Passover began two days ago. Ramadan began two weeks ago. Today we celebrate the holiest day in the Christian calendar.
Powerful prayer storms are being stirred up around the globe: clouds of incense, spiritual readings and focused intent. It is a time of turning inward, in search of grace, and of turning outward, in search of strength.
May the synergy of these holy days create a force for good to foster peace and prosperity around the world.
A burst of warm weather is greening the trees and fast-forwarding the azaleas. But two days ago, you could still take a walk around Lake Audubon in full-bore sun; almost none of the leaf cover that normally closets and cozies that trail was out on Tuesday. Which made for some strangely open vistas.
It was a different kind of experience. I admired the views, but I felt exposed.
It made me think that we grow accustomed to certain sceneries in certain weathers, and not having them unsettles us.
Perhaps it is during these off-kilter times, in these unsettling moments, that we see things clearly.
I’ve never been one for smart appliances. I’d rather not talk to my toaster or send messages to my thermostat. But sometimes, I think I might be reading their minds.
A few weeks ago, while sorting laundry, I was suddenly struck by the age and dedication of our decades-old washing machine. How many thousands of loads has it swished and swirled and spun dry? How many times have I spun that dial, always clockwise, of course. How many more loads did it have left?
I must have been sensing metal fatigue, because a few weeks later. the workhorse died. It wasn’t an overload or turning the dial counter-clockwise (the only two ways I was told you could break it), it was the great machine’s heart that gave out—its motor died.
After a few days of thinking we might fix it, we realized we had to buy a new machine … and so we did. It’s a fairly simple model, as modern machines go, but it’s bigger and shinier and plays little songs when it starts and finishes. It is, in short, a show pony. Let’s just hope it grows into a workhorse.
For 15 years I was a Metro commuter, riding the Orange Line train from Vienna to the District and, later, to the Crystal City area of Arlington. Before that, long before that, I rode the New York City subway whenever I wasn’t walking through the Big Apple.
All of which is to say, I’ve spent way too many hours/days/years (?) of my life riding the rails of some underground transport system or the other. I mastered the art of looking the other way when disturbed people entered my car and began hectoring fellow riders — or of slipping away entirely and hopping on an adjacent car when matters seemed to be spiraling out of control.
I can only imagine yesterday’s horror on the N Train in Brooklyn: the smoke, the shooting, the blood, the panic. Terror has erupted, this time in a subway tunnel. Not to be gloomy, but it’s only a matter of time before it erupts somewhere else again.
Whenever I’m in Lexington I make the pilgrimage and drive to the houses where I grew up. Unlike my own children, who know only this much-loved and much-battered center-hall colonial, I had three places to call home.
My sister and I drove past one of them last month. It’s a house I lived in only two-and-a-half years, the one I returned to from college and my early work years in Chicago. But though my time in the house was short, it left a big impression.
I’m not used to seeing the house from the back, but we drove down a cul-de-sac that gave us this view, that showed us the deck that’s been added, the trees that have grown up in the decades we’ve been gone.
When I look at this photo, I see not just a ranch-style house with a walk-out basement and steep driveway, but the rooms inside … and the people who used to live in them.
When I bought the new piano last year, I told myself I would play whatever I wanted. No agendas. No “practicing.” I only wanted to hear the sound of the instrument, which makes any kind of playing pleasant to the ear, even the rusty renditions of pieces I once played with ease.
But I’ve reached the point in this renaissance (can I call it that? I think so) where something more is required, some sort of foundation for the playing that is to follow.
That something is Hannon. Yes, Hannon, much reviled in my youth but now revealed for what he/it actually is: the means to an end. The stronger and more nimble my fingers, the better I can master the Brahms’ intermezzos and Chopin nocturnes and Bach fugues I’m trying to play.
At this point I begin to understand the purpose of those dreaded assignments of my youth, the scales and the Hannon and the other exercises I avoided whenever possible, teacher notes scribbled on the yellowing pages, usually the words “slow down.” Can it be that I’m now inflicting these exercises on myself?
As a matter of fact, I am. I know that practice won’t make perfect. But it will make better.
Walkers usually keep to themselves. We’re an introverted bunch. But yesterday was different.
“Can you believe this day?” a woman said to me as she came closer, gesturing to the blue sky, her arms raised as if I were a long-lost friend.
I thought for a moment we might know each other, so enthusiastic was her greeting. But no, she was just a fellow traveler, her tongue loosened by the endorphins or the trail or the fact that we were both alive and well on a glorious spring morning.
A male cardinal hops along the front walk, pauses briefly, then flies up to perch on a slender branch of the climbing rose, his crimson plumage shouting out from amidst the green.
It’s not long before he’s back on ground, foraging in the leaf meal, pecking around the forget-me-nots, glinting in the periwinkle.
He shines, this cardinal, his feathers brighter, as I’ve read they are this time of year. He’s all decked out for the ladies, of course. And I’m lucky enough to be around for the show.
(Unfortunately, the cardinal couldn’t be bothered to pose. But I did snap a quick photo from the rear.)
So far, April is proving to be as wet as March was windy. The months are playing their usual roles, in other words.
I feel a certain responsibility on rainy days: unless otherwise occupied, I should use them for cleaning closets or going through old files in the basement.
Which means that after I’ve written, and after I’ve studied, and after I’ve made today’s calls and sent today’s emails, I must get myself to the nether regions of the house … and fight the good fight.
If I’m lucky, I arrive on the Georgetown campus in time to hear the bells of Healy Hall toll the Angelus. It makes an already timeless experience feel even more so.
The bells were tolling last night as I walked to class past the old stone buildings through a cool and soggy evening.
I thought about a passage from Thomas Cahill’s Mysteries of the Middle Ages, which details a 1219 visit between Saint Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt, Palestine and Syria.
Some scholars think that it was then that Francis came up with the idea of tolling the Angelus bells at 6 a.m., noon and 6 p.m. — the Christian version of the Muslim call to prayer. A likely story, and maybe just that, a story. But it was easy to believe it when the bells were ringing.