My Music

I got a baby grand piano for my fortieth birthday. It was a gift from my dead grandmother, so to speak. I think she might be a bit appalled at its lack of practicality, but I love it. It is so way cooler than a dining room table that could be in the dining room instead. Do I play? Yes, of course I do. Do I play well? Not so much. I can read music about as well as someone who took seven years of piano two decades ago. I am slowly working my way through Moonlight Sonata, though I think it is giving me corporeal tunnel. Mostly I play my own stuff.

It started years ago right before Valentine's day. My brother had written a pick up song on his guitar. I sat down to compose a ridiculous break up song for him. But I really liked my melody. It was pretty good and I noticed various family members humming it from time to time. I decided to write real words instead. I adapted a Wordsworth Poem to fit. My first creation.

It was written in the key of c and when I played it for a musical friend, he suggested I transpose it to a different key. Yea, okay, I'll get right on that. But I did and the process of transposing it really helped with my ability to read music.

I then wrote a lullaby to go with some words I had made up when my youngest was born because I didn't know the real words to Lullaby and Goodnight. Not sure how it might affect others, but I find it calming to play it.

I wrote an Irish jig to accompany the words to the Yeat's Poem Fiddler of Dooney followed by another Irish inspired song about a wandering boy who loves his Irish melodies and his Irish poetry.

I wrote a Wedding Waltz next.

I then wrote another lullaby about a Mocking bird. I am having a hard time remembering that one. No, I haven't actually put any notes to paper.

I just finished, or started as it usually works out: They usually continue to grow and change, though the heart of the melody stays the same) my latest song. I don't think I want it to have words. It has a sort of Russian or Polish sound to it.

Writing music is a funny thing. I can't just do it. I play around on the piano a lot, but every once in awhile a melody will come together. I don't know why it works sometimes and not others. I never have a tune in my head, it just comes out my fingers. I have tried to sit down with the intention of writing a song. That NEVER works. If I come up with anything, I don't remember it the next time I sit down at the piano.

I don't mean to imply I am artistic. I have no idea how the world at large would judge my songs. I don't compose them for the world at large (though if anyone wanted to buy them, I would sell) :) I don't think they are great, though I think they are good. I compose them because...because...because....

I guess because
Every now and then, they are inside of me and want to come out?
I am in a mood and it takes the form of a song?
It is an expression of something I didn't know I was thinking about?

I don't know why actually. But it is a wonderful feeling to create something you like. To make something out of nothing is an amazing experience. My little songs didn't exist one day and the next they did. Poof, just like that. And no matter how bad they are in reality, I love them because they are mine. My creation.

It made me think: that is how God feels about us. So maybe that is why I compose. Maybe that is why all human beings create anything: To remind us of a truth about THE Creator. Hm? I wonder.

Who Am I

Let me begin by saying that my identity crisis should in no way be construed as a slight to any other human being. What fulfills us, what gives us joy, what is frustrating or depressing or gross is different for each of us. There are some commonalities between all human beings in these areas, but in what we choose from our various daily activities to define ourselves, we are all unique.

So lets go back. The first thing that I was really able to use as a definer was: Teacher. My first job out of college was with the pro-life movement. It was cutting edge. It was one of only a handful of paid positions in the country. It was exciting and worthwhile and at the end of the day, not fulfilling to me. I mused on my computer at work about the possibility of becoming a teacher. I taught a little CCD class on the side. That hour a week was more fulfilling to me than my full time job. Was God calling me to be a Teacher? I asked. A co-worker found it and gave it to my boss. He fired me on the spot for it had been his experience that once someone "checked out" they were not really worth employing. (Hazards of being a writer who doesn't know about computer security.) I should have been in a panic. But I wasn't. I went to visit a friend out of state for the weekend. I returned home to a ringing phone from a friend of woman for whom I had babysat all through college. "Is this Sheila, I heard you need a job." I took the job over the phone. The second ring that day was from my boss, regretting his impulsive decision. "It has been my experience," I answered, "That when you get fired, you probably aren't really wanted. I'll be fine, I hope you will be too."

A few months later, I left Texas and returned home to go back to school to get my teaching certificate. Not only had I returned home in a geographical sense. Teaching felt like returning home. It felt natural. I felt fulfilled.

I defined myself as a Teacher for some years. But in the end, it was accompanied by a job like any other job. A job can't really define who we are as a person. I knew I would always be "Teacher" but I needed more. I wanted to be a wife. And so, the second definer in my life came in the form of being another's other half. To find your other half out of a world populated by billions of people is quite something. It leaves you in awe. And to this day it is still the single most important definer I have.

