Recovering Lost Connections: Themes and Variations
August 5th, 2007 The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
This past Friday, on my third day back at work, my daughter sent me the following fortuitous e-mail:
There is a dangerous virus being passed around electronically, orally, and by hand. This virus is called Weary-Overload-Recreational-Killer (WORK). If you receive WORK from any of your colleagues, your boss, or anyone else via any means, DO NOT TOUCH IT!
This virus will wipe out your private life completely. If you should come into contact with WORK, put your jacket on and take two good friends to the nearest grocery store. Purchase the antidote known as Work-Isolating-Neutralizer-Extract (WINE) or Bothersome-Employer-Elimination-Rebooter (BEER). Take the antidote repeatedly until WORK has been completely eliminated from your system.
You should forward this warning to five friends. If you do not have five friends, you have already been infected and WORK is controlling your life.
*****
I found this e-mail amazingly well-timed, because by the time I read it, I was feeling so stressed out that I could barely remember I’d been on sabbatical and vacation for four months!
I can’t blame that entirely on my return to work. I’m sure it would have been less stressful had my return coincided with my sister’s visit from Connecticut, and our mother’s bout with “mild pneumonia.” Still, I felt as if I’d learned nothing at all about “balance” during my time away – which had been part of what I had hoped to attain!
In my final sermon last March before embarking on my sabbatical, I told you of my plans to re-connect with some parts of my life with which I’d lost touch over the years. I was going to track down some old friends and relatives, and of course write about the experience.
I said that I hoped to find a piano teacher so that I could get into a rhythm of practice again. I’d spend time beautifying my yard, so that I’d have a quiet place to sit and to read and do my writing before the weather became too hot.
Either in that sermon or a former one, I suggested that I would begin hanging out at local Farmers Markets, buying fresh, organic food, which I would then take home and turn into healthy meals for myself – as opposed to throwing a Trader Joe’s frozen something-or-other into the microwave as I’d become accustomed to doing!
And oh yes…I was going to read – all those magazines piling up, articles people have e-mailed or handed to me, and the numerous books around my house crying out, “Read me!”
In short, my plan for those three months of sabbatical was to pay attention to those parts of my life that I cherish, but that – for whatever reason – I’d let drift away: relationships, music, beauty, and words.
Above all, I wanted my sabbatical to be “productive.” In re-reading my journal this past week, I discovered that over and over again during the first few weeks of April, I would either list all the things I’d done to organize myself – paid bills, reconciled bank statements, completed my taxes, researched and ordered a new computer, got my piano tuned, had my car worked on, etc., etc., etc. – or I’d lament about how “unproductive” my days were. On April 16th I wrote, “It’s been over two weeks, and still I’ve done nothing productive towards my sabbatical theme.” All I seemed to do when not taking care of the purely pragmatic was sit around my house watching movies from Netflix and past seasons of Project Runway – to which I became completely addicted, I might add!
Eventually, however, after putting my life into some semblance of order, and after spending some uninterrupted time with my grandkids, I was able to turn my attention to the theme of my sabbatical.
One of the first things I did was to contact a piano teacher recommended to me by Galina. I’ll say more about this next Sunday, but suffice it to say that he was receptive to taking me on as a student, and it really became the most exciting part of my sabbatical.
Along with the piano lessons, I began contacting friends and relatives whom I hadn’t seen or talked to for many years – in one case, probably 50!
I had lunch one day, and dinner a few weeks later, with Phil, who had been my ex-husband’s roommate at USC before we married, and had sung at our wedding. I hadn’t heard from him in over 30 years.
I took my high school choral director, Miss Hougasian, to lunch in Pasadena, which was delightful. We hadn’t visited in almost 40 years.
I had lunch in Hollywood with Maurice, a close friend of my ex-husband’s and mine who lived next door to us early in our marriage, but whom I’d basically not seen since moving to Berkeley for seminary; that was 30 years ago.
