some blog updates

You may or may not have noticed a few changes here.  

1.  I changed the blog title to "this sacramental life" because I feel like it's more succinct than my previous title and pretty self-explanatory.  I realized this when I was talking to a new friend last week, trying to explain all the titles, subtitles and taglines!  

2.  Because the phrase "livingpalm" is no longer part of the blog title, I removed it from the blog address.  It's now just my name, plain and simple.  :)  "tamarajmurphy.blogspot.com"  Hopefully I'll never outgrow that.  Never mind.  I discovered that changing my url messed up all my links -- not worth it so back to livingpalm.blogspot.com it is!

3.  I updated my header picture just because it was time for an update.  Same with the color scheme on the page.

Please feel free to let me know if any of these changes affect you negatively for any reason.  Well, any reasons but stupid ones.  

I'll be back soon with new posts for this week!

mourning friends

there was the time you called me up and met me with your tandem bicycle

we rode eight miles back to your house then

picked out all the rocks in the yard by your swimming pool

because your father wanted it.

only then we collapsed on the grass

and I cried next to you because he had broken up with me.

there was the time your uncle died

and I couldn't find the Polish church and almost missed

you singing at the funeral

but I walked in right in the middle of the song.

when you sat back down in the hard pew

next to me I held your hand

because I didn't know what else to do.

there was the New Year's Eve our house

caught fire and my babies' clothes

all smelled like smoke.

you said come over and bring your laundry.

you took the bags from me at your front door

and told us to sit on your couch and take a nap.

you covered us in the red and blue quilt.

there was the Sunday night at church

i was so mad  i banged the door handle 

to leave the room in the middle of the meeting.

when I came back to my seat even though I didn't want to,

you reached your arm back through the crack between the

maroon and metal chairs and touched your hand to the top 

of my shaking knee. and then i sat still.

there was the Friday morning we drove to your

parents' house instead of sitting at the dining room table

in Endwell to pray.

we brought sheet music and you brought out the 

hymn books and we tried to find all four notes in the harmony

while we stood around your mother's bed.  she smiled at us and 

craned her neck to the spoon your father held out with ice chips.

we played her piano and the toddler plunked extra notes.

that was the last time I saw your mother
before she died.

*this is to conclude this week's theme, mourning with those who mourn.  *

*also, I'm linking with Em's friends today.*

Two Mourning Stories: Lars and the Real Girl & Henri Nouwen

Lars and the Real Girl

Sewing Circle Lady 3 : Well that's how life is, Lars.
Mrs. Gruner: Everything at once.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : We brought casseroles.
Lars Lindstrom: Thank you.
Lars Lindstrom: [Lars looks around the sewing circle. The three ladies are knitting and doing needlepoint] Um, is there something I should be doing right now?
Mrs. Gruner: No, dear. You eat.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : We came over to sit.
Sewing Circle Lady 3 : That's what people do when tragedy strikes.
Sewing Circle Lady 2 : They come over, and sit.

Henri Nouwen's Latin American Journal:

"There is one more thing I want you to do," said Ann, when the people had left the church. "There is a lady here who lost her only son of sixteen years last month. His name was Walter. She wants you to go to the cemetery with her, pray with her, and bless the grave." I found the woman sitting on a bench in the village square. As I touched her, she started to cry bitterly. It was a sad story. Last month, Walter went to Cochabamba with a truck loaded with produce and people. As usual, the younger boys were standing on the running board of the truck holding onto the door. At one point, Walter lost his balance and fell from the truck without the driver noticing. He fell beneath the wheels and was crushed by the back tires of the truck. They took him in the truck in the hope of reaching the hospital in Cochabamba in time, but he died on the way. 

Ann and I drove with Walter's mother in the jeep to the small cemetery behind the hospital. There we found the little niche where Walter's body was laid. We prayed and I sprinkled the place with holy water and we cried. "He was my only son, and he was such a good boy," his mother said with tears in her eyes. Ann told me how helpful Walter had been in the parish and how everyone was shocked by his death.

