To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Dreams feel real while we're in them. It's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.

Throughout human history, dreaming has fascinated and mystified humans. One of my friends tells a story of when her older brother was 5. He came down from his bed one night and told his parents: "Mommy! I saw pictures on my eyelids when I slept!" How fascinating and sweet that a small little boy had to be told that the pictures on his eyelids were a different kind of reality.

In a sense, dreaming mirrors the reality of life. When we dream, we enter a different sort of reality that's a part of our larger reality. When we wake from dreaming, we come back to the waking world, the "real world." But, just as dreams end, this life will pass by, when we die will we wake into the reality that we're actually meant for. The illogic of dreams we find jarring when we are aware that there is a greater world we are meant for. When we realize that there is a greater, deeper, more real reality that we are born for, then this world will seem like a passing dream.

Rose, the sanguine young heroine of Shadow of the Bear, ponders, "Have you ever felt that there was something going on in life that not everyone was aware of?...As though there’s a story going on that everyone is a part of, but not everybody knows about—a sort of drama, a battle between what’s peripheral and what’s really important. As though the people you meet aren’t just their plain, prosaic selves, but are actually princes and princesses, gods and goddesses, fairies, gypsies, shepherds, all sorts of fantastic creatures who’ve chosen to hide their real shape...Or have forgotten who they really are." The possibility that there is a deeper reality to our world is exciting and exhilarating. When we shuffle off this mortal coil, we will enter something so real, this world of ours now will seem like a passing shadow.

Now we dream, soon we will awake. That's the hope.

Heavenly Music

During the Christmas season the masses are bombarded with a multitude of jingles, ditties and songs that abound in good cheer, merriment and roasting chestnuts. However, the glitter and gayety of these songs that blast merrily away in shopping malls and on the radio lack what makes this season truly joyful. While it may make us all wriggle with delight that “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”, it cannot fill our souls with the joy and awe of Christ’s birth. ‘Christmas cheer’ and ‘gifts of the season’ are glorified and celebrated for their own sake without the slightest hint toward the greatest gift that was granted to mankind, that of salvation from our sins and the gift of eternal live with God. Without the birth of Christ, there would be no Christmas season. Without the joy and grace rendered to us by Christ and his birth there would be no cause for celebration. In the hustle and bustle of Christmas preparations, buying gifts, putting up decorations and baking cookies we all too often forget to prepare our souls for this holy season. The Savior of the world is born, let us all raise our voices in joyful praise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3vpAWW2Zc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXkgqpVVpTg

Magic

Magic.

Being lost in your own world. With music. On a bus.

Going from home to home.

People surrounding you can't hear the strains of Wagner in your ears.

The dark of the night world is lit up by the starry streetlights and cars.

The straining of the violins breaks your heart.

Wonderfully Made

One very comforting thought I've had recently is that God loves the idea of each person. Loves it so much He had to create us.

There's a very special bond between the creator and the created, because when you make a work of art, you pour yourself into it. And there's a certain mark- a trademark, if you will- on your designs, because they take on a bit of your personality. Your creations smack of you-ishness. Take, for example, the different authoresses of this blog. I don't even have to look at the bottom of the post to know who penned the entry. Each of us have our own distinct voice, vocabulary and writing style. It's quite beautiful if you stop to think about it.

So stop.


Think about it.


Now continue reading.


Now, sometimes we'll create a piece of art that doesn't come out quite as we hoped. It's imperfect. Flawed. We wish it would be better-more like the ideal we envisioned in our heads. God, however, only creates perfect works of art. God's idea of, say, Catherine, is perfect. It's a masterpiece-a work of art that shows off, as no other work of His can, some particular aspect of Himself. He formed the idea of her-of Catherine, with her own Catherine-ish qualities and quirks, her idiosyncracies and beauties. He thought of them all; He laughed with joy; and He fell in love. He fell in love so much that He had to create her. That's truly mind-boggling. God loves us so much that He creates us. I don't even understand how that works.

God wants our love. And, (as I feel like we've discussed before on this blog, and as many greater minds have been discussing since time began,) love is a choice. We have to make the choice to love God, or else our "love" is nothing worth. He can't program it into out hearts that we love Him. Love cannot be forced or coerced, it is a gift.

"If a man were to give all the riches of his house for love, It would be utterly despised." Song of Songs 8:7

God's love has breathed us into existence. Our love simply gives ourselves back to Him, since we really belong to Him anyways. The Creator who loves us so infinitely and indesciribably simply wants our love in return. But here's the catch: we've made the horrendous, disastrous, catastrophic, mistake of choosing not to love Him. How absolutely tragic. We only exist because of love, yet we constantly turn our back on Love himself. Imagine how desperate He would be to win our love, to woo us back to Himself.

I opened to my beloved;
but my beloved left; and had gone away.
My heart went out when he spoke.
I looked for him, but I didn’t find him.
I called him, but he didn’t answer.
The watchmen who go about the city found me.
They beat me.
They bruised me.
The keepers of the walls took my cloak away from me.
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved,
that you tell him that I am faint with love.

And the Word became flesh, and lived and died for us. Because He loved the idea of each person so infinitely that He would stop at nothing to save us. He came up with of the idea of His mother Mary, of Pontius Pilate, of each Roman soldier who scourged Him, of Judas, of everyone of us sinners-of you and me. He thought of us. Every single person who put Christ to death was a precious being that He had thought of, and loved so much that He wanted to create them. We were His idea, and He loved us so much He gave up His life for us.

