Sunday Silence

As I face the blank screen I am aware of the blessing of silence so apt for a Sunday morning. No whine of air compressors, roar of leaf blowers (that is a week day activity)or even vroom vroom of my neighbors five vehicles being sequentially started and primed through some testing sequence that he knows, but I do not.

Silence is a blessing. My friend who is sailing sent a sail-mail this week about how wonderful it was to be able to see a gazillion of stars, a phenomenon that is usually lost to us because of the artificial light all around us. That email prompted me to remember camping in the high Sierras when I was in my teens. My family went with another family and the silence that summer night was palpable, a quiet so deep that when I ponder it now, I can understand why people are called to be hermits, why they prize being able to move noiselessly through the woods almost as though they are not there.

Big Sur and Point Lobos are two more places where the silence was like a cloak, a gentle presence of its own, inviting us to seek the Presence whom we look for in church. Once in a great while I have experienced that deep silence in church, but usually there is a bustle there as people come in and ready for a service or the sounds of the city impinge on the quiet interior of the church.

Liturgists have argued fiercely about the role of silence in the services they arrange. Those arguments definitely broke the silence in a manner that argued for the silence in themselves! I have always been on the side of those seeking silence. The most sacred moments of the liturgy convey themselves best if we are not asked to "participate" by making some noise--or even gestures. But then, I am "old school"--keep silence in church, keep silence in the halls while passing from one class to the next, or risk detention, keep silent if you don't have anything good or kind to say about someone else. (Silence here can speak louder than words, too.)

I give thanks today for silence and am blessed.

Deconstruction Completed

For decades the house across the street from mine had a swimming pool that filled the front patio (now frequently referred to as the courtyard). Surrounded by a high fence, as are most of the houses in my neighborhood, the pool could not be seen. It took five days of pounding with a jack hammer and backloading with a small bulldozer, I called it a "baby dozer"--sort of like a baby dinosaur--to remove the concrete. Then the biggest truck I have ever seen on my street, a two-barreled black tanker pulled up and downloaded dirt into the street. The next day the 'dozer driver began trundling dirt into the yard through the hole that had been made by removing part of the fence. A friend and I watched on Friday and he commented that watching construction was mesmerizing. I found it so. Today they are tamping down the new dirt with a compactor and removing equipment. Peace and quiet will return and perhaps I can blog every day or so again. Writing was not possible last week!

I am glad for the young couple who bought the house two summers ago that they are going forward with their plans. The pool was in disrepair--probably too far gone to repair--and costly to maintain. It had become a "mosquito-breeder" and therefore even more costly to maintain because of the concern about West Nile Virus.

While the pool was being pounded out last week, I found myself thinking about my own memories of that pool. Seven or eight owners have passed through the house during the fifty plus years since it was built. Early on we knew the neighbors because two daughters were classmates in the same school. I remember that we were invited to swim and just to visit and that on one occasion we went over with our new young Keeshond to introduce her to the neighbors. They had a poodle and Frosty and the poodle began chasing around the perimeter of the pool. Frustrated because she wasn't catching the poodle, Frosty cut across the diagonal of the pool. The look on her face as she hit the water was something that I have never seen since and never forgotten. Part shock, part terror and then finally rage. Papa kicked off his shoes and was just about to dive in when we all realized that she was "dog paddling" toward the edge of the pool. Instinct had kicked in and she knew exactly what to do. One furious mass of wet fur was hauled out of the water. On dry land, she proceeded to shake water over all of us to let us know exactly how she felt about being bamboozled. A bath and more shaking followed at home because, of course, we had to get the chlorine out of her fur.

A decade later I was going to graduate school and coming home for the summers. The next neighbors kindly allowed me to use the pool so that I could exercise and keep in shape for my return to Chicago in the Fall.

It was a nice pool and I am glad that I do not have one to contend with in my patio. I figure that at today's prices the cost of removing a swimming pool is probably about the sum that my parents received for the two bedroom, one bath "bungalow" that we lived in in Toledo before we came to California.

Silence. At last. As I have been writing the last truck has pulled away and it is so quiet that it is almost delicious. I will stop clicking and clacking away here and savor it.

Silence is so Beautiful

As I sit here and type the sun shines over my shoulders, the poppies are continuing to grow and are loaded with buds, the big Cecil Brunner Rose bush that has anchored the corner of the back yard for over fifty years is bursting into bloom with its delicate pink roses--the color of raspberry juice in cream--and it is so quiet that I can hear the keys of the laptop make their thunking noise as I type.