I couldn't keep my eyes from the woman's face, a gentle and deep face that had known much suffering. She had given birth to eight children: seven girls and Walter. When I stood in front of the grave I had a feeling of powerlessness and strong desire to call Walter back to life. "Why can't I give Walter back to his mother?" I asked myself. But then I realized that my ministry lay  more in powerlessness than in power; I could give her only my tears."

--From Gracias! by Henri J. Nowen

Hospitality for Those Who Mourn

"Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted." -- Jesus

Impromptu Public Mourning Installation, 2007

In other parts of the world and other civilizations in ages past, mourning is a cultivated, communal act.  In our North American culture where individual experience and privacy are valued above almost all other ideals, we've lost the art of mourning.  With fresh disasters and tragedies wreaking havoc across the globe on an almost daily basis, it seems that for us to truly be present in this age we will need to regain a communal language and posture for mourning.  In my humble opining, the first step is to jettison our knee-jerk reflex toward sentimentality, cliche and kitsch.

There is nothing dignified about mourning.  Nothing airbrushed.  Nothing photo-shopped.  Nothing water colored, slick, or marketable.  Mourning is guttural, physical, visceral, sloppy, and often, embarrassing. We best welcome mourning when we refuse the temptation to pretty it up. We best welcome mourning when we enter into the experience of another and allow ourselves to be caught up in the physical indignity of it all.  

Mourning with those who mourn is an act of welcome.  An invitation to the wounded to feel sorrow, fear, anger, despair, loss without judgement.  Without feeling the need to see the silver lining or see the reason for everything or to quote the perfect Bible verse.  Not only to welcome the mourner, but also to share with them the bread of suffering.  

Mourning with those who mourn is not counselling, although that has its place.  It is not construction, clean up, dispensing supplies or sermons, although all those things have their rightful place.  It is not writing a blog post or a song, watching the news, or raising funds.  Mourning, in its purest sense, is ritualized, costly unresolved sharing of suffering.  It is more shiva than multi-colored lapel ribbons.  It is more wake than t-shirt slogan.   It is more slavery spiritual than worship anthem.  It is more Lamentations than Proverbs.


It is almost totally physical presence and almost nothing of commercial enterprise. 

In its purest form, mourning is a mutual welcome.  The wounded needs also to make an invitation to join in her unpredictable grief.  One of the saddest experiences of my life happened during the flood clean up in 2006.  After several days of productive work mucking out houses and offering encouragement to flood victims, we were flustered by the stubborness of one elderly woman.  She sat outside her river-soaked house, inside her four-door sedan, windows closed.  We tapped on the glass, "Can we go into your house with you and help you clean?"  She  pushed the lever to lower the window a crack, shook her head, smiled politely.

"No, thank you.  It's too messy.  I don't want anyone to see it."

Nothing we offered changed her mind.  She refused to allow us to enter her experience with her.  I could tell she was ashamed, of what I do not know.  Either way, there was no welcome there.  She did allow us to pray with her, but what do you say?  God help this senior citizen to have the supernatural strength to muck out two stories of her house all by herself.  To comfort herself.  To be OK all by herself. 

Doesn't seem to be the right words, but what could we do?  We prayed something through the partially-opened window and, unwelcomed, walked away.  

Both missing out on the gift of comfort.

*On this subject of hospitality to mourners, you might like to read this post also.*

Mourning With Those Who Mourn: mixtape

The days have gotten away from me.  Also, I haven't been sure what to post this week.


Today I figured it out.


I've been watching almost hourly updates from the disastrous flooding in my hometown.  From this distance I'm more able to see the big picture of the literal ebb and flow of water covering the region and the more intangibly measured emotional flux of the region's people.  If I were a psychologist I might be able to chart the peaks and valleys in some long-researched grid:  the adrenaline of anxiety to the relief of safety plummeting once again to the exhaustion of recovery efforts and frustration with the severe limitations of this new devastated reality. 


