Sing!

Can you recall a facet of your being – maybe a precious one – that you have left behind as you grew into your adult life?

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

As I read a devotion earlier this month entitled “Sing Because You Have To,” I knew I needed to write about it. You see, I used to do that. Sing. From my first memories music has been an important part of who I am. My voice was my first instrument.

Molly Baskette, the devo writer, wrote that Bobby McFerrin had visited her church the week before. In 1992, I bought the album Hush that McFerrin had put together with Yo Yo Ma. “What will this be?” I wondered. Ma is a classical cellist; McFerrin is a… goofy vocalist. When the album arrived, I was blown away. McFerrin was still goofy but also amazingly versatile. (I recall reading on the album jacket that his father trained in and sang opera.)

In my childhood, I sang because I couldn’t not sing but I slowly lost it. Maybe it was when a couple of my parents’ friends came to play Bridge. I was sitting at the piano belting out whatever song when Daddy came in, rested a hand on my left shoulder and quietly said, “Why don’t you just sing?” Maybe it was H. Ray (what I heard the choir insiders calling the high school director) never affirming my voice. Or anyone, in college. Then, of course, there are all the other “not good enough” memories that I could never entirely let go of, even after EMDR left me accepting that I am indeed good just as I am.

In spring of my one year teaching exclusively vocal music, I was sitting at the choir room piano with a 15-year-old soprano, helping her learn “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera for competition. She was having trouble with the scale-wise passage just before the final note. Saying “It goes like this,” I sang it, then paused and played the final note. “I just sang a B flat” easily. I think that’s when I stopped being so shy about singing my piece.

But I still didn’t sing, except in church or on Fridays when I’d belt out pop or show tunes playing on a “Sabbath” playlist. Last summer, I auditioned for and was accepted into the Wausau Lyric Choir. Between Covid cautions and Lyme isolation, I’d barely sung in over a year – but I knew I could – so I spent the hours before the audition doing vocal warm-ups. (I read about auditions the day they began.) When I entered the classroom, the director asked a few questions about my experience singing in ensembles. She invited me to sing without the mask if I so chose (and I did). Then we began. I sang like singing was the best thing in the world. I grinned widely and swayed even through exercises. The audition results didn’t matter – I was singing because I sing, re-membering part of what makes me “me.”

I firmly believe she added me to the choir’s ranks more because of my presence in that audition than because of my pitch-sense (which is good). When sopranos and altos (vaccinated, socially distanced, and masked) gathered in September for our first rehearsal, I was excited. When we began singing I beamed inside my mask as the harmonies from 40 voices resonated within me.

Bobby McFerrin is now 71 and Parkinson’s is eating away at who he once was. He no longer has his vocal range but as Molly wrote, “he’s still got the chops: a wild range of syllables and tones that froth up from the leviathan depths of the ocean within him, each of them starting a conversation.”

At one point in the evening, there was a Q & A time. A youth, knowing about his illness, asked how he finds his fire. The virtuoso responded, “I get up every day, and I sing. I sing while I feed the dog. I sing while I get my wife breakfast, slowly. I sing because I have to. I still have so much music left inside of me.”

This, this is what I need to hold onto.

What is it that you need to re-member?

   

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A Priority for Healing

 After writing about my challenges with implementing healthy habits, I reminded myself that change will only come if I initiate – and practice – it. I realized that I do meditate – during nightly Reiki, when I’m in the sauna. (Sauna is great for cold winter nights but also for treating Lyme disease.) Still, I need consistency. So, after reworking some old old FlyLady files I’ve begun practicing some new routines. Meditation comes right after morning meds.

I’m letting myself off the hook about yoga. If my back stays healthy with only one practice per week, that’ll do for now. The Sudoku I’ll have to monitor. For the present, the beast is quiet. I haven’t played in enough days that I don’t have ghost images when I close my eyes. One day, one moment, at a time.

Recent weeks have been eventful. It’s almost three weeks since the first two Afghan families arrived in Wausau. I’ve only heard stories so far but once they’ve completed the 8-hour federally-mandated Community Resources education, I’ll begin tutoring one of the women in English. I’ve been wanting to get involved in ELL tutoring since hearing six years ago about the Spanish language program operating out of Appleton First United Methodist. I’m also in process to begin substitute teaching (again).

