[Oe List ...] Salmon: Response to Making something of being seen

Sun Dec 12 13:00:50 CST 2010

Diann--
    I've been sweating to think through--and write--a SermonStarter for Christmas Day (John 1: 1 - 14). Your Earthwise testimony says it all. We all want to be noticed, even in the cacaphony of the on-goingness of life, and when we awaken to our "acceptance" we experience the gift of the manger. 
    Thanks for sharing. 
    Inner Peace--and Merry Christmas,
    Bill Salmon

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: McCabe, Diann A 
  To: earthrise at yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 11:30 AM
  Subject: Re: [earthrise] Making something of being seen

  Lately I've been reminded of the human need to be seen and to be loved.  And that sometimes that desire moves past individual self-absorption to something bigger, to a connection to all that has gone on before and to all that will come in the future. And I go back to Tillich for verification: In grace something is overcome; grace occurs 'in spite of' something; grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement.  Grace is the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself.  Grace is the acceptance of that which is rejected. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny; it changes guilt into confidence and courage.  There is something triumphant in the word "grace": in spite of the abounding of sin grace abounds much more. (from Paul Tillich's sermon, "You Are Accepted")

  Terry and I went to a discontinuous concert recently after a surprise last minute invitation from a friend who had 2 extra tickets.  We got to see Ray Lamontagne-who had vaguely captured our imagination before the concert, but afterwards turned us into devotees-who found, as you do when you love someone's music, that the songs he sings get inside the body and the mind in a way that is hard to put into words.  Lamontagne is a shy performer, barely speaking on stage, singing with dignity while the audience hoots with sexually suggestive cat-calls to him (this in Austin's formal Bass Concert Hall), singing with passion as though his life depended on it in spite of the moving bodies in the audience who can't seem to sit still, standing and moving like Indonesian Wayang silhouettes before me, silhouettes moving from seat to aisle (for what?) and back again, over and over. Yet the music was pure and powerful.

  But the real star of the evening was the last set with Levon Helm (drummer for The Band, two time Grammy winner in his own right, actor, and throat cancer survivor) who mounted the stage after Lamontagne's set, waving to the rowdy audience with gusto and acceptance, and climbed on his chair at the drum set to play with wild, focused abandonment (and after each song, turning his head from the audience to cough into a white pocket handkerchief).  He only sang twice in a thin voice due to a raw throat-that is, until the encore.  For the last song his lead singer put it in perspective: the next song would be the last song of the 8-week tour with Lamontagne and other band members. So the stage filled with everyone who had been on the tour, and then, much to my sense of sheer awe, Levon Helm belted out a rousing version of "I Shall Be Released" as though all was well. And in watching him, I had the sense that although he was sick as a dog, he was going to sing this beautiful song as if indeed it was the last time he would ever sing it.  And in hearing Standing next to him in this lonely crowd, is a man who swears he's not to blame, I noticed that even the woman next to me-the woman who insisted on standing and wiggling through Helm's entire set, blocking the view of those behind her-even she was a part of the wild abandonment that was beautiful.  There was something triumphant in this last song of the tour, something that gave me a sense of overcoming the separation and estrangement that so surrounds us-whether seen in a rowdy crowd or the desperate loneliness of an individual. 

  I experienced this same kind of grace and courage last Monday when I read Nicole Krauss's short story, The Last Words on Earth, to my sister-in-law during her cancer treatment.  The story-about a man near the end of his life who has spent his life being invisible and is now desperate to be seen and not die forgotten-was pretty heavy to read to someone with stage-4 kidney cancer.  But in reading, I found myself laughing throughout and crying at the end as the character, Leo, smiles at the gift of his broken life, the feeling of happiness he finds in waking up each morning, and the awareness that at the end of his life, his friend has not forgotten him.  But it was my sister-in-law's intense attention that reminded me that the time we shared over this story would not be forgotten. And the gratitude the two of us felt in being seen by each other helped us remember our past and imagine the future that lies before us all. 

  None of us wants to be invisible.

  And in this season of Advent may you all experience Grace and Peace.

  I'm Diann McCabe and have lived with Terry McCabe in San Marcos, Texas for 22 years where we raised two sons and where we teach at Texas State University (in Honors and in Math respectively).  For some 10 years before that (give or take five years in graduate school) we worked on town meetings and human development projects with the OE: ICA in Atlanta, Memphis, Mississippi, and Indonesia.  

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