How can i keep from singing?

" My life goes on, in endless song, above earths lamentations, I hear the real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation. Through all the tumult and the strife I hear its music ringing. It sounds an echo in my soul; how can I keep from singing?" Some people inspire us through action, some through words and thought, others through music, and still others through art; each of these are noble in themselves, but the person to whom I would like to pay tribute has influenced me through all these mediums. Daily through her actions, her encouragement, her perseverance and her constant cheerfulness she taught me and other students what it means to live a life worth living. She showed us what it really means to live our Faith and to live it well.
In the boarding school to which I went we called the nuns mother. Seems a bit weird at first, but truly you realize that really they are your mothers, for they give to us the life of the intellect just as our biological mothers give to us the life of the body, and a boarding school is just like a family. Mother Gabriel of the Sacred Heart was the Prioress of our school for nine years, as well as its founder. Out of the depths of the Idaho forests she made it possible for a magnificent school and chapel to be raised from the granite mountainside. In 1990 she came to this country with six other nuns and started our school in a small green house with just five boarding students and a few day students. Now, some fifteen years later there are five buildings with row upon row of desks in beautiful classrooms and bedrooms aplenty. They are now bursting at the seams with over 30 boarding students and 200 day students. And what else has she to her name? A girls choir, which has produced two CDs of polyphony, one sacred the other Christmas, and which some say is the most beautiful they have ever heard. But besides this choir being so beautiful, she really gave us something by teaching us music. She gave us love, and desire, she gave us the will to give ourselves completely to something. She taught us unity and discipline, and helped us to understand that " Sacred music is a double prayer," and that " Next to silence, music comes closest to expressing the inexpressible."
All this and more she has given us, and all the while very sick with a heart condition, yet never did I see her complain or be unjustly angry, or just plain grumpy. Always a smile, always a twinkle in her eyes. How, then, can I keep from singing, when, like a mother, through song and her example she has given me the wings to rise above the lamentations of this world?

12-06-06

green sweater days...

Hmmm sooo what to write..... But lets see. Sometimes, dont you just feel like swearing? Yeah it's been one of those days. And not just regular swearing, you know here and there when you're mad, but one of those days you just feel like every word deserves an expletive. It's as if it just started out wrong the night before. When you're tired but can't sleep because your bed is uncomfortable, and you're freezin your ever lovin feet off....how ones feet are everlovin, I'm not quite sure..but anyhow...yeah and when you get up you can see your breath...well I mean that's not really a horrible thing, but I dunno it seems to allll come together at some point. You're kind of mad for no reason, the day is cold and grey, here comes the rain to top it all off. It's your day off, but there's a lot to do, and out in the cold, with no one to help. Fences to build and fix, leaves to be picked up, apples to be dealt with, and all the while when you're making this mental list, you look up into the disheartening sky and remember that it's supposed to snow that day, and nothing is done. One consolation is that with the coming of snow comes a beautiful thing called snowboarding. However, as this thought is slowly warming you up you find out someone is not doing what they are supposed to be doing, what they should have had done weeks ago, and they whine at you about how cold it is. At that point, it's all over, and suddenly every noun must, by all means, be accompanied by an utterance of seemingly monumental sorts. Flooding into your mind comes a million other reasons to be ticked off, from no food in the house when you're starving, to no dry wood when youre freezing. You look banefully around the room for anyone who will venture into your destructive path. Fortunately they are all out of sight... fortunately for them anyhow... The day looks more dismal by the second.
But you know, then there are those little things, those little rays of sunshine that seem to break through, and remind you, with a few expletives nevertheless, that really the world is not ending, the sky is not falling, and that mankind is not irremediable, contrary to ever-so-recent staggering substantiation of these facts. Like my youngest neice for example. There she was sitting quietly on a sheep skin in front of a fire, wearing a green sweater that her dad, and all the rest of us wore when we were ten months. You know, ten months, heck that's nothing! and already there she is with a little personality, and not a demon either, thank god. And when she sees me out goes her little hands and a little smile lights up her serious face. Maybe my days are not that bad after all when God can make such a beautiful little thing happy even when she has to rely completely on others who may or may not be responsible enough to do what needs to be done. It's a beautiful thing, a child playing by themselves. Maybe I should do the same thing and quit being selfish thinking someone always has to be there to keep me company and help me out. Maybe that's why children get so many graces...God helps those who help themselves, eh?...
Well, it's still one of those days when I feel like swearing, but now I guess I can swear about things because I'm a little content, even if things aren't going the best. I said to my friend the other day that there are only three times I swear. When I'm furious, when I'm scared, and finally when I'm overwhelmed. Whether that's overwhelmed in a good way or not, those words still seem to begin to suffice, to begin to describe the indescribable. Hmm, call my vocabulary stinted, but sometimes the familiar needs to be described by the familiar. And those green sweater days, those are the days that we should keep familiar......

11-05-05

she said write about the rain...

Every now and then the sound of rain and road brings me to a place I have long forgotten. I remember lying in my bunk, hearing the cars go by, seeing their lights slide around my bedroom walls, wondering about their world, safe in mine. A child’s comfort. The appeal of the rain is in its simplicity – the sounds, the smells, the peaceful insistence. Like the snow, or the river, it just keeps coming and coming – threatening, perhaps – but also perfectly lovely even in violence. To stand in the rain, face to the gale, eyes closed, is a phenomenal feeling. All power and submission; meaningful yet insignificant, we feel the place of man -- somewhere between heaven and earth, it would seem. We haven't the raw power of the beast nor the beauty of the heavens, yet there is something there that calls to us and bids us take a place among them. Can we ever? Can we fall gently like the rain or howl like the wind, or do we only dream of such perfection? To be like the rain -- to fall and never hurt -- that would be a blessing; and yet I wonder: perhaps we are like the rain. Must we always fall from such heights to shatter into a million pieces, only to rise again for another fall? But maybe too, like the rain, our fall can be a blessing, for in breaking ourselves what beauty can blossom out of the muck, if even a single flower? Perhaps some day we will be able to stop falling, to stop breaking. Perhaps some day we can join the heavens and not have come down again. A child’s comfort, safe and full of wonder.


01-08-07