This is a second advancement in activity for me. In late summer, I began ringing with First Presbyterian’s handbell choir, joined a Tai chi class, and also auditioned for and was accepted into the Wausau Lyric Choir. None of this would have been possible two years, or even one year, ago.

Let me share a bit of my health journey.

I’d become increasingly tired, cranky and distracted since I was about thirty. My hormones were out of whack. When I told one doctor about my struggles with word recall, he dismissed it as stress. A few years later, I learned what fibroids were. Never were treatments suggested for anything. I slogged on because I didn’t know what else to do. (These are just some medical highlights.)

After a Hashimoto’s thyroiditis diagnosis in 2014, I assumed the chronic tiredness and some of the other symptoms were tied to that. Hashimoto’s is one of the autoimmune diseases that runs in my family. Each year, I’d requested testing during my annual exams only to learn that week that my requests had been ignored. I realize we each need to be our own advocates but I’d thought asking was enough. Being so fatigued, overworked and perpetually stressed, I never caught the omission.

In December 2019, I tested positive for Lyme disease. I’d been treated for Lyme back in 2010 after a telltale bullseye rash appeared on my arm following a tick bite. I was so tired that sitting on a short stool was too much effort – I just wanted to lie down. The doctor at the local clinic practically rolled his eyes when I said I thought I had Lyme disease – and I’m bad at reading non-verbals! – but he tested me and prescribed 7 days of Doxycycline. Yes, 7 days, less even than the recommended treatment in 2010. I wondered about this but assumed he knew what he was doing. (Big mistake!) The Lyme test came back negative but I’ve since learned that many Lyme infections are not caught on standard blood tests.

Seven days of Doxycycline and the fatigue had abated. And, unaware that the borrelia bacteria had only gone guerrilla, I forgot about it. After a very mild concussion a couple years later, I was puzzled that symptoms never ended but, through the years, worsened. (Only in studying chronic Lyme disease, did I eventually learn that any assault on the body can bring the Lyme out of hiding.)

I’ll pick up the story another time. For now, I want to assure us both that it has a good ending.

My most recent Lyme treatment – begun last April – was suggested by my sister Karen who also has chronic Lyme disease. She and her husband had found success with a certain herbal protocol which I’ve been practicing religiously for nine months. While the progress is slow, healing continues. If you have a practice you love, you’ll understand when I share how exciting it was last fall when my fingers moved more quickly over the piano keys than they had in many years. This month I was realized I would stall if I didn’t commit Chopin’s Etude in E major to memory. And I’ve nearly done it! 

In fairness, I also had a Lyme flare-up (an unpleasant return to past symptoms) this month after getting a tooth filled. Still, my mind and body are beginning to emerge from the shadow place that had been my world for too long. And it is wonderful!  

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A Backpackful of Privilege

For those living in the U.S., today is a federal holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If he had lived, he would have been 93 this weekend. Initially I planned to write about Dr. King but I think he would agree that talking about the justice work we still need to do (and doing it) honors his legacy far more.

I’m white. Though I didn’t know it, my parents were poor when I was a child. Still, our white privilege led to opportunities – for homes, education and wealth – that we would not have had if we had been black or brown. It’s from this place that I’ll be writing. (My assumption is that most, if not all, of my readers are white.)

Last summer, I reread Joseph Brandt’s Understanding & Dismantling Racism. My first reading, while in seminary, was eye-opening. Brandt writes not only that racism is caused by white people but also about how it affects us negatively, with a goal that we will develop strategies to dismantle racism.

My first job out of college was teaching bands and choirs in Navajoland (on the reservation). As a beginning band of 5^th and 6^th graders progressed through the tunes in the rote book, we eventually came to Ten Little Indians. I’d sung it many times as a child. I had to have learned it from someone. But as I looked at the lines of music and thought about the words of the song, I felt ashamed. How could I have ever thought this was okay?

I’m going deeper than usual but I ask you to keep reading. This is important.

Do you accept that you are racist? I wish it weren’t true but choosing not to be racist doesn’t work when we’ve benefited from racism all our lives. Peggy McIntosh (no relation that I’m aware of) describes it as an invisible knapsack of privilege, received at birth, that we can’t take off.