And I am reminded of the Church's needed presence in, yes, the doing of relief, but also the being of grief.  We are a people made whole by the physical life, death, burial and resurrection of God-made-man, Jesus.  Surely, Jesus-the-man, born into a specific time and place, gave himself to labor.  We know it wasn't just a super-spiritual fortitude that made him physically capable of withstanding the road to the cross.  Certainly, long years of sweaty labor prepared him to haul the weighty wood uphill.  He was Christ in flesh, to do the laborious living of men.  He became human to fully live out the blood and sweat of earth, but not blood and sweat only.


Also tears.

Jesus wept as a man as well as labored.  He gave the gift of both doing and being.  Often, we know he gave Himself wholeheartedly to celebration, feasting, rejoicing.  We also see him sit with suffering, mourn with those who mourned, weep.  

Increasingly aware of human suffering, both in the visible and invisible realms, I want to explore the means of mourning. 

track 1: photography

1937 Arkansas flood refugees 
Edwin Locke

track 2: music

track 3: poem

I wrote this in the summer of 2006 after a couple of weeks of mucking out Conklin.

there are no words

flood waters brown and thick with garbage and waste
sepia-colored stench
numb and sweaty faces of people whose
lives are piled in rotting mounds on muddy grass
and yet,
very few tears
(maybe there is no liquid left to cry)

Austin Music, Nice to Meet You: Guest Post

[guest post by Andrew Murphy]

One of the first sight-seeing ventures I partook (partook upon? Partook in? Took part in?) One of the first sight-seeing extravaganzas me and my brethren pertook...

One of the first things we did when we got to Austin was take a look at some record stores. The first one we checked out was Waterloo Records on North Lamar Blvd. From what I understand this is the Cadillac of record stores in Austin. It's near the behemoth Whole Foods Utopia that is also somewhat of an enigma for those new to the city (or any city with a Whole Foods). One of the awesome things about this organic marketplace is that it has it's own free parking garage. For those not willing to spend the better part of their paycheck on locally-grown sugar cane or coffee strong enough to give you telekenisis, you can still use the massive parking structure and venture outside to see the nearby attractions (disclaimer: I'm not sure you can actually legally do this, but it's pretty easy to do. I am also now becoming aware that I have shared way too many thoughts and feelings about Whole Foods, and this post is about record stores). 

Anyways, my visits to both Whole Foods and Waterloo Records were pleasant. However, Waterloo's breadth of options and new releases is slightly contradicted by its prices. The store doesn't have a great selection of used CD's (i.e. cheap), therefore the average customer really has to do some digging around to find a good deal. What I liked about the store, however, was the atmosphere and it's overall exuberance for music in the here-and-now. No other record store I went to had giant posters of new releases plastered on it's front walls. There's a respect for the artists making music right now that pushes their creations into a realm of theatricality and euphoria, as if a new release by an esteemed outlet isn't just something you can steal on the internet, but an experience and story that will shed itself new light when explored through a physical copy. I'm probably taking Waterloo's huge posters too seriously, but it made me think of CD's as, basically, a different form of movies. Cut to three weeks after my first visit, and I have made the shift from MP3's to CD's. I also bought a beeper and some pogs.

Right down the street from Waterloo is Cheapo's. This place is pretty self-explanatory. If you want cheaper options, it might be for you. The negative is that to get to the gems at low prices, you also have to dig through some really high-octane garbage. I'm not even that picky when it comes to music, but I'm pretty sure when your store is selling a used Blind Melon B-sides collection, maybe some discernment is in order. But I kid, folks. I have visited Cheapos more than once and found some excellent material. There's a Julian Casablancas vinyl still on sale and my brother picked up an Explosions in The Sky album for close to five bucks. The BM B-sides album, sadly, still exists to remind everyone that people made a lot of mistakes in the 90's.

