REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (Duration: 6:13 — 5.6MB)
Subscribe: More
One of the important things that the CLF does is serve as a teaching congregation, providing an internship or other learning site for people in ministerial formation. Our learning fellows are a treasured and significant part of most of what we do at the CLF. And one treasured and important part of their learning process is a twice-monthly meeting we call Theological Reflection. It’s a chance for the ministerial staff to dive deep into our understandings of a variety of topics related to ministry.
Not long ago, that topic was Beginnings and Endings. Knowing that Rev. Meg is heading toward retirement, knowing that our learning fellows are at various places in their seminary education and internships, knowing that not just ministry, but also life, is full of beginnings and middles and ends, where are we most comfortable? What point in any process makes us energized or anxious or fulfilled? We were all different.
Some of us love the excitement and inherent possibility of new beginnings. Some of us love the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment that come with endings. And, I realized, I am someone who likes middles. More specifically, I like a sense of progress, the feeling that I am moving toward a goal. For me, reaching the goal is not really as gratifying as feeling like I am headed in the right direction.
At the end of that meeting I shared one of my favorite poems, a section from W. H. Auden’s “Christmas Oratorio.” In it, he talks about the day after Christmas, the ordinary time that is neither the excitement of the new baby nor the devastation and resurrection to come. It is, perhaps, the most difficult time when, as he puts it, “the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing.”
The Spirit must practice the scales of rejoicing. I love that. Perhaps I love it so much because one of my central spiritual practices is music. A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to learn to play the mandolin. I’d been playing the ukulele for a few years, and really loved it, but I wanted that feeling of progress, of accomplishment, and the uke is, well, not that hard, especially if you have no ambition to become the rare ukulele virtuoso. The mandolin seemed like a step up, a real instrument that real musicians played. Although it has eight strings, each pitch is doubled, so it only has four notes like a uke. How hard could it be?
Well, pretty darn hard. Those eight steel strings are hard on the fingers, and picking is a whole different animal from strumming, and while almost any chord on the uke is simple to reach, on a mando it’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. And I love it. I love the sound, and the versatility of learning to play both tunes and chords, and I love how it feels in my lap. And I love slowly, slowly, making progress. Gradually learning to play a little faster, a little clearer, creating something that sounds a little bit more like music.
I love that every evening I sit down on my couch to practice my scales of rejoicing. I don’t do it because I have to, or because someone pays me. I don’t even do it with the goal that someday I will be really good, or that I will perform. Believe me, two years in, there is no indication that I am ever going to be very good! I do it because I rejoice in the practice itself, in that long stretch of middle in which I gradually become more capable, more grounded in the music itself. I do it because it reminds me that with enough practice, enough repetition, my fingers start to just know where to go.
That’s the thing about spiritual practice. It wears a kind of groove in your brain, a habit of body and mind. And the more we practice the scales of rejoicing, the day-to-day exercises of body and mind and spirit that place us in the path of joy, the more we are able to stay on that path.
For me, that sense of being on the journey, continuing on the path, getting stronger and more capable of finding my way, is where the joy resides. I feel that way about the mandolin, but I also feel that way about my work here at the CLF. I’ve been here for a long time. Beth Murray and I have a bit of an argument over which of us has been with the CLF longer, but in any case for both of us it has been more than 15 years. I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Jane Rzepka and Meg Riley as senior ministers, both Lorraine Dennis and Jody Malloy as executive directors. And I’ve loved it all. I expect when the new, as-yet-unknown senior minster or leadership team comes on I will love working with them too.
For that matter, every time one of our beloved learning fellows moves on I have a hard time imagining how CLF will go on without them. And every time a new learning fellow joins us I’m delighted by the new gifts that they bring. Sure, I have my anxiety about change. But I also know that change is always part of the path, part of what comes with the commitment to staying in that middle place. If what I enjoy is the sense of learning and growth, well, change is certainly an important part of that process.
I am so grateful for this long path that I continue to be privileged to move down with you, practicing together our scales of rejoicing. I always look forward to discovering what new music we will make.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
