Fall Fun

Sprëchen zie fric and frac

Yep, I'm in the middle of learning a German role.  I don't speak German.  I mean, not one bit.  I sang one piece in German when I was 18 for a competition, which I lost to an uppity 16 year-old that I hated (stage mom, supercute-- ugh!), and never went back.  So, here I am, with Google translate and a Cassell's German/Engish dictionary I picked up at Westsider Books for $11, trying to translate stuff like this:

ein roter Tau fiel mitternachtig, der macht die Naßgrünen moche trächtig.

Which means:

A red dew fell at midnight, making the damp green newts horny.

Did I mention I'm playing a witch??

This is actually going to be quite fun-- I love the sing-songy lines, and the fact that I get to play such a ridiculous, mean, awful, spiteful, nasty character.  And wow!  Navigating the sounds of german first-off is a bit tricky, but once you get it, watch out!  This witch can bite your head off just with words!

The joke about mezzo-sopranos is that they only play three roles:  witches/bitches/britches--- meaning evil women, loose women, and men.  Women often play young men in opera-- they're called 'pants roles'.  I should probably learn a role or two since I'm tall and have long legs, but I've been resistant for a long time-- I'm pretty sure I'd crack up if I had to pretend to make love to a woman.  Still, you never know until you try....

Hope at the Crossroads

Yeah, I walked into a wine shop after meeting with my Spiritual Director, and picked these two wines randomly.  I didn't even realize the names until I pulled them out at home.  Then I laughed pretty hard.

 

Going Native, Part 3

It happened so quickly, I didn't realize the significance of it until an hour later.

I was heading to the gym last night and a thunderstorm was brewing. (Little did I know that a tornado was touching down in Brooklyn at that very moment, but that's someone else's story.  It was just a regular old thunderstorm to me.)  One of the street vendors was folding up his purse stand at the corner of Lex and 85th-- I had walked by a couple of days earlier and noticed a purse that I wanted but didn't have the whatever to actually stop and buy it-- hutzpah?  time?  cash? Who remembers. Anyway, I squeezed under his makeshift plastic awning, grabbed the purse, and quickly start bartering and talked him down by 5  bucks.  Great.

Only later did I realize I had finally purchased the New York City Girl Bag-- that purse that can fit all the regular purse stuff, plus your lunch, three books, a change of shoes, and a potential change of clothes because who is ever home anyway and you can't leave it in  your car--all in a deceptively small looking fashionable bag. 

I'm surprised I lasted this long. I used it last night when I went downtown to hear Over The Rhine (awesome show at a very cool winery) and was able to tote my stilletoes to the show and then throw my hefty clogs in there no problem.  Today I went to my coaching and was able to fit three scores in it!  I'm in love.  I'm off to my church's retreat this weekend and was actually contemplating trying to see if the purse could fit all my toiletries and two changes of clothes, and realized I had gone a bit too far.  Still, a whole new and wonderful world is open to me...it's a new day.

In the Boat

I read Mark 4 about Jesus going out into the boat with his disciples and calming the storm as a Lectio Divina spiritual exercise yesterday.  It was eye opening what came out for me.  I know enough of you who read my blog will appreciate this, so thought I'd post it--

I took the place of a disciple working along side Jesus.  What I noticed is that she worked all day too, and then Jesus, at the end of the day, has her continue working by going over to the other side of the Lake.  He goes and takes a nap, she continues working by sailing the boat.  The storm comes up.  I’m sure she worked really hard trying to keep the boat afloat—she only wakes Jesus up once the boat is about to sink with this panicked expression—Don’t you care if we drown?  Jesus calms the storm, looks at her and says, Why are you afraid?  Have you no faith? 

As I focused on that rebuke I got really angry.  Finally, I took up my side and argued with Jesus—that’s unfair.  What do you mean I don’t have faith?  I have faith enough to work all day with you, get into this boat with you.  That’s just mean.  The storm comes up.  I have faith and I work hard, trusting that you will ride me through the storm.  What was I supposed to do?

What should the disciple have done?  How was she to exercise her faith? 

I am certain that a biblical scholar would find fault with my conclusion, but the point here is not to be biblically accurate, it's to insert yourself into the story and see what Jesus is saying to you.   I finally came to the conclusion that she should have woken Jesus up a lot earlier.  And said to him, LORD, there’s a storm brewing.  I need to be honest with you—I'm scared.  Please help me.

Jesus is saying to me, Joanna, wake me up, sit at my feet, and tell me what's the matter.   I have an open invitation from Jesus to not keep the things that are weighing me down to myself, but take them to him with the expectation (which is the key here) that He is listening and can and will help me in a meaningful way.  I need to wake Jesus up, be honest about my need, and say, can we take a look at all of this?  So I started. 

