Aim, but don’t aim.

This is what it’s like:

Having to avert your gaze slightly in order for the star cluster to pop into view.

—

Every time I look romantic possibilities in the face, head-on, they vanish.

Every time I stop to preen in my spiritual mirror ("look how far I’ve come"), I stumble.

—

Music Shivers feels that her OD name is alien to her.  How many times does she get them now?  Of course, she has so little time to just *listen* to music – in concerts, on the (sob!) radio (RIP, classical CBC), wherever – other than her students’ music.

She’ll stop talking about myself in the third person, in the middle of this sentence.

I did have a music shiver two nights ago, holding a resonating, carved pumpkin on my lap as the Unfathomably-diffficult-to-name Orthodox Guy drove us home from A Curious Mango’s party.  He had put on Ravel – the piano concerto in G, I believe – and just as I got a music shiver, the pumpkin did, too.

"Everyone should go to concerts holding hollow gourds on their laps," I quipped.

—

My Monday student who comes to my apartment just left with his mother.  I enjoy the weekly motivation to keep my place clean and tidy.  I was surprised when this student once brought his sister along to a lesson, and said when they came in, "So whaddaya think?  It’s cool here, isn’t it?"  I looked around in surprise.  My place, cool?  I have religious icons hanging up in various places, and your usual table, couch, chair, lamp … the piano, of course … an ivy plant that I have not yet killed, thank God … but nothing that warrants "cool" … I thought.

Today, for some reason, in a discussion about fingering, we started comparing the spaces we could stretch between fingers.  Then my student did the Vulcan "live long and prosper" sign with both his hands and started to play weird Vulcan chords on the piano.  I laughed and told him how my friend L and I used to put our fingers like that over the steering wheel and pretend we were aliens driving around on planet earth … He blinked and said, "That must have been just when you got your license?"  I said, "Er, well, this is embarrassingly recent, actually … "  His mother threw her head back with laughter …

—

I am going to be officially received into the Orthodox Church on Christmas Eve, just before midnight.  I’m going to be baptized.  I feel like I’ve been a catechumen forever.  Recently, our choir switched the communion hymn to one they had done before I ever showed up, and the soprano said at the last rehearsal, "We should look at this a little, since Music Shivers wasn’t here when we first sang this."  The prelude talks about serving at the altar and loving the beauty of the Lord’s house.  Just before moving into the main part of the hymn ("Receive the Body of Christ … "), it rests on a chord that just BEGS for resolution.  The resolution comes on the word "Receive … " and it is such a sweet relief.  As we practiced it, the harmonies started to unlock my emotions and I realized I was starving.  I apologized to the others for getting weepy.  But in typical Music Shiverian fashion, channeled my vulnerability into goofiness, and said like a Muppet (like Animal perhaps), hitting the table in front of me, "I want communion now, already!!"  Then I apologized for turning it into the Muppet Show, and I looked up, and the eldest son of the choir director was looking at me with teary eyes himself.  Then I looked at the choir director and *he* had teary eyes.  "That’s beautiful," he said.  "If we could only feel about the Eucharist that longing, every single time we go up to receive it."

And of course, ever since that rehearsal, the choir has managed to sing that particular hymn just as I’m going up to kiss the chalice.  One time Father M. saw my face contorted to keep from crying, as I stepped up towards him, and he rested his hand on my head for a moment before making the sign of the cross on me and calling me by name.  Kissing the chalice – feeling that what I desire is on the other side of something – it’s oh so familiar a feeling to me.  In music, too.  I have a feeling I will never forget my first Orthodox communion.