My favorite store, however, is End Of An Ear on South 1st Street, about a block away from South Congress. It's a humble little joint which shares a building with New Brohemia (no typo, I think the "R" stands for exact Replica of the popular vintage store on South Congress). There's also an abandoned trailer that sells chicken behind it, which I'm pretty sure was just established by mobsters in the witness protection program. Anyhowever, despite some questionable picks for the loudspeaker (a ten-minute kaval solo, really?), it is laid-back, reasonably priced, and has listening stations for both vinyl and CD's, a growing rarity in contemporary music retailers. I now own twelve new CD's since I've gotten to Austin, and I believe nine of them are from End Of An Ear. For some reason this place just clicked with me.

All this being said, no hard feelings towards any of the aformentioned stores visited. I discover something new virtually anywhere I go in Austin, which speaks to the uniqueness and lust-for-life that exists here. I know this statement will be frowned on, but music is pretty awesome. Let the comments battle begin!

On Being Kingdom Culverts When All Others Have Crumbled

"Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now." 

-- St. Teresa of Avila 

Yesterday the NY Times printed an interview with a few of the victims from this weeks' devastating floods in my hometown of Binghamton, NY.  One of the women interviewed, commented on the proverbial "100 year" and "500 year" floods in 2005 and 2006, wondering what label would be given the 2011 flood.

From our experience, the 2005 flood my family barely noticed.  

In 2006, we were airlifted to safety in a Chinook helicopter.  We spent the rest of the summer working together with friends and neighbors to mud out the town.   The sheer physical effort to clean out the stagnant stench of hundreds of houses exhausted our bodies, but the very same work bound our hearts together in deep, meaningful ways.  Even still, our little town spent years recovering damaged homes, parks, businesses.  A new job moved us out that town in 2008 but every time we drove back through, we still mourned the vacant lots where condemned homes once stood.  And, if we looked carefully, we could still spy the chalked red X's dotting the vinyl-sided homes.  Markings that reminded us of those who'd been evacuated to safety.  

Conklin, NY 2006

 This week, September 7, 2011, the entire Greater Binghamton area went under water.  From what I can tell watching news reports every valley, every dip in the road, every cracked crevice is now covered with muddy water overflowed from the rivers, streams, and creekbeds that weave all our little villages, neighborhoods, and cities together. It's a good question that homeless victim asks, but I'm not sure what the old proverb-maker, wherever he dwells,  will call this flood.

In God's curious sovereignty, our family pre-evacuated town by moving to Texas one month ago.  Frankly, even though we moved in during one of the worst droughts ever in Austin and are forty miles away from horrific wildfires, part of me is a little bit relieved to not have to experience the flooding again.  Still I am heart-broken for the people, neighborhoods, towns, schools, churches, cities that we love.  I haven't known how to say the words over the phone to friends and family, but this natural disaster signals an almost-certain timeline of years of recovery for an already economically depressed area.  I don't know how to say those words without sounding morbid.  

Today I talked with a friend who brought up the subject first.  People aren't saying it but we're all thinking it.  How are we ever going to recover from this disaster?  Could this actually do us in for good?  

I don't know.  I know that individuals will find new ways to live and move and have their being, but what about commerce, schools with dwindling districts, industries already sitting on the brink of closing their doors or, at the very least, laying off major percentages of their local workforce?  What about churches who lose members of their congregation forced to move out of the area for new work?  These are hard questions with answers that only time will tell.

I do know that God masters the work of redemption.  He is almost always most visible to us in the transformation of ugly to beautiful, broken to whole, devastated to dignified.  He overcomes darkness with light.  He binds up wounds, offers living water to the thirsty, shelter to the lost and families for the lonely.  He almost never does this work as miraculous, supernatural out-of-the-blue rescues.  He almost always does this work through the ordinary men and women walking around, living out their everyday lives together in ordinary ways.  Ordinary men and women rescued by the supernatural, extraordinary birth, life, death and resurrection of the God-man Jesus.   That extraordinary, miraculous work of incarnation gives us the power to be human sons and daughters of God.  Jesus is the firstborn of all creation and gives us daily glimpses of a new way to be human in the here and now, before the Edenic not-yet.