But I wanted more. I wanted to be a mother. It really was what I had wanted all along. And because God is so good, He gave me what I wanted. I became the mother of three children. Then we adopted our fourth. To be a homeschooling mother caused only a few moments of debate in my mind. For I was Teacher, Wife and Mother, so what better way to find my fulfillment than in the teaching of my own and my other half's children.

And I did. I often tried to explain it to my mother who thought I took on too much. I told her that in the end, it was really about me (this she could get as I was not the most selfless person growing up.) I could make the arguments about why I thought it was the best option for my children, but as I have explained on another post (The Home school Why) I always knew there were many great options in which my children could flourish. The reason I did it was because it made me feel fulfilled. I couldn't imagine being chauffeur and room mom only. I couldn't imagine being with my kids just a few hours a day. I knew they would be fine if I shared the burden of raising and educating them, I just didn't think I would be.

Fast forward. We adopted our fifth at the age of six. Life became too hectic to manage. I put all my kids in school. The transition for all of them was better than I could have imagined. I was right that there is not one right way. In many ways, I know they are perhaps even better off now as I watch them blossom and grow. An aside for the home schoolers: This does not mean I believe that school is better. Or that all kids are better off in school. Just as I did not believe homeschooling was the only option when I did it. I do not now believe school is. There is no right way to raise your kids. Ours was a unique situation and what my children had to adapt to required changes.

The changes we made were good for them. But were they good for me? Am I fine?

I am not. The dirty little secret is that all those room moms and chauffeurs have ways to define themselves. For some it is through volunteer work, part time jobs to help financially support the family, coaching, or like my mom they find fulfillment in cooking, or like my grandmother in the order of her household. They are good friends or marathon runners. It doesn't really matter WHAT it is. It is that IT is how you define yourself. It is how you find fulfillment. It is how you know who you are.

I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know how to define myself. I don't know how to feel fulfilled.

We recently got a little dwarf hamster. He is really quite cute. He has a little wheel he runs on. He goes round and round and never goes anywhere. They call him Nip because he bites. Perhaps Sheila would have been a better name. But no, because he is happy going round and round. He has no need to get anywhere.

Teacher...Wife...Mother...Teacher/Mom... I am still all of these and I guess I should be excited. I used to have the spirit of adventure, waiting for the next big phase. And it will come. I will get another definer. Before and between each previous stage there was a period of longing and confusion. Before and between each I would ask, "Is there more?" The answer was always "yes." And the result was always fulfillment. Who am I God? Who am I now at this point in my life? What should I use to define myself?

Please, Please, Please don't answer: Marathon Runner.



I

Diversity

Let me begin by saying I have always thought Diversity to be over rated. Not real diversity, but the modern concept of diversity for its own sake. Also, the definition of diversity bugs me. It simply means a room full of people who look different. Or in the model of corporate America, a room with more minority faces than white.

I remember a friend once telling me she had always wished to be part of a dinner club where the couples were made up of one white, one black, one Asian and so on. How strange, I thought. How about a dinner club of couples who all had a passion for food or conversation or drinking wine.

Diversity surely plays an important role in relationship. The relationship at the core of our society, the marital relationship, is based on the inherent diversity of the primary players. Men and women are by physical nature, complimentary. I think most will also tell you the differences go beyond mere physicality. We each bring something to the table. Society's survival depends on the diversity of men and women.

But the heart of all relationship is not diversity. It is unity. What creates friendship, teamwork, marriage is not what makes us different, but what we have in common. We belong to a church community because of our shared beliefs, we belong to a team because of our shared love of a sport or hobby, we commit to a marriage because of shared core values. Our friendships also require that we have something in common, something that unifies us. This can be shared values, geographical proximity, the need to get children to the same place at the same time, books, movies, Bunko, Poker.

The beautiful thing is that when we are looking for commonality, we often end up with diversity. We share a space with our neighbors and find unity in our desire to protect, beautify and socialize in that shared space. In doing so we find different values, faiths, hobbies. We carpool with the families of our children's friends. While establishing this pragmatic relationship, we discover people who know of things we do not: art, fishing, origami.

The liberal left knows what I know. Diversity doesn't have anything to do with skin color. To them, Justice Thomas, Condi Rice, Bill Cosby aren't really black. Why? Because while they say they want diversity, what they really want is unity. A unified ideological perspective. That is all well and good, but don't market your desire as a desire for Diversity.