Contrast that with my first communion as a Mennonite Brethren.  In our family there was an unofficial rule that one didn’t have communion until one was baptized (which of course happened when you were older, when you chose to do it).  But that wasn’t a hard and fast Mennonite Brethren rule.  I remember our pastor giving a talk about it once and saying that children could start taking communion when they were old enough to "understand it."  Wow, what a telling phrase.  How strange it all seems to me now.  Anyhoo, I didn’t have communion until our family moved to a church closer to home, and they did things differently every month.  Sometimes they’d pass around those little plastic cups of grape juice (and crackers or Melba toast or whatever), but sometimes they’d have an actual loaf of bread at the front, and families would go up together one at a time.  So when that happened, I went up too, feeling unprepared and kind of … peer-pressured into it, because this was how they did it at this church.  I.e., I would have been embarrassed remaining in my seat because all the other kids went up with their parents.  But at the time it felt wrong to me, because I had had this vague sense of having to wait till after my baptism.

Later on, when I was in my "rebellious" period of going to an Anglican church (woooo!), one of the things I loved the best about it was going up for communion and kneeling at the front, with my hands held out for the bread as the servers came round.  Though sipping from the cup held out was sometimes tricky.  Oh, and a part of me revelled in the fact that they used actual wine.

Much later, when I was attending the house church on the Archangel’s and Friar’s island, our communion ritual was almost never the same.  That is, I couldn’t have predicted who’d be serving it to whom, or how.  Once we took turns passing it around to each other as we sat at table for lunch.  I felt presumptuous holding it out to my neighbour.  From my current standpoint, the whole thing seems like an exercise in spontaneity.  "Keep it authentic people!"  Keep it new, keep it fresh, don’t let it stagnate in a (gasp) tradition!

How much more humble it seems to me now to see my priest, week in, week out, doing it exactly the same way, not trying to induce any emotional experiences, just matter-of-factly (and I do not mean casually) administering the medicine our souls need.  Did I say "exactly the same way?"  That’s not quite true.  He did, after all, respond to my obvious emotion the other Sunday by resting his hand on my head for a moment, in a gesture I can only describe as affectionate.  There is authentic response to the moment but the tradition remains.

And it’s a *mystery.*  There’s no pressure to understand it.

—

–

I had a dream last night that I was put into an arranged marriage with someone I know.  I actually woke up out of shock.  In the dream, everything was quite peaceful.  There was a sense of "Yes, this is work I am willing to take on, and it will be for good."  It wasn’t just an arranged marriage; it was a partnership – the man was going to become a priest and I was going to be his matushka.  In the dream, Father M.’s wife was crying with happiness, hugging me and saying "You were born for this, you’re going to be so good at it!"

I woke up freaking out, went to the bathroom, had a glass of water, and went back to bed.

I slipped into a dream that was a sequel of the first.  The man and I were married now, but hadn’t consummated our marriage.  There was an unspoken understanding that we’d let that side of things wait until it felt "right," since we hadn’t exactly entered this marriage out of attraction for each other.  Again, there was a sense of peace and "Yes."  And we were happily busy, learning and preparing for our new life.  A subplot happened in the dream that I’ll keep private because it concerns other friends of mine (though that in itself was uncanny! when I called up one of those friends to see how they were, to find that the dream had been appropriately timed … ).  I’ll just mention one part of the subplot: one of my friends asked me, "Are you happy?  Is this what you wanted?"  I replied, "I am happy.  He’s a kind person and I trust him."

I woke up freaking out again, and decided to stay awake since it was almost time to get ready for work anyway.

I don’t want to make very much out of this, but it was so vivid, and the subplot was so uncanny, that I couldn’t help mulling over it all day.  And honestly, I thought Father M’s wife was right in the dream, when she said I was going to be good at being a matushka.  I completely believed her, and even had the same feeling I once had when I realized I had to do music.  Like someone had put a bow or a sword into my hand and it fit perfectly and I knew just what to do with it.

In waking life today, I had a good connected day of intense house-cleaning, one baby class in the morning (sheer joy to see those little minds awakening), one lesson in the evening, and walks in the crisp autumn air (beauty all around).  I don’t know what to do with this dream and the ideas it has given me.  Partially because I just don’t see this man marrying me, even if someone tried to arrange it for all the good reasons that were there in the dream.

So I’ll stop looking at it.  I’ll avert my gaze, focus on my work, and let miracles pop into view.