Most of the reunions were made while traveling through Northern California and Oregon. In the Bay Area I visited with my best friend from high school, Patricia, who I hadn’t seen or talked to in many years; Clare Fischer, one of my professors at Starr King School for the Ministry, and the first full-time female faculty member to be hired in any of the Graduate Theological Union schools; and Mary, a friend from college who had been a concert pianist when I’d last known her some 30 years ago, and now is a practitioner of the body alignment method of Feldenkrais.
From the Bay Area I drove to Ashland, Oregon, where I had lunch with Elaine – one of my sister’s best friends from elementary school, and daughter of the man who gave me flute lessons when I was about 8 years old.
I then spent three nights at a bed-&-breakfast owned by my good friend, Barbara, in a tiny town outside of Grant’s Pass, Oregon, right on the Rogue River. That was more retreat than anything else.
I drove on to Portland, visiting with my cousin John and his wife, Carol, as well as his sister Robin also my cousin, who said it had probably been 50 years since we’d seen one another (though I found that hard to believe)!
That same weekend I attended a brunch for the just married son and daughter-in-law of my 2nd cousin Alyson, who I basically haven’t seen since childhood. The next day I drove to Cannon Beach, where her father (who is my mother’s first cousin) and her sister Valerie own several motels on the beach. Alyson joined us there, and she, Valerie and I sat up one evening looking at old family photos and trying to identify relatives we shared in common. It was wonderful!
On my way back home, I spent a night at Jennifer Byrom’s home in Santa Rosa. She’s Beth Byrom’s daughter who was our office administrator for a time. She sends her greetings to you all, of course. We had a lovely time.
Eventually I made my way back home – just in time to attend my sister’s “Sopranos” dinner party on the last night of the series! In all, I was gone for about 2 ½ weeks, and it was a perfect trip.
My re-connections didn’t stop with the trip, however. I’ve had lunch with Sharon, another long-lost friend from early in my marriage; and one day drove to Ventura to have lunch with my Aunt Mary Ann – the only one of my father’s siblings still living, - and her daughter (my cousin), Diane – and Diane’s daughter and granddaughter – all visiting from Washington. Again, Diane is someone I remember having delightful times with as a child, but whom I’ve since only seen for a couple of memorial services.
And then, while in San Diego a few weeks ago for a colleague’s wedding, I decided to see some former parishioners from the San Dieguito Fellowship – Sam and Sylvia Messin, and Robert Landay. I learned of several deaths in that congregation, which felt very sad to me, as these were people who had really helped “birth” me in to ministry.
And finally, after trying several years ago with no success, I was able to track down the first boy I ever really loved – no longer a boy, of course! Tony had been an “older man” when we met – a student at Reed College, while I was only a junior in high school. He was the first atheist I ever knew, and was the most politically radical person I’d met. When he’d been a student at Pasadena High School a couple of years earlier, he’d lowered the campus flag to half-mast the day Carryl Chessman was executed – for which he was suspended from school!
He and I had dated for about a year, and I was truly heart-broken when he ended the relationship. Over the years since, I have often wondered what had become of him.
We’ve now spoken by phone several times. I’d like to be able to tell you that he’d never forgotten me, that he’s single and that we’ve fallen in love and are going on a romantic cruise to become the subject of some human interest story about old folks finding their high school sweethearts.
But in truth, he didn’t remember me at first. And not only is he married to the same woman he married 41 years ago, but he lives in Virginia and is very involved with the Lyndon LaRouche movement – which I don’t know a lot about, but what I do know, I don’t think I much like! But I’m enjoying our phone conversations, which are mostly about politics.
And there’s just something very intriguing and wonderful about slowly learning who someone has become 40 years after you’ve first known them.
And that’s what has happened with each connection I made. While I thought we’d reminisce about old times, and in the case of relatives, share insights about our families – what really happened was that we caught one another up on our lives, and who we’d become in the meantime.
I gained no real insights about my family, or wisdom about the nature of friendship. But I did renew some important relationships from my past, and that really had been the intention all along.