When will the elites stop trying to force the subject. We common folk don't do it. I don't know many people who pick their friends based on physical realities nor do they exclude for a similar reason. We create communities because of what unites us. Sometimes the demographic may look to be homogenous. My school community is primarily Catholic. Well, that is because it is a Catholic School. My adoption community is made up of mostly racially mixed families. Hm, maybe because we all adopted internationally. In both cases, while we may look similar and we do have things in common, the groups are fantastically diverse because they are each made up of human beings.

This may sound heretical coming from a person with an incredibly diverse family. But I can assure you that diversity has never and will never be a goal of mine. I don't want diversity, I want unity. I want to find in those around me what unites us: What passions, goals, values we share. I want to surround myself with people who love something that I love. That does not mean they have to love everything that I love. My Literature Pals do not have to have a passion for the treadmill. My soccer moms do not have to read Shakespeare in their spare time. My dinner club does not have to read the Psalms on Thursday mornings.

But if we love nothing in common, I don't care what color, nationality, height, weight or gender they may be, I don't see a friendship there. And to try and FORCE one simply will not work. It goes against human nature. We are drawn to those who are most like us. And while the social engineers think we are all shallow enough to think in our deepest DNA this means to those who look like us, they are wrong. We are drawn to those who love what we love. Think back to the marriage bond. We are drawn to those who are physically most UNLIKE us.

And when we share a love of something beyond ourselves with another, we naturally love the other. We love them despite our differences. We love them because their difference adds to the relationship. We have a common goal, a unifying principal, and our diversity serves that goal, enriches our lives, shows us something we could not discover on our own.

So to the elites, the corporate watchdogs, the social engineers: Can we quit seeking diversity for its own sake and instead seek to find things to love, things to unite, things to enrich. In the unity we can't help but find diversity. True diversity, not fabricated or physical. The diversity of personality and of a unique soul unlike any other: The diversity that is worth of our love because it has nothing to do with the book cover, but the deep and rich story that is on the inside.

Images

Images are a recurring topic of conversation in my life. In various debates, my husband has emphasized the strength of our childhood memories. His inparticularly are the images he has of marriage from his own parents. My mother has images of her own mother sitting on the porch, the couch, the bed saying her rubber banded book of daily prayers. But she also recalls an image vivid in her mind of coming out of her room in the early hours of a morning to find her father, not particularly religious, on his knees in the bathroom in prayer. "I don't know if he had ever done it before or if he did it every day. I was not usually up at that time. But it something I will never forget."

Smells, sounds, a song, seasons in the year bring to our mind an image. Sometimes they are wonderful like the smell of baking cookies that fill our hearts with the warm love of our mother. We can see her in the kitchen in her apron, flour on her nose. Sometimes they are painful, like the dull ache that comes with the Monarch Butterfly each fall with the image of the letter written to a friend, returned because he died before he could read it.

We spoke today in Bible study, while discussing the Psalms, of our responsibility to form our children so they are not like chaff in the wind. I couldn't stop thinking about Images. What my children will remember long after they have to listen to what I say is not what I said. It will be images. What will they see?

What do I see?
I see my father's walk. I see it from the back: long even strides, shoulders slightly stooped. He is deep in thought not noticing the passing crowds.
I see my mother in the kitchen singing to herself.
I see my sister with a book.
My brothers riding bikes.
I see Family Dinners in a sunny room. Ping pong tournaments. Indiana Jones on the big screen.
I see our church, the woven brown and gold material of the pews, my father always on the end.
I see my grandpa's truck, the ashtray filled with coins, the bed filled with fishing gear.
I see my grandmother's drawers, a place for everything and everything in its place.
I see my other grandma's sweet smile.

What images will children have? Mine, yours, the guy over there?
It can give reason to pause, can't it? For it is not reasonable what we remember. It is what it is. My mom saw her dad pray once and only once. She saw her mom pray everyday. She remembers both, one for its rarity the other for its familiarity. I remember going to the movies as a family because it only happened once, but I remember family dinners because they happened every day.

Do I yell more than I smile? Do I nag more than I praise? Am I always in a rush? Will they remember the good things because they were so common or because they weren't? What will they see?

What gives me hope is that while our images do form us, I also think as time passes we form our images. The relationship we have with people determines what we remember most or at all. The kind of people we really think they are effects the kind of images we see. So, while I will surly try and leave my children with beautiful images, perhaps if I try harder to nurture our relationship and to make my own soul beautiful, my children in time will smooth out the edges, crop a few things here and there and see a mom who loved them more than life...with flour on her nose.

