Mrs Metaphor

For those of you who asked to hear the music to The Shore here ’tis. Please bear in mind the fact that I recorded it into my laptop without fancy equipment…seriously….and in fact, the whirring sound you hear in the background at some point is my computer’s hard drive. Nice touch, huh? I will also tell you that yes, that is my fine beginner guitar work there. It’s coming along.

One day, I will master this and I shall rule the world of technological things….either that or I will hire someone to do this for me.

I’m thinking a great deal this week about love and faith and even “religion” as I understand it…so…I thought it right and proper to put this out there and shine a little light on it.

There is this little book, “The Quotidian Mysteries” that was recommended to me long ago by my wonderful friend Karen. We both harbor a real love of Kathleen Norris’ work. This book was originally a lecture given by Ms Norris on Spirituality and it centers around the idea of embracing the “quotidian.” This is a delicious word, “quotidian” and I work it into blog posts and conversations as often as I am able.

The “quotidian” refers to what we would identify as the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday tasks. The word, however, is much much richer than we give it credit. Prayer, is quotidian…just as housework is quotidian. I’d go so far as to say that Love is quotidian. It must be revisited every day. It must have commitment every day.

This passage from the book puts it so well as it relates to my faith so I rest here for now:
“Laundry, liturgy and women’s work all serve to ground us in the world, and they need not grind us down. Our daily tasks, whether we perceive them as drudgery or essential, life-supporting work, do not define who we are as women or as human beings. But they have a considerable spiritual import, and their significance for Christian theology, the way they come together in the fabric of faith, is not often appreciated. But it is daily tasks, daily acts of love and worship that serve to remind us that the religion is not strictly an intellectual pursuit, and these days it is easy to lose sight of that as, like our society itself, churches are becoming more politicized and polarized. Christian faith is a way of life, not an impregnable fortress made up of ideas; not a philosophy; not a grocery list of beliefs.”

Food for thought. Prepared lovingly. I shall be chewing on this as the week progresses.

I’m finding more and more that not only am I a “night person” I am also a “night parent.”
It’s hard to explain so I wrote it as a poem. (what a shock, right?)

Not my usual bag for poetry, this subject, but I’m branching out…

Late Night Parent

it is here
in these small hours
cicadas provide the soundtrack
the breeze
cool now
untouched by the sun

and it is here
that I,
while on night shift
thank God
with each forehead kiss
and each whispered assurance
that everything will be
alright

I’ve been thinking today about writing. I’ve been thinking quite a lot about it.  I thought about it rather well. When the time came to actually put something down on what Luci Shaw referred to this weekend as the “democratic white page” I faltered. My fingers fumbled. Keystroke-like movements started and stopped.  I thought about the look of the dogwood trees blooming and could not come up with words to describe them with any honor large enough. This went on for most of the day and into the evening.  

I thought about the sound of the quiet, interrupted only by the uneven tapping on the keyboard when an idea came then followed quickly by the rhythm of the backspace key beating time with measured regularity.

It seemed so much more certain of it’s job.

At last all I am left with is the astounding realization and perhaps the appreciation finally, of the unfinished things.

that’s all.

A few days ago someone googled, “metaphor for kissing” and found me.  I have no idea which post they found, probably it was “The Holy Kiss” but who knows.  That got me to thinking though about kissing as metaphor and metaphors for kissing and of course that led me to thinking about the assignment I shall give this week while I’m at the Festival of Faith and Writing visiting my poet crush, Scott Cairns and soaking in the smell and feel of the written word.

So in light of that, it’s that time again…How long did you think it would take for us to roll around to the use of “euphemism” in our studies?  Ok, ok…I know you are all excited about this one but let’s take a moment and just explore this a bit, shall we?  

Some of us, when we think of the word, “euphemism” perhaps go straight to the gutter and think of words or phrases substituted for sex but in reality, according to the dictionary a euphemism is:”The act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive.”So you see?  I’m not going to limit you to something as pedestrian as “sex” while creating or sharing your favorite euphemism.  You can feel free to use any harsh, blunt or offensive subject.

Hey, you’re welcome…I know you’ve been itching to try this one.

I could model this for you but I’d rather share with you a website I stumbled upon recently.  Be forewarned…it might get a little harsh, blunt or offensive, euphemistically but there were a couple that cracked me up pretty good and a few that made me blush.

make your own euphemism

best of luck to you…but remember, we do get underage readers in here once in a while…try to contain yourselves…

now hit me with your best shot

then what kind of drug do I want to be?

Am I penicillin or heroin?

Opium or Ibuprofen?

Arsenic?

Aspirin?

Do I heal or do I harm?

There is your radical thought for the day.

I went to my guitar lesson this week and plugged into the amp.  As I played I realized that the sound coming out was not even remotely similar to what I hear at home.  This was crunchy and grungy and erm…not quite the me I expected to hear.  I was thrashing without even trying, babe. My guitar teacher reached down and turned a knob, pressed a button, something… bringing me back to familiar ground and sound.

