Untitled

Wherein a profound tragedy brings me out of blogging re retirement ( warning: explicit lyrics, not necessarily appropriate for all audiences. In other words lock up your children and south'n belles before reading this.)

Fuck Christmas.

Now I know it doesn't sound good - especially the rude juxtaposition of the birth of our Lord up against what many consider one of the top three un-jesus-y words in the english language. But bear with me if you will, for the sake of raw honesty.  When I plumb the depths of this rotten life as rotten as it seems when your babies are somewhere across the country with someone with whom you no longer have congress because of how horrible he is...when I let out my lead weight to see just how abysmal the death of my sister's husband must be for her...when I think of my dear friend Jenni's sister Kelly and my brother Ben taken from us on the same day, though years apart...fuck sounds not only accurate but pretty cussin appropriate. Sometimes it just seems like christmastime is out to fuck you over and in response it seems only appropriate to give it right back.

This year I was fully prepared to boycott Christmas in a blur of wine and depressing streaming Netflix.

I flew my kids out to California to spend the lion's share of Christmas break with their father.  I rented a car and went to my girlfriend's house and settled in for what promised to be an uneventful long winter's nap.

A few days earlier I had attended a workshop on Surviving the Holidays amidst separation and divorce. One of the suggested methods for dressing up the dreary holiday season was getting outside of yourself and helping others. I put that in my back pocket and thought "yeah why not? I could go to a soup kitchen or something and help that way..." I never dreamed my service would be called upon in the manner in which it was about to be.

Just over a day after I arrived in California, I received a phone call from my little sister. I jocundly asked her "what up yo" and received in response unintelligible mumbles swathed in sobs, that upon reflection I was eventually able to interpret as the report that her husband was dead.

Shock. Disbelief. Some sort of attempt to unhear what I had just heard. Then the tidal wave of sadness for her washed over me and, milliseconds or years later-I don't know-as it receded the adrenaline left by the shock steeled my mind into action. My body followed. I instructed my sister to do two very important things: call my sister(this story may get confusing for some
Of you as there are six sisters)  in Florida and get close to Jesus.

I spent the next two hours contacting the other six of our living siblings...we were 9 but for over 20 years have only been 8 since the death of my youngest brother just on the other side of christmas
In 1989...so 8 minus the two of us most recently on the phone with eachother makes 6. I did the math just as much as a fact check for myself as an attempt to
Clear up any confusion on
Your end.

I spoke with them all, let them in on the tragic news and discussed the impossible sadness of it all to varying extents with each. In the middle of all that I managed to call my ex and ask him to bring the kids home to me as I had to fly immediately back to be with the lately widowed Abigail. He agreed. Southwest worked to change my flight amidst a bit of technical difficultly- but you really musnt complain about the only airline that charges you neither bag fees nor change fees.

Deep beneath the din of busyness and roar of grief tilting at lunacy I heard a cello, low and sweet, with a subtle vibrato. And it hummed to me of peace. And I felt the peace pass through me and over me and buoy me over the noise. And the voice of God seemed to say "this is the service I require of you: to mourn with those who mourn and to take care of the widows and fatherless." And there for that moment, without a second thought about my much needed (in my own estimation) rest and relaxation I was filled with joy to be in the unique position that I was : sans bebes so that I could
Entirely focus on being the support that Abby needed.

It may be too soon for her to hear this, and it may even be gauche for me to write it so soon, but, He has already given me in an instant beauty for ashes and joy in the midst of mourning. It is a paradox which, were I able to, I would better explain. But in order to understand you have to have been there in the pitch black of midnight, out on a limb, completely lost, in the wilderness of understanding and yet knowing like you never have before, and you swear you never will again, the brightly brilliant blinding
Light of truth. It is there that you find the choice of humanity from the very first has been to inextricably link pain and comfort, sadness and joy. The road we have individually and corporately chosen to travel has intertwined these in our desperate self attempt to have it all...to make ourselves whole...to satisfy our longing curiosity.  That is the road He so Graciously and Gracefully met us on and walks along with us and as we walk He does what we never could have, in fact we never even imagined that it was this wholeness, oneness that we really wanted all along. It is an unending and ever-unfolding mystery full of delight and wonder-oh that I had the words to tell.

If you are still enough you may hear it as I tell it. The symphony He built around the discord of a violent death and the potential cacophony of so many loose canons beset upon every shore of the island of aloneness on which Abby, our heroine, stood-and from where I observed  it appeared she felt utterly alone.

Wendy drove 6 hours without hesitation. I arrived 24 hours later in tandem with Jen and her youngest baby. Thomas and Mai flew quite literally across the world, pregnant with toddlers in tow (and SARS too, but we will blame that on the travelers from parts unknown arriving at the adjacent gate.) Wendy-b flew in as much needed succor on a flight that had not existed prior to the need for her in Tampa. Christa and Dave accompanied by dad whose lymphoma had just returned. And John and two of his children.

There were minor disagreements, more like personalities getting the best of us due to physical and emotional exhaustion. They blew over like a summer rain replaced moments later by a warm breeze with sunshine in its wings.