Nevertheless, as my sabbatical neared its end, I found myself fretting over how much I hadn’t accomplished. I basically did no reading, nor did I do any writing other than in my journal – though one day I did sit down at my computer, open a brand new document, and type “Recovering Lost Connections” at the top of the page. I stared at it for a very long time, and finally closed it until more inspired. I haven’t opened it since.
I went to only one Farmers Market during the three months, and much of the food I bought there spoiled before I could use it. I cooked only slightly more than usual – and by cooking, I mean doing more than just heating something in the microwave! And I didn’t speak to one colleague about church governance or volunteer recruitment – something else I’d had on my list of Sabbatical goals.
You see, I had this image of who I was going to be by the end of the three months: A tanned, skinny, totally serene and balanced woman buying organic fruits and vegetables at Farmers Markets; cooking healthy, low-calorie meals every day; baking fresh bread; landscaping a beautiful garden; reading (in that beautiful garden!) a new book each week; and learning all kinds of new approaches for church growth. I’m afraid that those things never happened.
So what did I learn from all this?
I learned that I just don’t like to cook! Actually, when I have the time, I do love baking a pie for a family gathering, or trying some new recipe that isn’t complicated and doesn’t use ingredients or utensils I’ve never heard of. But on a day-to-day basis, just for myself? I’ll stick with Trader Joe’s, thank you very much!
I learned that while I loved reading as a child and young adult, I’ve now forgotten how to read for pure pleasure. I read every book, no matter their subject, with a pencil in hand, just in case there’s something I can use in a sermon or newsletter column, or even a rite-of-passage. I need to put away the pencil, and re-discover the sheer joy that comes from the printed word.
I learned how difficult it is for me sometimes to trust the goodness of life – despite the fact that mine has been so short on real sorrow. On April 24th, after my first piano lesson, I wrote in my journal: “I am immensely content and relaxed – though I do catch myself worrying about what might ruin it…But what if nothing happens to intrude on or destroy this peace & happiness? What if I just remain happy and hopeful? How disconcerting would that be?!”
And I learned that I was more tired than I’d realized, and just needed some time to do nothing. Doing nothing is difficult for me – as I imagine it is for many of you. I’m the kind of person who not only makes “to-do” lists so I won’t forget the tasks I need to accomplish, but if I do something that wasn’t on the list, I’ll often add it just so I can cross it off and see that I did it!
In a book I have begun to enjoy recently – even with pencil in hand – called Eat, Pray, Love, the author Elizabeth Gilbert notes that we Americans “have an inability to relax into
sheer pleasure.” While in Italy, she learns the concept of il bel far niente: “the art of doing nothing.” According to Gilbert, the Italians hold this as a “cherished ideal. The beauty of doing nothing,” she writes, “is the goal of all your work….The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement.”
I did accomplish much of what I set out to do on my sabbatical. But perhaps my most important accomplishment was to occasionally allow myself the “beauty of doing nothing.” Because before we can re-connect to others, we must first be able to re-connect with ourselves. In order to become more attentive to what’s important, we must become more attentive to ourselves – and that can only occur if we allow ourselves to stop and simply be.
As Traci Davis so eloquently pointed out in this month’s issue of Leaves, our religious community should be a place “where our spirits are nurtured” – a refuge where we can settle in to our natural rhythm. It should be a place where we are reminded – not only through words, but through example – of the joy of life, and the grace that comes from finding balance and peace within ourselves. Only through such balance and inner peace can we then nurture our children, and work for a world where all can experience the joy of life.
So I will continue to seek that balance – not only for the sake of my soul, but the soul of this congregation which I so dearly love. I cannot fully express the gratitude I feel towards all of you for your gracious support, and especially to those of you who worked so hard to keep our beloved community thriving.
At the end of my final sermon prior to leaving on sabbatical, I threw you all some candy kisses as a symbol of my love and gratitude. So it seems fitting that I shower you with such kisses today upon my return.
(THROW CANDY KISSES)
Amen!
© 2007 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