I confess that while I feel I’m picking up the musicality of the instrument fairly well, I am still finding my way around the technology.  For the first time since I made the decision to purchase my semi-hollow body electric rather than the nice sounding but not sexy acoustic I wondered if I was maybe in over my head.

I’m making some good noises with the guitar.  I am really very happy with my progress.  I even “hammer-on” stuff now and again.  Yeah, baby.  The trouble is that I still have to think about what each of the little knobs and buttons and bells and whistles do in this setup.  I am astounded at how one thing turned ever so slightly completely changes everything.

Things are simpler on an acoustic.  You sit, you play.  No electricity involved.  No 9v batteries to change so that your humbuckers stop humming. No grunge buttons pushed by mistake.  You sit, you play, kum ba ya, my Lord, kum ba ya.

I imagine my learning curve would be less steep had I gone with the acoustic.

Then again….there is this moment I recognise in all of this and if everything is metaphor then there is one here as well, yes?

There is this moment where I think about this complicated choice, this sharp learning curve and I see how having this kind of latitude in sound fits me.  It mirrors so well the life I’ve chosen….the life of the artist, the wife of an artist, the mother of the chaos crazed artists in training.  Nothing is certain.  Everything can change in a breath.  We adapt, we push a button, we turn a knob and find a sound that works here.  Half the time we don’t know what will happen…feedback, more often than not, trial and error, it’s all good….or it’s all good-ish at least.  It’s an adventure.

I will learn what each knob does in time.  I hope I remember after I learn it.  It will probably take the rest of my life to figure it out and put it all into practice…then again, metaphorically the lesson is that perhaps really it’s more about seeing this AS my life after all…rather than something I do to fill the time.

Watch this video and you will see the wonder of my new girl crush, Imogen Heap. Maybe you will not realize, just at first, how astounding it is, what she is doing here. Each and every sound of this song is made and recorded by her voice or her hands right then, right there…fed into samplers and looped as she cues them. Live. Nothing has been pre-recorded.

Maybe you don’t realize this but I am going to just tell you and I know you will trust me, your friend Mrs Metaphor, when I say that this is astounding. It truly is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

It’s that time of year
Leave all our hopelessness’s aside
If just for a little while
tears stop right here
I know we’ve all had a bumpy ride.
I’m secretly on your side

Here is your radical thought for the coming week.

Pay attention.

Pay attention to the feel of the air on your skin. Pay attention to the color of the sky and the trees. Pay attention to the sound that fills the room and failing that, pay attention to the silence.

If you had a camera in your brain (and in effect, you DO have a camera in your brain as it were) and your eye is the lens then this week take as many well framed and focused photos as you can.

Slow down.

Look deep.

Breathe it in.

Pay attention.

I don’t usually post about my faith. I should amend that to say that I am always posting about my faith but I don’t usually post about it in quite this much detail. This, being the day before Easter, however I feel compelled to put some things down. This feast day is the reason that those of us who profess to be Christians, um, profess to be Christians. Without Easter, Christianity makes no sense, really…so there you have it.

For whatever reason I’ve been contemplating lately The Holy Kiss. This phrase has come to me again and again in the last year and it was just today that I thought to google it. I was contemplating writing a poem or a song or something. It’s just such a good visual, filled with all kinds of promise, yes?

In the early Christian church there developed a ritual greeting which was called “the Holy Kiss.” It was common in the culture to greet one another with a kiss. This practice, during gatherings of Christians though moved beyond the traditional nicety. It became a sign of such deep affection that it came to be seen as a sacred act. It was one of the things which DEFINED them as community.

We see the remains of this in some church services which embrace the “sign of peace” or “passing the peace.” For the most part, however, in our own culture we’ve moved away from the physical touch, away from showing this deep affection for one another. It is simply not done. It’s not alright. It’s not accepted.

I find though that I am drawn inexplicably to this idea. It’s an intruiging one especially for the latent German Catholic in me; this part of me which shies away from touch because of my own fears. The little voice present in the back (or sometimes front) of my head which tells me that I am not worthy of touch…I am not soft enough, I am not warm enough, I am not deserving of it.

This then takes me right into the acts of Christ in the New Testament…touching the untouchable, using his hands to heal and of course, my favorite; the story of the bleeding woman. When the hem of Christ’s robe is touched by the woman he FEELS it. Christ was all about touch, all about the Holy Kiss.

I wonder if He knew that it would be this very Holy Kiss which would signal His betrayal.

These are the thoughts that drive through my mind today, Holy Saturday…the day that I, as a follower of Christ and believer in His divinity, wait. We, as a body, wait for the chance to greet one another anew, on Easter Sunday with the realization that He is Risen and perhaps one day…the return of The Holy Kiss.