Viper's Tangle, a Book Review

I remember being taught an important lesson when reading Catcher in the Rye in high school: a narrator is not necessarily honest. A writer may choose to make his main character a liar. He may try and get his reader to find the truths through the lies. I didn't learn the lesson then, I think I liked Holden Caufield as an adolescent because I too wasn't necessarily honest. Neither of us would have admitted as much to ourselves. We simply could not see the hypocrisy in our own lives. I saw Houldon as he saw himself. Neither of us could see how we did not live up to our ideals or even to the images we had of ourselves. I hated him as an adult. Perhaps because I then saw him, and myself, for what we were in those earlier days: Liars.

Vipers' Tangle by Francois Mauriac also has narrator that can not always be trusted. However, he is not the least bit dishonest about his own flaws. In this confession of Monsieur Louis, an old and dying lawyer at the turn of the century. we find a bitter, yet honest portrayal of how he sees himself. He is greedy, vindictive, proud. He is hated by all and returns the hatred with a feeling of justified revenge. He also has a keen eye for seeing the flaws in others. While he admits that his heart has become a tangle of vipers, he rightly sees in his children and wife a nest of vipers outside of himself as well.

What begins as a letter to his wife explaining how and why he has disinherited his children of millions becomes a confession to himself, a means of therapy for a man who has no friends and no one else with whom to talk. While he is accused by his wife of seeing only evil, and admits freely that he has rarely seen good, he is also honest in recognizing beauty in certain souls: the complete lack of hypocrisy and desire to live a life according to his creed of a young seminarian, the carefree spirit and innocent joy of his orphaned nephew, the sweetness of his youngest daughter.

We learn that he can not always be trusted from the narrator himself. As he reflects on his life he begins to question his own honesty. He begins to wonder if he was only seeing half of the people around him, only half of himself. He realizes he acted like a monster, but that he was not a monster. He begins to try and look and see if the things he hates in those around him might also be superficial, if humans can be more than even they themselves can imagine.

What has been the cause of his wasted and monstrous life was a lack of love. He, for only a few months after he was married, believed himself capable of being loved. He found nothing in himself to love and did not believe anyone could ever love him. The three good people in his life were the only three who saw good in him. Because he believed everyone else expected him to be hateful, he was in fact hateful. He molded himself to the image he believed the world had of him.

With this realization he becomes an honest narrator. He searches desperately for the answer. What was it that he missed? An atheist and ruthless critic of the Church during his life, he begins to wonder if he had judged Christianity by its failed members instead of looking deeper. To his mind comes the image of the humble walk of the young pious seminarian, the faraway look on the face of his beloved nephew as he sat on the steps after church, and most painfully, the death of his youngest daughter who offered her death for him:

"In her delirium that she kept on saying-'For Pappa!-For Pappa!'...Do you remember the sound of her voice when she suddenly cried out, "Please God, I am only a child..." and how she stopped, and went on, "No, I can stand it, I can..."

Who then can love those who do not deserve love? Who then can teach man to love after so many years of hate? Louis desperately wants to answer those questions before he dies. "...A few more months, a few more weeks..."

With a narrator that can not be trusted, not because he is a liar, but because he is a man, Mauriac portrays the story of a soul searching without even knowing it for Divine Grace. If we are honest readers, we can see ourselves honestly in him. At the end of the day, we don't deserve love. All of us are in many ways, unlovable. To deny this fact, as Houldon would say, makes us a phony. We can only be loved if we first know we are loved. Divine Grace is at its heart LOVE. Does he find it? (If you don't like to know the endings of books you want to read, stop here.)

No, he does not find it. It finds hIm.

Little Bit of This and That

I haven't posted in awhile and I feel guilty. So, true to its name here is a post about just this and that:

I love fall. Everything about it: The clothes, the food, the weather, the sports, the holidays, the smells, the leaves. the memories.

I got the exterior of my house repainted and all the wood rot fixed. I even had the deck replaced. It looks wonderful.

I cling to the notion that when you feel farthest from God is when He is closest to you. I wonder if this is true when you are pushing Him away.

I have two free days a week from 8am until 3pm and two free half days. You would think my house would be cleaner.

I do not miss homeschooling, but I miss teaching. Does this mean I will go back to work? NEVER.

I am sick of politics.

I learned today at the doctor's office that Martha Stewart still has a magazine. I used to love that thing.

I love boys. I was one of those rare teachers who loved teaching boys, middle school boys at that. But several times over the last few months I have looked at my daughters and gushed with love just because they are girls. A son a son 'til you get him a home, a daughter a daughter when you're all alone.

Confession is still the thing I love and hate the most. I hate going but I love it after I have gone.