I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go,

The moral of the story: God loves you. We hear it so often, but we don't listen to these words. God loves you. He likes you-He wanted to make you! He's not like: "Well, since I'm forced to make someone, I might as well throw together a Becca." He fell in love with each of us so much that He wanted nothing more than to bring us to life, so that we might share in His life. Everything God makes is infinitely and incandescently beautiful, including us. We are a masterpieces, made by the Master Artist.

Behold, you are beautiful, my love.
Behold, you are beautiful.

God loves you.

April 20th, 1999

Today marks the 11th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings. My dear friend and columbinus cast-mate called me late last night, after having spent the whole day holding back tears, and then finally being overwhelmed by them. She kept saying: "Why am I feeling like this? Why can't I let this go?"



There are so many people whose lives have been completely changed by the events that took place this day. And I feel disrespecful, in a way, saying that my own life has been changed by this day as well. I haven't lost a child, a friend, or a sibling. I haven't lived through blood-spattered halls and the sounds of gunshots, jeers, moans and screams. The pain all those people felt is something almost sacred, that I can't presume to even begin to understand or fathom. Their grief is something I can never feel.



But, without a doubt, Columbine has changed my life. columbinus was a show that changed me. I've been immersed in this story for over three months, and closing the show felt like coming up out of the water for a giant, refreshing breath of air. I was able to let go of the burden of the story; yet there's no way I can let go of the story itself. And I shouldn't.



There was one rehearsal, towards the beginning to the process, which was really difficult for me, and I broke down afterwards. We hadn't even started dealing with the Act II Columbine story, but I had just finished reading Columbine, by Dave Cullen (one of the reporters who covered the shootings), and I was so weighed down by the story. After rehearsal, I spent a good hour and a half talking with our awesome director and stage manager, and trying to find words to describe the feelings of grief that overwhelmed me. Then, on my way home, I stopped by the adoration chapel, and kneeling in the back, I looked up at the Eucharist. I realized I was sitting in front of the one person who had never let that story go; and He was still feeling the pain, the sorrow and the grief as acutely as He did that very day. As much as I was grieving for those 15 people, and as much as I loved them; He loved them infinitely more, and was grieving for what took place on April 20th. I realized that I could share all that sorrow with Him; He understood perfectly what I was feeling.
As a Littleton parent said: "There's no such thing as closure; they're our kids and we don't want to put them behind us." We don't always have to carry the burden of the story, but we can never let it go. Every single person deserves to have their story told-and never forgotten. It's the least we can do to try to right the wrong that was done to them.




There's a beauty and an awe in knowing there's a whole communion of people whose lives have also been touched by these events-who wake up on April 20th, knowing why this day is different from all other days. And now I'm a part of that connection.
We ARE Columbine.



We began columbinus in winter. We ended it in spring. Winter sometimes seems as though it will go on forever-we forget what it feels like to walk outside without freezing to death; feels like when the sun shines and the birds sing. By March, we begin to wonder if we'll ever see the spring. But spring always comes. Winter cannot last forever. Spring always comes.

That's the hope.





"We die many times and experience many forms of grief; but love...it never fails. "

"There are no words to convey how sorry we are for the pain that has been brought upon the community as a result of our son's actions. The pain of others compounds our own as we struggle to live a life without the son we cherished. In the reality of the Columbine tragedy and its aftermath, we look with the rest of the world to understand how such a thing could happen.
[...] We envision a time when circumstances will allow us to join with those who share our desire to understand. In the meantime, we again express our profound condolences to those whose lives have been so tragically altered. We look forward to a day when all of our pain is replaced by peace and acceptance."
~The Klebold family -- 4-15-2000



"Ever since that day we've been obsessed with moving on or getting back...so we've gone to gun control, the music, computer games, the school, the police, the parents...looking for someone to blame. But we always find ourselves back where we started asking the same question...

Why?"

I did that whole open-up-the-Bible-to-any-random-page-and-read-the-first-verse-you see-thing today, and received this little gift from God:


But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them.


In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be an affliction,


and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of others they were punished,



their hope is full of immortality.(Wisdom 3:1-5)

Heavenly Music

It has been said that God speaks to us through music. When hearing truly beautiful music our human souls are lifted and elevated to unimaginable heights. Music has the ability to express to our senses the beauty of God's presence in the world and to realize his greatness.

Ave Maria - Verdi



O Mio Babbino Caro - Puccini

Of Mozart and Midterms

There is just something about the breathtaking beauty of Mozart's Requiem that stirs the soul. These dark days during midterms require something to remind us students that we are not going it alone.

Lacrimosa


Domine Jesu


Kyrie

PHF - 95

You know that there is still hope and light in a world where a song about getting hugs from fireflies becomes a smash hit. I give thanks for those who try to maintain a sense of childlike wonder in a world that can be so dark and cynical.

Perfect Humility

"I suddenly remembered that on one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child-- not in a conceited child, but in a good child-- as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised. Not only in a child, either, but even in a dog or a horse. Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures--nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment--a very, very short moment--before this happened, during which the staisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enought to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that is is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex forever will also drown her pride deeper than Prospero's book. Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself; "it is not for her to bandy compliments with her Sovereign."

----C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory"

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever...

Of Homecoming and Haydn

[hearing Balthazar sing] An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him.

~ Benedick, William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

Here are the two little ditties that I am going to sing with the college chamber choir for the homecoming concert tonight. I hope you enjoy them!

Haydn's Te Deum

Vivaldi's Gloria

Music to Sooth the Soul

"If music be the food of love, play on..."

~Count Orsino, William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

A lovely aria from Handel's Rinoldo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yPfrpWyCF8