Yesterday was the Feast of St Athanasius, one of the early doctors of the Catholic Church. He is the patron saint of the church around the corner, which is the parish where my family belonged after we came to California. Papa was active in the men's club, serving as its President at least once as well as on the Parish Council. Mama was equally active in the women's club and taught CCD--catechism for grade school children. While I had been confirmed in Toledo in fourth grade, my younger sister was confirmed at St. Athanasius. Both parents also both sang in the choir.

I remember so many things about this parish--Fr. Bose, our first pastor building the church and making sure that the congregation learned to sing Gregorian chant from the cards published by the Gregorian Institute located on Jefferson Avenue in Toledo, Ohio! It was the time of Vatican II, Mass was still in Latin and then the priest turned around to face the people as he celebrated--a radical change from centuries old tradition.

Papa used to say that turning the priest around to face the people and having them join in the responses that had once been reserved for altar boys was probably really enough change for one century! I agreed. Both my parents were buried from this church with splendid Requiem Masses sung by the St. Ann Choir as they had sung while growing up in churches in Toledo where the school children sang the funeral masses for parishioners.

I also remember splendid, lovely May processions with girls in white dresses, flowers and Marian hymns. I hope that if that tradition does not continue, it can be revived. May is also Mary's month, the time to make a home altar and deck it with flowers. Silence helps to pray the rosary and contemplate Mary's role in the life of the church.

In the meantime, I enjoy the irises which look like girls in their frilly party dresses and remember. I am grateful for the silence and the time to remember.

Wednesday of Holy Week

I am finding that I almost do not miss the television. The quiet in the house is profound. Right now the loudest sound is the refrigerator and then the slight click, click made by the computer keyboard and the occasional whir of the little hard drive on my laptop.

Tulips grace my kitchen counter, a gift from a friend who came yesterday bring me communion and to wish me a Happy Easter. Today my pastor visited and also brought communion as well as the anointing of the sick. I am so blessed that I am almost happy today and the depression, which normally weighs me down almost as much as my weight, seems to be at bay. Sunshine flooding the house helps, too, of course.

Safeway delivered my groceries and paper products today. Last night as I made the order I felt, for the second time in a month, that I was personally floating the economy out of the recession! Everything is so much more expensive than it used to be. One thing caught my eye--eggs that have been pasteurized. More expensive, but possibly worth it if a salmonella infection can be bypassed. They come in a plastic carton though. I do hope that it is recyclable--and will be tempted to find some use for it. Cute plastic containers and boxes always are hard to part with because I think that I will find some use for them. Recycling takes the edge off of throwing them out--but not completely.

Tonight is Tenebrae, the service in which the Lamentations of Jeremiah feature in the service and the lights are turned out, preparing for the darkness that shrouded the world on the afternoon of Good Friday. I will listen to a recording tonight and be present in thought with those who sing this beautiful service with its splendid music.

Jeremiah is my kind of prophet, too. Reluctant and having to be dragged into his vocation, if I recall at one time he went and hid in a well. Hmmm. Maybe I need to remember more about him and see if there aren't some parallels here.

A blessed mid-week of Holy Week to all.

Tuesday of Holy Week

Today is the third day of Holy Week counting from Sunday. Sunday I decided to try an experiment and not turn on the tv for an entire week. This was prompted in part by the fact that it is Holy Week and it seemed like silence would be a great way to observe it, especially silence from the naysayers nattering negatively about the news and the obnoxious, tasteless, in-my-face and always loud commercials.

In addition, I was watching something on Saturday night that had a particularly, gruesome and unsettling image that I had difficulty shaking before I went to sleep. It prompted a bad dream of its own--very different, but still not the way to wake up on a Sunday morning. The benefit of having had an old tv with a crummy picture was that I was using it like radio and didn't see the disturbing images.

So far I have slept better (and longer)without the tv on than with it on. I have knitted in the quiet of my own mind and space unfettered by whatever is going on in the outside world. Today will be day three of my experiment.

It is a good day, this Tuesday, a bit on the chilly side but bright and sunny. The trees are leafing out and the daffodils are gone. In two days it will be officially Spring, but I think the warmth of spring may be late this year even here in California.

Finally, my doctor, bless her came through and everything was done electronically that needed to be done. Now if I could send in my blood electronically to be tested....Or better yet have the kind of scanner that Dr. Crusher had on STNG, and just upload to the computer the way that we upload photos. Virtual medicine for a virtual world. Someday we may eat that way too! (That is a penitential thought!)