Racism creates two prisons, one is for the people of color who are oppressed, the other is ours. This second prison is shaped by all the boundaries – cultural, institutional, residential, relational – that divide and disconnect us from everyone else. If you take the analogy further, this prison is invisible. It functions only so long as we don’t recognize it. If someone suspects, tales are spun to lull them back into complacency. How?

From the time we are infants, we take in subtle identity messages – at home, school, church, wherever. Some are good and healthy; others are not. Do you recall any of these messages – that some people are better, smarter, prettier, lazier, less sensitive, more suited for certain jobs or roles? And how are “they” portrayed? As drunks? Or people you can’t count on?

Last year, the lone black Marathon County commissioner (where I live) introduced a resolution saying that the county affirms and supports all people. After months of discussion, it was voted down! We made national headlines.

Maybe you’ve unpacked some of your baggage around racism. I hope so. But as long as systems are in place that make it easier for white people to get homes, education and jobs – which naturally means money too – as long as there are white people who don’t recognize their racism even as they use us/them language, there is work for us to do.

Whole books are written on the subject of racism. I’m not so foolish as to believe I can cover the topic here. Still, I hope I’ve persuaded you to consider your own racism and to look further at how we – well-meaning, caring people – could possibly be racist. (Peggy McIntosh’s TED Talk is a good place to start.)

I have one point left to cover.

A Facebook friend who is black recently posted that black people are taking care of their part. It’s up to white people to do ours. It wasn’t the first time I’ve read this thought.

We are all caught in the web of racism. And it’s bad for all of us – not just for brown and black people who continue to be oppressed – but for white people as well. When we accept the socialization we’ve received that we’re better or more deserving, when we benefit from the systems that elevate us unawares while diminishing others, not because of any personal merit but simply because this society was established for the benefit of white people, then we can never be our best selves. We can never be the persons that God intends us to be. We can never, without lying, say we’re not racists.

We need to dismantle this evil for all of our sakes.

   

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Coping with Covid

Life has been a real roller coaster these last two years, hasn’t it?

Record storms and fires, a contested U.S. presidential election followed by an attack on the Capital when the sitting president didn’t like the results. Oh, and a pandemic that just won’t quit. (Who would have thought there’d be this kind of world-rattling pandemic in our lifetimes? Not I.)

Life has been turned upside-down for many of us.

• Remote work as kids attend school virtually.

• Rampant unemployment and resignations.

• Grocery store shelves emptied of toilet paper and hand sanitizer.

• Hospital oxygen supplies depleted.

• Masking. Having to consult the NIOSH Certified Equipment List to be sure the N95 masks you buy are legitimate. (According to the CDC, 60% of respirator masks sold in the U.S. are counterfeit.) The CDC suggests double-masking as a substitute which I did for tai chi class but with Omicron raging in Wisconsin I also ordered (real) KN95 masks.

Life has been and is likely to remain crazy for the foreseeable future.

How are you managing? Are the habits you set in place during calmer days still working? Are you leaning on less-healthy practices more than you'd like?

Because of being sidelined by Lyme disease – I’d been working on an exit-plan long before Covid-19 struck – my situation is a little different. These last 18 months were spent nurturing my body and mind and working toward healing. Until last fall, I’d confined myself to home except for medical appointments, 14-minute grocery runs and get-togethers with my bubble-friend. 

That said, my habits have not been good. Oh, food and drink intake are generally good (except for holidays) and I’ve been sleeping well. (What a delight that is!) But I have two struggles:

1. While I say that meditation and yoga are important for my well-being, I don’t make them happen. Every effort at scheduling fails. My Google calendar has three (3!) weekly commitments with lots of blank space. I make plans but too often don't follow through. 
   I am playing piano regularly so there’s good along with the mediocre. But what will happen when I start working again if I can’t make these into habits now?

2. Then there’s Sudoku. I learned to remove Solitaire from devices so that I don’t lose whole days mindlessly. I had hoped that deleting the Sudoku app from my tablet would free me from this black hole. But one day I found that I could casually play online. Oh, dear.
   I tell myself that having something with which to check my fatigue level is beneficial – if on good days I can solve “Evil” puzzles, then when I find “Hard” ones taxing I can cut back on other activities. This works (but at what cost?) since I can solve most puzzles. I say this not with pride but with an awareness that I spend entirely too many hours at it. 

