from me. I remember how much thoughts of God, Hell, Jesus, and Eternity animated my mind starting as a small child and I am intriqued to know what he thinks.  

Johanna was named in part after my Father, in part after the Apostle, in part after the Dylan song Visions of Johanna, and in part after Hannah in the Bible. (Doug always says she was named after Hannah Arendt as well, but I don't remember.) She might have been named Davita if she looked more serious or had darker hair. But, from the start she was blonde, blue eyed and fair and seemed to favor her parents Scandinavian side.  In the Dylan song, Johanna haunts the singer.  She is his Beatrice.  

I can imagine Jo in such a role.  I'm in love!  But, of course she is too young to be some poet's muse and much too young to finish up Arendt's final section of Life of the Mind, and it also might take a few more years before she can tell a story as well as her Grandpa John or craft a stunning prologue about the Word made flesh.  Although she can tell a good story and can wax eloquent about the peaceable kingdom--a topic that John could have perhaps expounded on a bit more in the book of Revelation.  

What a lot of hope is embedded in these names.   What if Simeon grows up to be an Industrialist and Johanna a fashion model?  What will we do?  What does it mean that we have put our hopes into these forms so frail but who possess the dynamo of their own wills and intellects.   I am not sure?  

In another sense, I feel ill equipped to pose this question.  We did give the names filling them with meaning and significance and a bit of an unspoken prayer.  But, it isn't the case that we are pushing them in any particular direction.  We are not placing babies in Sim's arms to see if he can make predictions or having Johanna read Aristotle.  In fact, we are pretty low key in general.  (See post below on parenting philosophy)  But, I hope that they will at least grow to love their names and to treasure the meanings that they have.  That they will know that the were given in love and that the names at least resonate with them--speak of things that they value--that they are proud of them.  

 T.S. Eliot

1888-1965
   
      A Song for Simeon 
      Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and
      The winter sun creeps by the snow hills;
      The stubborn season has made stand.
      My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
      Like a feather on the back of my hand.
      Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
      Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land.
         Grant us thy peace.
      I have walked many years in this city,
      Kept faith and fast, provided for the poor,
      Have given and taken honour and ease.
      There never went any rejected from my door.
      Who shall remember my house, where shall live my children's children
      When the time of sorrow is come?
      They will take to the goat's path, and the fox's home,
      Fleeing from the foreign faces and the foreign swords.
         Before the time of cords and scourges and lamentation
      Grant us thy peace.
      Before the stations of the mountain of desolation,
      Before the certain hour of maternal sorrow,
      Now at this birth season of decease,
      Let the Infant, the still unspeaking and unspoken Word,
      Grant Israel's consolation
        To one who has eighty years and no tomorrow.
         According to thy word.
      They shall praise Thee and suffer in every generation
      With glory and derision,
      Light upon light, mounting the saints' stair.
      Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought and prayer,
      Not for me the ultimate vision.
      Grant me thy peace.
      (And a sword shall pierce thy heart,
      Thine also).
      I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
      I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.
      Let thy servant depart,
      Having seen thy salvation.

Take my moments and my days let them flow in endless praise

I like to sing.  Every night I sing somewhere between 3-9 songs to Jo and Sim as I put them to bed.  Some kid's songs, a couple of folk favorites, but mostly I sing them hymns. To close our singing time I always sing a song Doug's mom made up and the Doxology.  We started to sing the Doxology before we joined a Russian Mennonite congregation that joyfully refers to the song as the Mennonite National Anthem.  The particular hymns that we sing tend to go through phases.  Currently, "They will Know we are Christians" is quite popular.  I especially like the line about "guarding each man's dignity and saving each man's pride."  It has a nice Trade Union sound to it and also fits my Father's ethic of never, ever embarrassing someone or making them covet you.  

Others that are on the top ten right now are "Forever Young" and "Simple Gifts.  "Forever Young" is a pretty perfect blessing for a kid.  I especially like the line "May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true, may you always know the truth and the light surrounding you, may always be courageous, be upright and be strong and may you stay forever young .. "  I also have been singing "Take My Life"   

I am not a good singer or even average.   Whenever I get to the line "take my voice and let me sing always only for my King."  I chuckle to myself.  My kids and God might be the only ones that want to hear me sing.  A select group.  However, singing is pretty hard to detach from being human and I feel like it important to sally forth with my nasally out of tune jubilations despite the ways in which my voice can falter and fail.  

It was during the stressful time that surrounded my comps that I found myself singing "Take My Life" to the kids.  It might have been at that time that the lines about intellect and will were especially resonate to me as I was pondering which had primacy.  But, I also think it was part of a clambering towards wholeness and a deep longing to feel like my days were part of a great symphony of praise.  Marilyn Robinson's Gilead helped me to see the degree to which there is praise embedded  in our very being in this world--a world that God had set apart by his presence.  

I recently has a friend refer me to a G.K. Chesterton quotation : "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."  I have fallen in love with it.  I see the merits of excellence, but it has started to fail for me as a way of praising God.  I would like to return to a place when human excellence can once again feel doxological to me.   I realize that much of the dismissal of praise songs that occurred when I was at Calvin came from a strong commitment to the belief that God should only receive our best.  I can think of better reasons for not liking praise songs.  But, I think this is a particularly unhelpful one.  We praise a God who is high and holy and beyond us and we always fall utterly short in this.  Excellence as a measure of a life of endless praise fails me because I seek excellence for a whole host of other reasons as well--typically the real praise in the equation is the praise I hope to gain from others.  . 

