My Virtual Life

Anyone who would admit spending too much time online would probably be making an under statement.  My virtual life in cyberspace often has some of the characteristics of an addiction, including feeling like I am going through withdrawal when I find myself without access to a computer.   And the whole phenomenon so stealthily and insidiously crept into our lives, didn't it?

I mean, really, how long ago was it that only a small part of society knew how to type?  Do you remember back to the days of yore when you had never heard of people tweeting and texting; when Facebook was just a glimmer in someone's eye?  Even beyond all that, how about a time when you could walk through an airport and not have to hear half of a telephone conversation wherever you were?

Do you think our increased ability to communicate in all sorts of hi-tech electronic ways in our virtual lives has become an impediment to intimacy and face-to-face relationships?

On the other hand, I know people who have met their spouses through the use of internet dating sites.  Of course many still meet the old fashioned way through friends or relatives, at church or doing hobbies, or even at ladies' night at a local pub.  And I personally always found that the guys I met on the internet first were nothing like I imagined them in virtual reality.

As for that, I will admit that part of the problem with my virtual life is that even when I am interacting with someone by chat, tweet, text, e-mail or on Facebook it means I am at the same time cutting my self off from the real world around me.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Or is there?

I was kind of amused during the past few days when some of the 571 of my closest friends on Facebook became turned inside out over some changes made by the programmers.  These were the latest in a fairly frequent set of supposed improvements to how the whole thing works.  In the midst of the cyber turmoil, some people were very upset and some threatened to disappear from that particular quadrant of cyberspace.  Very creative protests were posted on many friends' walls, cyber rumors flew and were debunked by the trusty Snopes folks, and some very funny warnings showed up in reaction to the tempest in the virtual teapot.

The bottom line is that people don't like change any more in virtual reality than in their day to day lives when they close down their computers and recharge their cell phones.

Now I don't know what I would do without a computer or a cell phone.  But sometimes I yearn to try it.  I have a friend who observes the Sabbath by staying offline in addition to the other traditional ways she draws aside in rest, prayer, worship and reflection.

We all can probably use more of that kind of practice.

Maybe someone will start a new web site to encourage it!

(Just kidding . . . I'm sure there are plenty of them out there in our virtual reality already.)

I hope you have a delightful day (virtually and otherwise).  Enjoy!


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

A Whiter Shade of Pale (Another Chapter of The Gospel According to Saint Baby Boomer)

As I woke up the other morning I encountered a strange confluence of dreams, memories, thoughts, and some old rock music with a classic movie I saw when I turned on the television. The dreams were both mine and Seth's, my five year old grandson.

My dream was probably triggered by a Facebook conversation I had had with my dear friend and college roommate the night before. I had been having had something to do with my college days. All I remember for sure is that we were in our dorm room talking and listening to music on her 1960s state of the art stereo record player.

Seth's dream was about going to the beach. He had been excited about the trip to a Gulf of Mexico beach that he, his mom, his dad and his baby brother, Jude were going to be taking later that day. Seth's a kindergartener, and for more than a week he had been caught up in a countdown to this long awaited chance to go to one of his favorite places. When I read him a bedtime story the night before, the trip to the beach was on his mind and in his prayers.

So I wasn't surprised when Seth's early morning knock on my door overlapped the dream I was having. At first I thought someone was knocking on the door of our dorm room in my dreamscape. When no one came in, though, I came to realize that it was Seth's little hand knocking on my bedroom door in my very early morning reality.

I don't know what exactly made me understand that I needed to say, "Come in," out loud. And I was still in that state between dreaming and waking when Seth came in, full of sleepy excitement to tell me about his dream of the beach. As he was speaking to me, though, I was still hearing some music in my mind. You know how it often is with dreams, right? Sometimes there seemed to be some musical accompaniment to the scene that is rapidly fleeing as you wake up. And before the dream escaped my consciousness, I recognized that the music running through my mind was the old rock tune by Procol Harum called "A Whiter Shade of Pale."

Below is a link for a rendition of it I found on YouTube with the matured group playing the song in a church converted into a performance space. (There is nothing like an old classic rock group still able to entertain when they are sixty-four, is there?)

Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale (From "Live at the Union Chapel")

Here are the lyrics:

We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more

The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, 'There is no reason and the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be one of
sixteen vestal virgins who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might have just as well've been closed

She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
though in truth we were at sea
so I took her by the looking glass
and forced her to agree saying,

'You must be the mermaid
who took Neptune for a ride.'
But she smiled at me so sadly
that my anger straightway died

If music be the food of love
then laughter is its queen
and likewise if behind is in front
then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard s
eemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
and attacked the ocean bed

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale . . .
[Words by Keith Reid]

A short time after Seth told me about his dream of the beach, my daughter Krista came upstairs with sweet baby Jude to get Seth so that they could start their day. It was a sweet way to wake up. After they went downstairs, I went over and turned on the television with strains of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" still echoing in my mind.

