No Coward Soul is Mine

i went home this weekend to see the mercersburg area community chorus perform their spring concert. one of the things i miss most since moving from home is being able to sing with the chorus, so seeing the performance was bittersweet.

sitting in the chapel, hearing an orchestra and gorgeous choral music - i understand it's not for everyone. but it made me long to be up there making the music with everyone. i imagine athletes must feel this way when they watch someone else play their sport: it's fun to watch, but you'd rather be in the game.

the concert featured two major works: the first, haydn's famous oratorio the creation, and a newly commissioned piece by ola gjeilo entitled no coward soul is mine, whose lyrics are drawn from the poem of the same name by emily bronte. gjeilo composed the piece for the community chorus this year, to honor their 35th anniversary. i got to hear it performed for the first time -- and it was beautiful. its first performance has been uploaded to youtube - here it is:

the lyrics (or the poem, i suppose) felt especially poignant to me while i'm in a season of waiting, wondering, doubting, and more waiting. so here it is:

"no coward soul is mine" 

no coward soul is mine,

no trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:

i see heaven's glories shine,

and faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

o God within my breast

almighty, ever-present Deity!

life -- that in me has rest,

as i -- undying Life -- have power in thee!

vain are the thousand creeds

that move men's hearts: unutterably vain;

worthless as withered weeds,

or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

to waken doubt in one

holding so fast by thine infinity;

so surely anchored on

the steadfast rock of immortality.

with wide-embracing love

thy spirit animates eternal years,

pervades and broods above,

changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

though earth and man were gone,

and suns and universes ceased to be,

and Thou were left alone,

every existence would exist in Thee.

there is not room for Death,

nor atom that his might could render void:

thou -- THOU are Being and Breath,

and what THOU are may never be destroyed.

- emily bronte

POP! CULTURE! LOVE!

do you know me? if you're reading this you probably do. i don't think i get a ton of random traffic here. or, well, much of any traffic for that matter. but whatever! it's time for me to share one of my great loves: deep analysis of popular culture. in other words:

NERD ALERT.

of all of my personality quirks, i embrace my nerdiness with the most relish and joy. i am unabashedly in love with using words like unabashedly. i have an opinion about oxford commas, and i'd be willing to share it with you (even you, vampire weekend). i have not only read the age of innocence, but i've read it about 8 times and i could argue that it gives a much fuller picture of femininity and the complexities of love than any jane austen novel. i think barnett newman's abstract expressionism is real dumb (i mean "zips?" really??) but i love me some rothko (even if admitting that makes me feel like i lose a little indie art cred). i recognize and love my over-use of parenthetical asides in my casual writing (this is the fourth one for this paragraph alone!). and i know that even right this very moment, i'm digging myself deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit that is my nerdiness, and i do. not. care.

but here's my not-so-secret confession: i'm just as happy listening to puccini as i am memorizing the ludacris rap in justin bieber's baby. i love reading short stories from literary magazines, but i can as easily spend my time reading a celebrity news blog. sure, i occasionally like to think i can rise above pop culture on the wings of bach and flannery o'connor and npr. but i know i'm a participant. and not just any participant, a gleeful one.

and i'm here to tell you - the greatest thing about being a nerd is the total lack of tension that comes with using a ten dollar word in describing a two cent tv show.

in other words, being a smarty pants and talking about stuff that's real dumb? COUNT ME IN.

over time, i've found more and more incredibly smart people talking about popular culture. in fact, i would say some of the most intellectually satisfying things i've encountered over the last few months all fall into that category. and man do i want to participate in that conversation! maybe (because of the crushing unlikelihood) not as a pop culture correspondent for npr, but at least with some friends.

twitter is kind of awesome for enabling little bite-sized quips and observations. but the best things i'm seeing right now are as follows:

npr's monkey see - hosted by linda holmes, the blog itself is full of terrific insights: reviews of everything from comic books to theater productions, to the bachelor. but my true love is the weekly podcast entitled pop culture happy hour, in which four npr writers/edtiors/friends sit down and chat about the week's events. the show is snappy, whip-smart, hilarious, and insightful. imagine four of the smartest people you know cracking wise about friday night lights and passionately defending community. it's my favorite.

television without pity - some argue that television without pity lost its teeth when it was acuqired by nbc owned network bravo, but i'd say there are still enough things about it that make it worth visiting. primarily a recapping site, TWoP balances deep analysis with hilarity quite well. they archive all of the shows they've covered, and i can tell you that the recaps of buffy the vampire slayer have made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions.

and finally, the a.v. club - you want smart? you want funny? you want real, thoughtful, deep analysis of last week's glee and why it didn't measure up to the other episodes? go to the onion's a.v. club. seriously. these people know how to write about pop culture. they know how to articulate their arguments, and they know how to do it right. i could literally read this all day. they cover music, film, books, and tv. and i think they're some of the best people out there writing about it.

so yeah. i'm a nerd. are YOU a nerd? do you wanna talk bout buffy with me? or glee? or anything at all? do you work for any of those websites and you want to give me a job? no? okay, that's cool too.