During my time at Calvin I received lots of praise from my Professors.  I had never even been the biggest academic star in the very small Buckley, MI constellation.  Suddenly some of the smartest people I had ever met were giving me outrageous praise.  It all seemed to fit the idea of calling-- the fact that people were telling me how talented I was in something, the wonderful atmosphere of a Christian academic community. . .  It was easy for me to see how my papers, and test, and projects might be part of a larger project of praise and thanksgiving and joyful being.  It is tougher now.  Currently, I am trying to figure out what it might mean to let my moments and my days flow in endless praise and if that means an attitude change or something more drastic.

My singing is perhaps the least excellent thing that I do.  But, I have always sensed a blessing in singing words of resignation, praise, release, faith, boldness, and lament.  It may be that we are as likely to find a life that is doxological doing the things that we fail and falter at as those where we find our gifts. I have known this a long time.  But, I seem to need to be reminded hourly of it.  

Take my life and let it flow in endless praise...

T

The Sea, the Sea

Johanna lost a tooth yesterday. This is her fourth. She has managed to lose her teeth all over North America. She lost one tooth in Northern Michigan, one along the shores of the Atlantic, another at home in Toronto and last night she almost left her tooth on the beach. From sea to shining sea, the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Ontario to the shores of the mighty gitchi-gumme.

We travel alot.

This summer alone we have been in L.A., Boston, and New York. We have gone to Rhode Island twice. This despite the fact that we officially had a staycation this year and did all kinds of wonderful stuff in the greater Toronto Area (including the Toronto International Film Festival) not to mention a wonderful trip up to Algonquin Park.

I am a bit flabbergasted and feeling a wee bit profligate. There have been a lot of resources burned and I have failed to appreciate it fully while it was occurring.

Parenting: Apologia Pro Vita Sua

I tend to walk accidentally into some minefields. I have been attempting to avoid the parenting minefield. It would be a satisfying feeling to meet with parents that hold to the same parenting philosophy as I do. I know that a lot of people have such communities or such imagined communities, but I feel startlingly alone. The problem in short is that I do not have a philosophy. This offends people. I remember a college boyfriend once told me, "Hey, I would be fine if you didn't shave your legs out of principles. . . or I would be fine if you shaved everyday out of vanity. . . but this shaving sometimes and not shaving other times is gross." Destroyed on the shoals of intentionality. Intentionality is hard for me. I once made a decision for Jesus. No problem. I made a decision to marry Doug. That was easy. But, in general no other decisions have ever been that easy. I am still not sure about what I would like to do when I grow up. I still become troubled about the question of denominational identity. And, then, there is the daily grind of decisions that really, truly wear at me.


What first attracted me to the work of the Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas was not his startling vision of the alternative Christian polis, instead it was his portrayal of the virtuous person for whom ethic is not the crisis of decision but an art-- a way of being that is seemingly seamless. At my best I hope that my parenting embodies my love and faithfulness and patience and that decisions are made correctly (a lot of the time) without recourse to a philosophy. At the worst, I fear that I worry neither toiling or spinning.

But, how to explain this to people who have very decided philosophies and who make me feel at times like a falterer and a fraud? Is there grace in doing nothing? I was never able to appease the boyfriend who believed that I needed to have a rationale for only shaving my legs some of the time.

I am a person of strong convictions and yet surprisingly meager intention. As, I often tell those dear to me. . . I am a plodder and not a plotter.

I am blogging in the flicker of candlelight. Strange neon pink shadows are splashed across the face of the table.  I hover over this light and brood.   There are big problems and then there are negligible ones.  But, my inability on an almost daily basis to write and think and edit and research is starting to get me flummoxed.  It may be time to start treating my writer's block with tried and true remedies.  Will power seems to be a faltering affair.  Perhaps there is a twelve step program for dissertation writing.  I need to admit by powerlessness, that I must rely on an higher power and take a inner inventory.  Enough, my inner inventory would begin with how self absorbed I am... and the degree to which this blog declares this...

I rarely find myself awake at 2:30.  I think that it might be a simple matter of too much coffee and a full moon.  I always kind of enjoy these lucid intervals in the middle of the night.  I had quite a few of them when I was pregnant with Simeon.  That was a heady time.  I was studying for the GRE, trying to secure one more recommendation, and finish my course work, and apply to Graduate School.  A crazy time.  But, I have good memories of staying up late reading Barth and Foucault.  

I have jumped through a massive amount of hoops during the last six years.  It is hard to work so hard and still feel like things aren't quite going to work out.  That perhaps the die was already cast and that you are just fruitlessly kicking against the pricks.  I have always found it particularly hard to work hard for something and simultaneously leave the fruition and the outcome to God.  It may be the case that an academic career is simply not going to work out.   I still remember my pre-teen frustration that every time I prayed in a Basketball game, "God, please let me hit this free throw--just once,"  I never did.  It was difficult to realize that what I want and what God wants are not the same thing.  And, in the scheme of things my wanting a personally rewarding and enjoyable career might stack about as high as nailing a free throw.  I know... this is not precisely ad majorem dei gloriam or Calvinist vocation talk.  I tend to think that our general vocation the love and hope and faith stuff is probably enough for most of us. Most of us don't necessarily require a special call from God. 

 Yet, I have to admit to having experienced one. Many of you that are closest to me know that when I was a very young girl I sense a distinct call to the ministry.  I never have precisely rejected this call.  Perhaps, I am waiting to hear it in a more visceral way or a more concrete way or through the ministry of my church.  Who knows?  I really don't.  Quite honestly.  Truth be told, sometimes I think that the academia is not going to work because it never was suppose to work.  I know. I know. I know. There are many things I feel when I hear myself saying this-- excuses, excuses; or fears; or a case of the grapes are sour anyways; or when will that girl shake her evangelicalism?, or, or?  Well. I don't know.  I really don't know.   And, that is all she wrote.