And strangely enough as I "heard" the line about the sixteen Vestal virgins, I saw that on television the Vestal virgins were dedicating a triumph for a Roman commander in the grand historical epic made in 1951 with a cast of thousands , "Quo Vadis." It's one of my favorite movies of that genre, so I kept the TV on and sat down to check on my e-mail with the strains of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" still hovering in my mind while the scenes of Hollywood's version of the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. were depicted on the television screen.

As a teenager I had always assumed that the words of Procol Harum's rock song reflected a marijuana or LSD-induced alternative reality, mostly because they do not really make sense.

In addition, the music seems to somehow affirm that suspicion since it has always seemed hypnotic and haunting to me. Maybe the lyrics describe something that actually happened interpreted through a drug-induced haze. (The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"is supposed to have been written from similar inspiration.) "A Lighter Shade of Pale" begins with a narrative about a night out dancing with impressions colored by the sensual image of the room humming and shocking illusion that the ceiling is being whisked away.

The songwriter, Keith Reid, must have had a classical education because playful references to the writings of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton are found in the lyrics. Even the name of the band is roughly based on a Latin phrase meaning "beyond these things" or "of these things far off," but the Latin words are neither spelled correctly nor properly formed grammatically. (Poetic license . . . )

The mention that "the miller told his tale" alludes to the second story in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." In contrast to "The Knight's Tale" of courtly love that precedes it, "The Miller's Tale" is a bawdy story about lust and betrayal. There is a good deal about lust and betrayal portrayed in "Quo Vadis," too, of course. As you may know, it is a historical fiction about the faith of early Christians written by the Polish Nobel Prize-winner, Henryk Sienkiewicz, in the mid-19th century.

The phrase "quo vadis" is actually a question from a tradition about the life of St. Peter the Apostle meaning "Where are you going?" The story is that during the time of Nero's persecutions of Christian believers, Peter is in Rome, but starts to flee. He is surprised to encounter Jesus on the Appian Way heading toward Rome and asks him, "Quo Vadis, Lord?" Jesus replies that he is on his way to Rome to be crucified again. Overcome with his grief at his faltering faith, Peter turns around and heads back to the city where he then is captured and crucified. Tradition also holds that Peter asks to be crucified head down, stating that he is not worthy to be martyred in the same manner as his Lord and Savior.

In the movie as the two main characters leave Rome after Peter's death, they see his shepherd's crook along the side of the road blooming with flowers and glowing with a radiant light while a voice is heard saying, "I am the way, the truth and the life." I only saw the last half of the movie the other morning, and actually "A Lighter Shade of Pale" keeps coming to my mind, but the confluence of dreams, a song and the movie got me thinking about a lot that has influenced us Baby Boomers and some of the collective memories we share.

Certainly even though we share the same memories it doesn't mean that we all think of them the same way. And the older I get the more I realize that each one of us have reacted to the events of our lives in very individual ways. In our generation the world became a very small place because of our ability to travel, because of improvements in communication, because many old boundaries between East and West were torn down or transgressed, and because the anti-establishmentarianism that characterized our rebelliousness lead to a radical world-view.

Not all of us have embraced the most far out manifestations of the revolution we all found ourselves in, but over time each of us has come to be comfortable with whatever we have come to embrace as true and good for each one of us. And I think for the most part we respect one another's beliefs. We understand that the roads each one of us has traveled have moved through the turmoil of the violence of the Civil Rights' movement, the Viet Nam War and the protests against it. We suffered through the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Jr and RFK.

We were born in the shadow of the end of World War II when the devastation in Europe, in the Pacific, and in Japan was still extant. The people of the world were still in deep mourning, and the shock of our use of nuclear weapons still overshadowed our parents and grandparents psyches. And we have raised our children with our values, just as they are raising their children with the way they interpreted what we taught them by action as well as words, while adding their own take through the circumstances they have lived through.

A "gospel" is the good news about something. And a saint is just someone who is blessed. The music of the baby boomers and the movies we grew up seeing characterize not only the input we were subject to, but are also records that map out the emotional landscape in which we thrived or just survived. Does that make any sense? I'm not sure. But it was just what all that led me to think about and I wanted to share it with you.

Thanks for "listening."


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Onto 9/12 . . .

I woke up at about 5:15 am out of a 9/12 dream thinking about the ecumenical service called "Re-Membering 9/11" that I attended with a good friend from a small country church I attend here in the Cherokee foothills of northern GA.

There were people there from local Protestant churches, two synagogues and two Moslem centers. There were also local "first responders, and a US Senator from GA who had taught 6th grade boys Sunday School there for 30 years.