Rain and Gloom, Or How I (re)Discovered God's Faithfulness in February

the last two months have been a challenge. i packed up my cozy room in mcconnellsburg. i said tearful goodbyes to my church family and, you know, my regular one. i said goodbye to one tiny town and hello to another tiny town.

i moved to camp.

and if you know me, you know i love camp. it felt so strange to be away from it this summer. away from the games, the routine, the songs and skits and staff. so the opportunity to be back - and not just back, but back starting in january - sounded fantastic. it sounded like where i was supposed to be.

but when the time to leave rolled around, it felt less like that. i realized how much home felt like, well, home. leaving felt absurd and scary. but at that point, it's not like there was much of a choice left to make; it was time to go.

and now i'm here. the work is good work. i have community, and a job that matters. i live in a cozy house:

and i live with friends and neighbors who are caring, loving, and gracious. even with all that, the transition has been rough around the edges at times. i leapt headfirst into a time consuming and pretty intense job. and even with the familiarity of camp and the surrounding area, there's a level of feeling out of place that comes and goes.

in other words, it's not home yet.

today i gave a family with three sons a tour of the property and answered their questions about camp. and while i was telling them about everything we do, i remembered how much this place can feel like home. i remembered how precious my summers have been here, and i remembered how much i love being here.

so this afternoon, i decided to go for a walk. the weather here is downright gross today. it's rainy, gloomy, muddy and wet. yesterday would've been a much better day to trek about, with the sun out and the bright blue sky, but today felt right. it's not too cold, and the rain isn't too heavy. and the more i looked, the more beautiful the day became.

i don't mean to sound too melodramatic here. it's not like i've been slogging through some emotional turmoil and i finally had some breakthrough today. "i've been so sad, but now i see that the sad is beautiful!" ha, not this time. i'm actually quite happy, but the confusion and transition felt a little messy.

today it was nice to be out in the mess and enjoy it. it's not that photogenic, it's not the ideal day to show off our property, or to take a lot of photos for my blog to impress you with the beauty of my surroundings. but it's where i am right now, and today i remembered that the lord put me here with great intentionality. he put me here, because here is where i'm supposed to be. he put me here in the middle of winter, when there are no kids, when it snows all the time, when it's cold and icy.

he put me here to accomplish his purposes for me, no matter how vague or distant they might feel to me right now. and he calls me to enjoy it, not just in the summer. not just on the bright and beautiful days, but always.

The Annunciation

The Annunciation, 1898, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.

an angel came to me

and i was unprepared

to be what God was using.

mother i was to be.

a moment i despaired,

thought briefly of refusing.

the angel knew i heard.

according to God's Word

i bowed to this strange choosing.

a palace should have been

the birthplace of a king

(i had no way of knowing).

we went to bethlehem;

it was so strange a thing.

the wind was cold, and blowing,

my cloak was old, and thin.

they turned us from the inn;

the town was overflowing.

God's Word, a child so small

who still must learn to speak

lay in humiliation

joseph stood, strong and tall.

the beasts were warm and meek

and moved with hesitation.

the Child was born in a stall?

i understood it: all

Kings come in adoration.

perhaps it was absurd

a stable set apart,

the sleepy cattle lowing;

and the incarnate Word

resting against my heart.

my joy was overflowing.

the shepherds came, adored

the folly of the Lord

wiser than all men's knowing.

- o simplicitas, madeleine l'engle

Chorus, Christmas, & the Coming Lord

This is the weekend of the community chorus concerts, which means I've been singing and singing and singing. This afternoon is the last one, which is kind of bittersweet. I'm looking forward to a little respite for my voice, but I do love singing with the chorus.

The chorus does a spring concert and a winter concert, though the "winter concert" would be better described as a Christmas concert. All of our selections are about Christmas in one way or another. This year we're singing selections from Rachmaninoff's Vespers and Bach's Christmas Oratorio, and a bunch of other stuff including an arrangement of Star in the East with a hammered dulcimer player (it's awesome). But my favorite piece is one by Daniel Gawthrop, called O Come Emmanuel, which the chorus actually commissioned 10 years ago. The music is gorgeous, meaningful to sing, and the text is a poem by Madeleine L'Engle, taken from a collection of her poems called The Ordering of Love: the New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle (Thanks, Google books!). This poem is the second of her "Three Songs of Mary."