2006

In my non-denominational church upbringing I've often felt we teach the Cross well but not the resurrection. Our long years creating sermons, stories and songs  about sin and blood and forgiveness far outweigh our work at re-telling resurrection.  

Perhaps this long, muddy season in my beloved hometown will be a catalyst for remembering the ways Jesus gives us to be new humans in an old, broken earth.  I can only hope.  I think those with eyes to see and ears to hear will be overwhelmed by the acts of resurrection taking place. I imagine this will look like an infusion of Spirit-inspired creative energy streaming through those communities willing to innovate, to dream up new ways of thinking, serving, creating, doing business, learning, teaching, giving, healing and being.  

May it be so.

2006

"God is groaning too, present within the church at the place where the world is in pain. God the Spirit groans within us, calling in prayer to God the Father. The Christian vocation is to be in prayer, in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, and as we embrace that vocation, we discover it to be the way of following Christ, shaped according to his messianic vocation to the cross, with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the pain of the world and to the love of God." 

-- N.T Wright, The Challenge of Easter

I love the descriptive phrase my friend Brett shared with me not long ago:  kingdom culverts.   He uses this description of those who follow Christ in such a way that the kingdom of God flows through them, unobstructed.  I thought about that phrase again talking to my friend on the phone today.  She said, The damage is so widespread that it seems like every little road with a culvert is wiped out. And I thought about the kingdom culverts I know and pray they would bear up under the weight of suffering these next weeks, months and years.  Not only bear up but find clear and sturdy channels for fresh ways of thinking, serving, creating, working, playing.  That they would be conduits for new ways of being human that will stream the beautiful Holy Spirit-truth of our future resurrection into the ugly mess of the here and now.

*thank you, Stephanie Cosme, for the photos you took in 2006.

Wednesday Words: Tim Chester

"Communion should be a feast of friends shared with laughter, tears, prayers, and stories. We celebrate the community life that God gives us through the cross and in the Spirit. We can't celebrate it with heads bowed and eyes closed, alone in our private thoughts and strangely solitary even as we're surrounded by other people.

When we recapture the Lord's Supper as a feast of friends, celebrated as a meal in the presence of the Spirit, then it will become something we earnestly desire. It will become the  high point of our life together as the people of God. In this sad and borken world, the Lord's Supper is a moment of joy, because it's a moment of the future."  

-- Tim Chester, A Meal With Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, & Mission around the Table

hospitality feels like home

I've lost track of the number of people who've invited us into their homes since our move to Austin one month ago.  (today, as a matter of fact)  Each dish passed and drink poured a new layer of comfort, welcoming us into a new place.  

please notice Brian's trifecta of man-friend joy:  beer, bourbon and Oreo cookies

Even so, there's nothing quite so familiar as welcoming company into our home.  The rhythms of preparation:  counting out place mats, tidying up the quadrillion pairs of shoes inside the front door, brewing iced tea, grilling meat with hometown marinade.  

Bob, Jennifer and little J

We invited a few people over this past Labor Day weekend.  Several of us had never met each other before Saturday.  Three of the five families in attendance had moved to Austin within the previous month.  We were coming from San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Dallas.  As often as we dismiss the value of social networking, we owed our meal to the power of facebook and blogspot.  

Chris, Micha (mama monk herself!) and sleepy boys

And as far apart as we started, it didn't take long for us to rack up a tidy list of six-degrees-type connections.   Seriously, what are the chances that every single one of these recent Austin transplants would have either grown up in or attended college in New York state.  Not just New York state, but central New York state?  

oh my heart was happy to see little ones enjoying our old children's books again!

At the end of the day, after we'd swapped stories and side dishes, said our good-byes and let's talk again soons, I put away the remaining dishes, wiped off the counters, crashed on the couch with a contented sigh:  Today, this feels like home.