I am a work-in-progress. That's okay.

I might write about shame another day. For now, I’ll simply say that when I feel inclined to keep something to myself I look for a way to shine light on it. That’s one of my reason for sharing this story. (None of us need more shame.)

Another reason is so that I might have credibility when I ask how you are managing. Life is wonderful but it can also be a bear – and there’s been a lot of bear lately.

If you’re reading this, you already know suggested ways to help yourself. Mayo Clinic offers a good list. I might add:

• Do more of what nourishes you and, where possible, less of what depletes you.

• Find ways to help others.

• Allow yourself time simply to be. We’ve been trained to be “human doings” but we need the other as well. “Being” freshens the mind and enhances creativity.

• Hum. Yes, this sounds strange. But years ago I read that humming eases anxiety and it works for me. If you’re not musical, hum tunelessly. It the physical action that matters.

That’s it for today. Stay healthy. Be safe.

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What I Know

“Write about what you know.” Anyone with an interest in writing has heard this, read this, more times than we can count – and with good reason.

Although most of us grew up within a family setting and many of us as adults work and/or live with others, no two lives are the same. We may share a similar environment, facing the same joys and predicaments. Yet we interpret each meeting, each moment, with a mindset shaped by past experiences of other people and other situations. And each day of living adds further input for a constellation of insights that expand and contract, refine and hold fast, tear down and rebuild our knowledge, opinions and beliefs. It’s truly amazing that our minds can keep up with this.

But I digress. I was talking about why it makes sense to write about what we know.

We tend to dive deeply into those topics that capture our interest – studying, researching and generally keeping our radar active so we can notice new tidbits about the objects of our passion. The longer we have been living with our interests, the more time our hearts and minds have had to refine our thoughts. What we were passionate about last year may not have stood the test of time while other concerns that we didn’t think were exciting may have surprised us, worming their way into our psyche. (This one particularly happens with experiences of failure, illness and other losses.)

What do I know? I know about . . .

• The joy of making music – alone and in ensembles.

• Teaching, as a band & choir teacher, as a homeschooling parent and as a substitute teacher.

• Parenting two wonderful people. Shepherding them through childhood and adolescence, I made plenty of mistakes. Now that they have grown, I learn that parenting really is a lifelong venture.

• My rocky marriage. Having divorced after 25 years, I don’t call the marriage a failure. A lot of it was painful and hard but I am who I am today partly because of that relationship.

• Living with undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome. While I learned of my AS only six years ago, looking back I realize that it touched every aspect of my life for as long as I can remember.

• Following a call to pastoral ministry that led to seminary and a long road to ordination, both while serving churches.

• Chronic Lyme disease that led to deteriorating health, the blindness of a medical system that does not acknowledge this disease has a chronic form, and my ongoing battle toward remission.

• Transitions – from marriage to single life, from health to illness, from employment to medical leave...

Of course, I could add more points to this experience list but, in short, I know – really know – only those things that are or have been a part of my life. The list of things I don’t know about is much, much longer. While I understand this intellectually, I sometimes get caught talking like I know more than I do. (But then don’t we all?)

I write all of this as an introduction into a new chapter in the Fierce Joy & Hope blog. I hadn’t intended to stop two years ago. It just happened. I lamented the loss but with the long hours at church and the growing fatigue caused by the Lyme disease I couldn’t do differently. I’ve been wanting to reboot for a long time but that fatigue left me with no energy to put toward that endeavor for almost as long.

At long last I am ready to try.

I’ve changed in the interim. Even without a pandemic, we all have. Some of my topics will be familiar to those of you who have read this blog in the past. Some will be new, reflecting the person that I am now.

If you used to find truth in my words, I invite you to join me in this journey to see where it takes us. If this is your first time reading my words and you find the reading worth your energy (all things take energy!) you might like to venture with us also, at least for a time. Either way, maybe you’d like to click the blue “Follow” button.

After hearing Dory say “Just keep swimming” in Disney’s Finding Nemo, I adapted the line and made it my own. (I'm sure I’m not the only one!) Whenever I’m facing a challenge, when I have a chore to do or a call to make but not the stamina, I tell myself, “Just keep breathing, Jayneann.”

Until we meet again, through all that may come your way, “Just keep breathing.”

    

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