2. O Oriens 

O come, O come Emmanuel 

within this fragile vessel here to dwell.

O child conceived by heaven's power

give me thy strength: it is the hour.

O come thou wisdom from on high;

like any babe, at life you cry;

for me, like any mother, birth 

was hard, O light of earth.

O come, O come thou Lord of might,

whose birth came hastily at night,

born in a stable, in blood and pain

is this the king who comes to reign?

O come, thou Rod of Jesse's stem,

the stars will be thy diadem.

How can the infinite finite be?

Why choose, child, to be born of me?

O come, thou key of David, come

open the door to my heart home.

I cannot love the as a king -

so fragile and so small a thing.

O come thou Day-spring from on high:

I saw the signs that marked the sky,

I heard the beat of angels' wings,

I saw the shepherds and the kings, 

O come, Desire of nations,

be simply a human child to me.

Let me not weep that you are born.

The night is gone. Now gleams the morn!

Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel.

God's Son, God's Self, with us to dwell.

November = Wool

Well, it's cold out again. Actually, today it's in the 50's, so it's not really that bad yet, but still. I know it's coming. The time change, the darkness descending at 5, the frost in the morning...and the annual flu-like cold that hits me like sledge hammer: they're all here.

I've been out of commission with The Sick since Wednesday night. Mercifully there was no school Thursday, and no call to sub on Friday, so I've been spending a lot of time in bed or on the couch. And while rest is awesome, it gets oooooold after a while. To combat these doldrums?

That's right.

It's time to get CRAFTY.

I won't yammer on and on about how much I love making stuff this time. I wanted a hat. I found a hat pattern, and I made a hat.

How do you not look like a doofus when modeling a hat? I didn't want to look how I really feel, which is like this:

Yeah, that's a bit more accurate.

Anyway, that hat is the product of a good afternoon and evening's worth of work. I laid in bed. I watched the movie Waitress, which has been on my desk for almost a month after its arrival from Netflix in October. It was dark, clever, cute, and worth watching...though it made me want a piece of pie. I'm glad I didn't send it back entirely unwatched, which has happened before. My problem is that I don't usually feel like sitting down to watch an entire movie, especially by myself. I use the instant streaming of Netflix, like, all the time to watch 30 Rock or Veronica Mars or Arrested Development or all these other awesome TV shows. But movies? I dunno. They just require such a time commitment. So what ends up happening? The little red Netflix envelope sits there, starting balefully up at me, until I finally cave and either send it back or carve out a chunk of time to watch. Which becomes surprisingly easy when you can't muster the energy to get out of bed.

Anyway, so I made the hat. I watched Waitress, and I totally watched an entire season and a half of the show  Pawn Stars (also streaming on Netflix, duhhh) while crocheting my little heart out. And can I just say, that show is pretty flipping cool. And addicting. And a major time suck. You turn it on, and they're just these short little 20 minute episodes that are like the Antiques Roadshow, if the Antiques Roadshow said bad words. And suddenly you've watched 10 episodes and you forgot to make dinner (...wait, what?). But it's funny and interesting. And I'm probably going to crawl downstairs to my couch and watch it as soon as I'm done typing this thing. So there.

Under Duress

Oh hi. Remember me? Remember this bloggy mcbloggy thing? I barely do, to be honest - which is evident from my total lack of posts in the last, oh, two months.

UPDATES:
- I have some cool stuff happening starting in January. I'm being purposefully vague. Perhaps unnecessarily so, but WHATEVER. It's my blog. I do what I want.
- Because of the cool stuff, I got to quit my retail job! Which is good. Because it was far away and it was retail, and there's this little thing called "Black Friday" coming up and I don't have to work in a retail job for it anymore. Bullet = dodged.
- I'm trying to get as much teaching in as possible. I taught English today and Friday, and I will again tomorrow! Though tomorrow I'm teaching at the tiny little private Christian school in my county, not the public school I taught in today and Friday.

So there. Changes, quitting, teaching! Also, I'm busy teaching/singing with the (two) high school girls at my church, teaching the high school Sunday school class, learning tons of music for the community chorus, and bouncing around doing fun stuff on the weekends.

I also got a web cam (and a haircut!)

See, I just took that picture! JUST  NOW! And I've been Skyping with everyone, near and far. Well, mostly far. Lindsay and Eric in Florida, Emily in Syracuse, Olivia in Lewisburg, and Whit in England! The internet is awesome.

In summation, further proof that the internet is totally awesome: A baby monkey riding on a pig.

You're welcome.