Monday Mix Tape: I Shall Not Walk Alone

Some weeks I sit and think lots of silly thoughts about blogging, especially the Monday Mix Tape posts. After I sit and think silly thoughts, I usually play around with a bunch of music and dream grandiose dreams about changing the world with a melody or a killer set of lyrics.  Then I usually get up and do something monotonous, load the dishwasher for example, and think more silly thoughts.  Who am I kidding?  I'm not even a musician, let alone hip enough to post weekly mixes.  What hubris!  What fantasy!  


After that I usually play FastTyper on Facebook and take out all my pent-up writerly frustrations on the floating text.  As if each rhythmic ding of the pseudo carriage were an actual paragraph I'd written. I compete with myself until I'm bored.  After this, I listen to music again and begin -- slowly -- to find something to say.  Sometimes I do some laundry instead. Or watch Cagney and Lacey.  Some weeks, like this one, it takes a couple of days.  


I don't usually say much about the songs I post here each week.   Mostly because I really am not a music expert.  Partly because I'm lazy and want you to just sort of listen for yourself and come up with your own conclusions.  Sometimes I just like the way particular music feels with the theme I'm meditating.  I was definitely feeling a gospel/spiritual vibe with this mix (Blind Boys of Alabama, Mavis Staples, even Wilco and the Fleet Foxes).  Mostly, though, it's all about the lyrics this week.


As I listened to the songs that were speaking to me, pulling out the threads of thoughts all jumbled up in my post-cross-country-move exhaustion the pattern that began to emerge could be a kind of part 2 to last week's Come, Union.  Maybe part 1 could be the abstract hopes hovering over the concrete movements of our recent days.


Thus, I give you this week's mix, I Shall Not Walk Alone.

track 1: visual art 

Tamalada
© Copyright, 2001 - 2005 Carmen Lomas Garza.

Sandia / Watermelon© Copyright, 2001 - 2005 Carmen Lomas Garza

I stumbled on this work this week and have found myself just gazing at the colorful scenes full of activity, family, food, a sense of togetherness and contentment.  I love that the works demonstrate a specific culture while depicting a deep, cross-cultural human longing.  Togetherness. Contentment.  Beautiful.

track 2:  music

1.  I Shall Not Walk Alone, Blind Boys of Alabama

2.  People, C'mon, Delta Spirit

3.  You Are Not Alone, Mavis Staples

4.  Amazing Grace, Sufjan Stevens

5.  Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley

6.  Beautiful Things, Gungor

7.  I Shall Be Released, Bob Dylan cover by Wilco / Fleet Foxes

8.  Brotherhood of Man, Innocence Mission
9.  Beautiful Savior, Innocence Mission

10.The Father's Love Is Deep and Wide,Brian Moss

track 3:  poem

Amish Economy

by Wendell Berry in A Timbered Choir

We live by mercy if we live.

To that we have no fit reply

But working well and giving thanks,

Loving God, loving one another,

To keep Creation's neighborhood.

And my friend David Kline told me,

"It falls strangely on Amish ears,

This talk of how you find yourself.

We Amish, after all, don't try

To find ourselves. We try to lose

Ourselves" -- and thus are lost within

The found world of sunlight and rain

Where fields are green and then are ripe,

And the people eat together by

The charity of God, who is kind

Even to those who give no thanks.

In the morning light, men in dark clothes

Go out among the beasts and fields.

Lest the community be lost,

Each day they must work out the bond

Between goods and their price: the garden

Weeded by sweat is flowerbright;

The wheat shocked in shorn fields, clover

Is growing where wheat grew; the crib

Is golden with the gathered corn.

While in the world of the found selves,

Lost to the sunlit, rainy world,

The motor-driven cannot stop.

This is the world where value is

Abstract, and preys on things, and things

Are changed to thoughts that have a price.

Cost + greed - fear = price:

Maury Telleen thus laid it out.

The need to balance greed and fear

Affords no stopping place, no rest,

And need increases as we fail.

But now, in summer dusk, a man

Whose hair and beard curl like spring ferns

Sits under the yard trees, at rest,

His smallest daughter on his lap.

This is because he rose at dawn,

Cared for his own, helped his neighbors,

Worked much, spent little, kept his peace.