Our church was only represented by a small group and there was only one of us in the mixed choir. The Muslim women were easy to spot, and some of the rabbis wore yarmulkes. There were only a few people who represented other minorities in our diverse nation, but the points of the Senator's speech was the "power of one" and unity in diversity. Holy passages from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Did you know it is chanted in a similar way to how psalms are spoken by Cantors at synagogues and used in Gregorian chant?

Afterwards, there was a Muslim worship service as the sun set. And the rest of us who were so inclined went down to the gym and mingled (somewhat) while eating delicacies brought by people who came, including baklava. Of all the Methodist potlucks I have been to, I am pretty sure no one ever brought baklava to any of them . . .

The scripture had covered Micah 6:8, Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, and three verses from the Quran about peace. We sang "This is My Father's World" at the end of the re-membrance, and the combined choir offered up a beautiful rendition of "Let There be Peace on Earth," in the middle of the service although when "The Star-Spangled Banner" was sung at the beginning of the service, it was hard to imagine a song or hymn invoking as much emotion.

The Hebrew Bible and Quran verses and two of the benedictions (in Hebrew and in Arabic) were translated into English and the last benediction was spoken over us by a pastor who said his would also be translated since his native tongue was "Yankee". That got a laugh amidst the pain assauged by the worship and the fellowship. I spoke to several of the Muslims at the service as we were walking out and in the gym. One couple was from India and had been in the US for 21 years. Several lovely teenagers wearing beautiful burkas wandered around together as teens do at such gatherings.

On the way home, the hearts of my friend and I were lighter than they had been earlier in the day at worship back home. God is so good and so faithful! And His peace passes all understanding and knows no boundaries.


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com

Remembering 9/11/2001

A friend on Facebook asked a couple of weeks ago how people would be marking the anniversary of 9/11/01. He also asked something like "What should our response as Christians be?" The writers of the template for this newsletter exhorted, "let us come together to grieve, to remember, to express our gratitude to
those who demonstrated what it is to be a hero, and to pledge ourselves to live
in honor of their bravery."

And I was very touched yesterday to receive the following e-mail from a precious friend who is a United Methodist pastor in Moscow, Russia:

"Dearest brothers and sisters in Christ,

Tomorrow we will have special worship service of remembering of tragedy September 11th in USA.

Our hearts are suffering with you about this awful terror act.

May God continue to bless USA and all Americans and give His Peace, His Mercy, His Grace for all people around the world.

We love you and thank God for you.

With love in Christ.

Ludmila Garbuzova and First UMC of Moscow Russia"

What Ludmila wrote to the people she knows and loves in the U.S. was very gracious, especially since the people of Russia, too, have suffered because of terrorism, as recently as last winter when there was a suicide bombing at the arrivals area of one of the Moscow airports. Less than a week before I spent a month in Moscow during April of 2010, there were also those attacks by two women suicide bombers on the Moscow subway line that goes back and forth from the United Methodist Seminary.

Sometimes it seems absurd that in the 21st century people would still be resorting
to the use of violence and the threat of violence. Over and over friends say, "You
think we would have learned by now!" And certainly for those of us who have lived
through most of the 20th century or longer, we can't be blamed for feeling like
peace is a very elusive state

And of course there is the issue concerning violence on behalf of religions, belief
systems or power struggles between ethnic groups. Domination, hatred and the tendency to demonize an enemy--or to make and enemy or enemies for a plethora of reasons--all seem to be human responses to life on earth.

So as with many, many other people today, my first thought upon waking was about
this anniversary. In the last ten years there is much more to mourn than just
the victims of the tragedies perpetrated on that bright beautiful September day.
The suffering that resulted from our response to what happened hasn't ended.
When I go to the VA Medical Center, instead of a preponderance of veterans from
the wars of the 20th century, there are many more young people who have lost limbs or have head injuries among other wounds. When I get into a taxicab in Washington, D.C., the driver might easily be a refugee from a nation in turmoil or one that is ruled by a fundamentalist or repressive regime.

As a nation we seem to have come to regard ourselves as the kid on the block who
takes on the bullies for all the other kids, though of course we usually get our
other buddies to help. Not everyone sees us that way. But every person and every
nation has their own way of viewing whatever reality is.

Our response as a nation was dictated by our government, but not every citizen feels the same way. I do not envy the people who had to make the decisions and sent troops to far away places or ordered houses to be stormed to make sure terrorist leaders could no longer lead.

And I can't drive by the Pentagon or see a photo of the skyline of New York City
without still feeling a stab in my heart. Remembrance of such a day is not something you have to dredge up from some corner of your mind. There is both a personal and a collective memory, individual trauma and a traumatized society.

Just as I paused to check on something in my e-mail inbox, I saw that the memorial
ceremony at Ground Zero was on t.v. and I tuned in just in time to hear that the
second moment of silence commemorating the second plane flying into the second
of the twin towers was being observed. Then former President Bush quoted a letter that President Lincoln wrote to the mother of five sons who had died fighting the Civil War.