It began with a loud crash and silence broken by a note. A long single plaintive wail and soon it was joined by tens hundreds thousands? Who can know? But like a scene out of the Silmarillion, the song  grew and changed and became more beautiful. Flowers and letters and baskets and caskets. Poems and words and thoughts unspoken. Hugs and kisses and kindness expressed by people who would rather be mean in their everyday lives. Songs of men and women and their mournful sobs as well, mixed with prayers and questions without any answers.  Can you hear it, can you see it? It was nothing short of a miracle.

And there I was in the Middle of it. Miriam to Abby's Moses. I held her up and hugged her and laughed and cried with her. And I prayed for her. I asked the God who with a word created light out of nothing to give Abby the tangible, emotional, physical expression of His love she so desired. I asked
him to put in her relentless faith to pursue Him in the face of despair and as Brennan manning so eloquently put it "ruthless trust" to follow Him into the dark, knowing that there is yet light in this world and the peace that passes understanding to rest in the truth that even if she can't He will. He does. He has.

I find myself now suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. My attachment to this world via the body and its wanton desires, the needs I think I have and those carnal things which we crave drag me down like so much gravity pulling me toward a minefield of consequence and its crapshoot of results.  Simultaneously the "unbearable lightness" of eternity calls me and draws me in the gentlest of ways along a gossamer thread toward the singularity of endlessly heavy gravity and infinitely invisible unknowingness that my mortality is not ready to grasp.

RocketCIty Brings Me Out of Blogging Retirement

And what a retirement it was. I resolved for New Year's not to blog about anything that wasn't worth blogging about. At first it was a resolution not to blog at all, but then I put in an "unless it is worth writing about" clause, you know, just in case. To be honest, I all but gave up this blog only a few short weeks after I started it, and it is surely a lot of garbaaaahhge.


January came and almost went. Then my nephew sent me a link to his demo album. I clicked on the link and downloaded RocketCity's debut Bedroom Demos, saved it to iTunes and planned to sample a few seconds of each track. I listened straight through to the end, burning a red quinoa dish along the way (never fear I salvaged what wasn't actually stuck to the pot, added some broth and spices and the kids ate it up none the wiser).

I must find the words to tell you how much I love this album. The words that come to mind are so overused that I cringe at their appearance here. Bedroom Demos is hauntingly, stunningly, heart-wrenchingly wrought of a (very) young man's life, love and talent. The lyrics are sweet, clever, wise beyond their years, yet joyously youthful, speaking of regret but always pointing to hope. Yes, Arthur, paradox. Armed with only his understated, unassuming, lovely (and most importantly) in tune voice, a Stratocaster, some reverb and a wah-wah pedal (you'll have to excuse me if I didn't get any of these items correct...I'm painting an image here, not necessarily striving for factual accuracy) this album was produced quite literally in his bedroom. The melancholie ridden lyrics are only matched by the bittersweet melodies, the two synergisticly evoking something more than any of the meager tools would belie.

I am again brought to tears as I listen to the album in the background as I write. I am sandwiched between emotions and pulled forward and back by the reasons for them. I knew this baby when he was born, the first-born of my older sister. As an infant he would mistake my voice for his mother's and be tricked into accepting me babysitting him for a while. He reminds me in that way of my own sons, especially my first born. The freshness with which my mind can conjure perfect memories of him so young, speak to how fleeting time is. The grown-up heartbreak he conveys breaks my own heart over that baby being so old, capable of experiencing and communicating such love and hurt, healing and breaking. It fills me with fearful anticipation, a sort of creeping, shadowing dread of what awaits my young sons. The misunderstanding, the mistakes, the rejection, even hatred that awaits and the the strong desire to protect them from these things all overwhelm me.

He takes me back to a time when my heart was capable of truly feeling that crazy kind of love, and then makes me doubt that I ever had it in me, finally making me mourn the fact that it simply does not. I am taken back to to a wonderful terrible time when feeling and breaking rode over each other like waves coming without any apparent rhythm that threaten to keep the heart tumbled til its lungs burned up...if only there were anything left to break.

Somewhere in the sadness is an undercurrent of hope. I hear a deeper song of a love that isn't fickle and doesn't change and would never break the bearer. The mark of what I consider truly great music is the steady driving force behind each track. A love that puts the pieces of the broken back together and breaks anew a heart of stone long thought to be dead. In the end, that's what really got me.

The talent matched with a willingness to work hard and get himself out there impress me with what wonderful parents must have raised him. Granted I am biased, because his mother has been the truest friend I have ever had and I have more than once been jealous that his father had not been my own. (Don't anyone take that too literally) It just seems like they really gave him some good tools, and certainly God didn't scrimp on the talent. Questions rush into my mind: how do you be that kind of parent? how do you impart such confidence and chutzpah to your offspring? how do you love them so that they can grow up and love and then write about it?

RocketCity is my new hero. RocketCity writes, composes, produces and has put out what I predict will remain my favorite album of 2011 in its Bedroom Demos. Please give it a listen, it is available for free http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V4O9X1O4 Please tell your friends about it, especially if your friends are discerning people in the music biz with an ear for the kind of talent that touches the heart.