Spiritual Direction

I went out to the hinterlands today, also called New Jersey, to meet up with C., a member at my rockin' church, an IV staffer, and a spiritual director.  I had heard her name around church, I'd met her on a couple of occasions, and a few weeks ago I ended up praying with her after church in a really nice, normal sort of way, about a picture I had gotten in prayer.  One thing lead to another and then there I was on the train to meet with her for direction.  It was one of those experiences where I thought this was going to happen months ago, but knew I didn't need to do anything-- it would come to me when the time is right.  Wow, I sound very Yoda-ish there, but its the truth.

It was great to meet with her.  It was relieving to meet with her.  It was great to be in a place with time carved out and to unload on a spiritually discerning person the truth about me right now and know she wasn't going to freak out, worry about me, or give me paint by number instructions about what to do next.  I cried my eyes out, I was articulate, she asked good questions, we kept digging, I got some clarity, I felt relieved and lighter and less a mystery to myself.  A lot of things that I was perceiving as failure was actually growth, albeit painful growth.  Where I am makes sense and how I'm feeling makes sense.   She then gave me some suggestions about how to go about praying in the coming months out of the Ignatian spiritual practices.  I'm looking forward to seeing what comes of it.

Which just leads me to thankfulness.  God is so kind.  What a good gift.  

9/11

I awoke a bit later than usual this morning, having attended NYC's Fashion Nite Out-- basically, every retailer in New York opens its doors from 6-11 p.m. and plays cocktail party host to thousands of people out to looky-loo through the stores.  My friend M and I hit Manolo Blahnik, Talbots, Tiffany's, Sephora, Bloomingdales, and Louis Vuitton.  The winners for best food and drink were Talbots (lots of white wine and huge bowls of candy) and Sephora (champagne splits for everyone!!).  So, yeah, I woke up a little late.

I decided to stroll down to Cafe Amrita, a very groovy eurocafe replete with coffee bar and a TV always tuned to soccer, for some coffee and pastry and to read the paper.  It was delightful to sit, overhear conversations and people watch.  The weather is glorious here, and it was just lovely to watch the world go by.  I recalled a statement made by my voice teacher after he underwent open heart surgery-- 'No matter what happens in your life, Joanna', he said, 'existence is pretty incredible'.  Sitting in that cafe this morning, I'd have to agree.  The privilege of being alive, is a beautiful and fragile gift.

So that was my profound moment of the day.   Next, I decided, since its the kind of thing I never do, to go down to the World Trade Center site and just see what was going on.

I confess, I was fascinated.

Once I got topside from the subway ride, the first thing I noticed were the cops.  They said the police presence was going to be overwhelming, and it was, but not in an oppressive way.  Camera crews were everywhere, and I mean everywhere.  Here was a vertically challenged lady trying to file her story:

Next I ran into a group of fundamentalist Christians from North Carolina handing out tracts in one of the many impromptu holding pens the cops had set up for people who wanted to assemble.  I think you just got in your pen and did your thing.  Passerby's could watch you and talk to you but it did make a clear point of dilineation between protester and pedestrian.  It was kind of like the zoo. Anyway,  I'm not sure if they were here to protest the mosque or what, but here were there t-shirts:

I heard them singing praise songs to Jesus when I was finally leaving the area.

Right beside these guys was the group that thinks that 9/11 was an inside job.  They were well organized and did the T-shirt thing too.  I have their tract and honestly, I have no idea what they are talking about, but I'm going to do some google searches later on tonight.

I finally got down to Ground Zero, and the official 9/11 televised memorial service was still going.  It must have been over two blocks away from where the barricades were set up for tourists-- we couldn't see anything from where we were.  We could listen, though, and hear the names of the victims being read, and taps being played.  It was very moving.    Everyone was respectful and extremely quiet. There were few to no signs.  Instead, a lot of American flags, and this piece of artwork:

The mosque protesters were around the corner at the Park51 site, and at about 45 minutes before their start time, they didn't have a lot of people there, but they did have this guy:

He's really got to believe in what he's doing to wear that on a day like today.

The people protesting the people protesting the mosque had a much better turnout, from what I could tell.  They were an interesting group-- ex-Hippies, people with communist leanings, some Buddhist monks were there, college students, a handful of obviously Muslim people.  All peaceable, very energized:

I did have a very interesting conversation with a woman in line for the bathroom at Starbucks with me (God bless Starbucks for being the public restroom provider of NYC!).   She was two blocks away on 9/11 and now writes for an online newspaper warning people of the dangers of Sharia law and Islam.  We had a cordial conversation in the bathroom line, and to my surprise practically everyone in the line weighed in, too. 

I gotta say, I left feeling proud of a country where all these people-- half of whom I'd put in the crazy crackpot category-- can exercise their right to assemble, their right to speech.  I wondered what all the cops thought about this.  And then I went to Trader Joe's.