I had to turn it off for a while.

In Washington later today there will be other observances. It seems very strange
that the service planned at the National Cathedral--that beautiful "House of Prayer
for All Nations" had to be cancelled because of damage done on the grounds when
a crane being used to repair damage from the recent earthquake. And since I know
Washington so well and know there is a Triathalon today, I can imagine what the
traffic will be like for the people trying to drive into the city for church or
the memorial services or whatever.

And being able to imagine triggers the memories I personally have of waking up that otherwise nondescript day like so many other in the previous year for me. I was living in a lovely apartment in Arlington, Virginia about two miles from the Pentagon, teaching English as a Second Language in a private school near the Ballston Metro Station. I am not a morning person, so I rarely put on the radio or television when I am getting ready for work, but for some reason I turned on the TV that morning.

At about 8:40 when I was getting ready to head out the door, the weatherman showed a live camera shot of the twin towers and commented on the beautiful day. he said it was perfect flying weather. Worried that I would be late, I headed to my car and made the five minute commute to the school.

In the classroom behind ours the teacher often began the day with one of the network morning shows, so he and his students were the first people to see what happened as it began to be reported. He came and told me about it and confusion reigned among the teachers and administrators for a while. The owners of the school didn't think there was a reason to cancel classes for the day until the Pentagon was hit.

Since most of the students got around by bus and on the Metro, I just told mine
to go home despite the way the owners of the school seemed not to be aware of the seriousness of what was happening.

On the way home, in shock as we all were by that time,no doubt, I mailed a letter
at one of those drive-up mail boxes on a busy street in downtown Arlington. I put
on my emergency flashers, but didn't realize until September 12th when the car wouldn't start that I neglected to turn them off.

Everyone has her or his own memories of that day and the days following. Because I have friends who were working in the Pentagon, friends who worked at the Capitol and in many other government buildings, friends who had relatives or friends working in one of the twin towers, and because I was teaching in a school where about 1/3 of the students were from pre-dominantly Moslem countries, the aftermath was particularly difficult. Not like people who lived in New York City. And not like people who were directly affected because of the loss of a family member.

And not like someone who has lost a loved one in one of the wars.

But our collective trauma and grief is affected by being able to imagine in some
small way how those who lost the most must feel.

As far as what our response should be as Christians is concerned, I remember that
my home church pastor in Washington was amazed at how many people came to church on the Sunday following September 11, 2001. That was probably true for all the other places of worship including synagogues, mosques, Sikh temples and Hindu community centers, too. Despite a tendency to react in anger and seek revenge, many people have worked hard not to act out negatively in a prejudicial way toward our fellow citizens or immigrants from other cultures.

Suspicion and distrust are sometimes still acted out in hurtful ways, though. And
the troops have not all returned home yet. There are continuing questions concerning what will happen in the nations engulfed by armed conflict and civil strife, too.

It's one thing to ask what our response should be as Christians and it's another
thing to consider what our response as a nation should be.

We may be a nation whose people are predominantly Christian, but our Founders made sure that we would strive to be a nation where people of all ethnic groups and all faiths would be welcome. Our pride in the ideals of the Founders sometimes does not reflect the failures to live up to those ideals from the very beginning when
our Constitution allowed the slavery that existed to be continued.

Robert Frost once wrote, "Something there is that does not love a wall . . ." And
I think there is also "something" that does not love liberty, free enterprise and
equal opportunity. Thank God there is also "something" that does not love injustice,
oppression, terrorism, totalitarianism and murder.

Someone once wrote or said that there is nothing worth killing someone for, but
there are things worth dying for. That may be debatable, but the bottom line for
me is that it really would be wonderful if by now we were able to live in peace.
If we could only figure out how.

As Rodney King asked, "Can we get along?"

"Let's try to work it out.".

Does violence and the threat of violence have to be the only way we can guarantee
"peace."

Peace is characterized by wholeness beyond just the lack of violence. It is a state
where there is nothing missing, no freedom denied, the opportunity to have a roof
over your head and food on the table for you and your family. Peace allows everyone to live in harmony, respecting even those who do not agree with you or who look at the world in a very different way.

Human beings always have to work for peace when there are threats. And even when things seem to be going along beautifully and smoothly like they were before 9 am on September 11, 2001, there can be threats to peace and security lurking in the unknown.

So in whom can we trust?

On our some of our currency it is written, "In God we trust." That's a lovely motto,
although there are some who challenge it. Some people don't even believe in God
and there are many ideas about God and how to trust God.

We all just have to decide for ourselves as individuals and as a nation. But hopefully we can choose love as our governing principal and live out that love as our response to all that we remember this day and every day.


Kathleen Ware Harris  © 2013
kwharris777@gmail.com