I read The Alchemist. Worth reading.

I am a big fan of water color pencils. I have made a couple little projects involving children's fingerprints and water color pencils. Though not an artist, I liked the results.

I think that when it comes to God, there are few fair weather friends. Most of us show up in earnest during the storm.

When you have kids, you take trips not vacations. Vacation evokes images of rest, relaxation. My family had a vacation this year. How do I know? I liked my kids more at the end of the week than at the beginning. I didn't need a vacation when I got home to recover from the trip we had taken.

I used to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Now I am just a master jack ass. Don't ask me why I wrote that, but I like it.

If you are still reading me, I thank you. I wish I had more of worth to say. Maybe someday I will.

Math

My math skills are a running joke in my family. I found an old SRA test from third or fourth grade, and I scored in the 7th percentile. I never learned my times tables. I remember trying to memorize them, a few stuck. But I didn't know what I was memorizing. They were just random numbers to me. I took the college prep math courses in high school and I think I may have even managed a B- one semester. That had to be in geometry which made a bit more sense. The Algebra was like Greek.

The first math course I ever liked was Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry my senior year in college. I had a great professor and the benefit of three and a half years of liberal arts education, you bet I waited until the last possible moment to fulfill that requirement. The professor required no prerequisite knowledge but asked us to use logic to figure out the proofs. I had my first glimpse at the Incredibly wonderful world of math.

When my oldest was five, one morning at the breakfast table he asked, "What is three plus three plus three? Is it nine?"' "Why yes" I answered after quickly using my fingers to check. "What is three plus three plus three plus three? Is it twelve?" "yes, why do you ask?" With a shrug he answered, "I don't know, I just think about it when I go to bed at night."

We were doing kindergarten math, but I decided to skip subtraction for awhile and move on to multiplication since he was interested in it. I quickly learned that if I asked him, "What is Three times Two?" He would answer, "Five." But if I asked him, "What is three two TIMES?" "He would answer, "six." Oh, so that is what the times tables are. I am sure I knew this, but to see how the changing of one word made it clear to a five year old made it clear to me. It became clearer when I would watch him double the answer to four times six to get the answer to eight times six.

Having taught math to a math kid for four years, I have learned a lot. Watching how his mind calculates and figures things out has shown me the incredible order of math. No longer just random numbers, I see patterns, lines stretching infinitely in two directions, parts of wholes and wholes made out of parts. He of course hates math. But because of him, I have come to love it.

I have always believed that because the Universe was created by God, everything in the universe could tell us something about Him. From an ant hill to the genetic make up of a human being to the rotations of the planets, we can catch a glimpse of who He is. I have never believed that anything, not even the Incarnated Word, could teach us everything about Him. Though the human mind is amazing beyond anything else in the Universe, it can never fully grasp the Divine in its entirety. I think if it did, it would explode into a million pieces. Perhaps this is why we enter His presence first as pure spirit.

I have just read an incredible article in this month's edition of First Things titled "The God of Mathematicians." In it, David P. Goldman reviews the work of Kurt Godel. Much of it is over my head, I admit. But one thing struck me as incredibly wonderful. "Godel's incompleteness theorems, critique of the continuum hypothesis, and examination of general relativity all have theological implications...He considered mathematical objects to be real and his research therefore to be empirical. He thought his theology thus to be an empirical one, founded on man's experience of the infinite fecundity of the creator's mind."

Godel believed in a personal God. According to Goldman, "Godel's personal God is under no obligation to behave in a predictable orderly fashion...we cannot construct an ontology that makes God dispensable. Secularists can dismiss this as a mere exercise within predefined rules of the game of mathematical logic, but that is sour grapes, for it was the secular side that hoped to substitute logic for God in the first place. Godel's critique of the continuum hypothesis has the same implications as his incompleteness theorems: Mathematics never will create the sort of closed system that sorts reality into neat boxes."

As I worked with my four year old this morning on math, it occurred to me that our's is a ten based system. How ingenious that we also have ten digits. From laying in bed and thinking about threes, to seeing how many different ways we can arrange our fingers, our Good God has given us so much to work with. But in the end, not even math can tell us everything about God. As human beings who can never truly know another human being, how many of us ever even master a decent self-knowledge, can we ever hope to master the Divine?

No, but our God has not left us to be bored. To contemplate the human mind's capacity to search for Him is to me the greatest sign of His existence. We could each spend one hundred life times searching a different part of His Universe and still not find all He has left for us to discover. And sadly, we could spend our one lifetime never looking for Him at all.