Perfect Pitch
I don't usually post these, but I realize not everybody reads the News & Observer, where my columns appear once a month on Sundays. So here it is. It appears in the Feb. 21 edition of the Arts & Living section.
Perfect Pitch
Though I began my career slugging out words in a newsroom, for more than 20 years I worked from home. I loved the freelance life, leaving the office long enough to search for a story or meet with writing students, but I also loved that by the end of the day I was home and ready to collect whatever jewels my children chose to share when they came home from school.
Then college happened, and my husband looked at me and said: It’s time you got out of the house.
Just about that time, my church called a new priest, a man so young I could have been his babysitter. (After hours, he plays bass in an indie rock band.) He set to work, and his youth brought a new energy to our congregation, and soon he began to build a team to help him lead our parish through what would be a time of tremendous growth.
Some of these wonderful folks already worked there. Others, like me, he found within the pews. When he approached me about joining the staff for communications, I was reticent. I cherished my freelance work (and my flexibility). I liked attending church and volunteering, and though I loved the people, working where I worship? I wasn’t so sure.
Then he took me to lunch and talked about that “call” thing, and well, that got me.
In those first weeks I sat in a tiny office filled with somebody else's filing cabinets, trying to invent a job no one had had before me. But soon I was sharing space with my friend Lee, who had a similar lunch and was now leading our newcomer program. Then came Charlotte for endowment and Abby for youth — the Episcopal logo tattooed on her wrist long before she ever thought about working for a church.
Today we are a baker’s dozen — working in music and finance, youth and children’s ministry, administration, preaching and teaching, forging deep friendships as we go, doing what I now know is God’s work.
I think too often when people hear the word “ministry,” at least in the Episcopal Church, they think of hands folded, voices low, lots of fancy language and all that kneeling.
There is that, of course, but there is so much more.
Our weekly staff meetings begin with prayer, surely, and with sharing plans of how our work will help bring our people closer to God. But sometimes our spiritual conversations morph into how popular culture competes with Church, and to mask our frustration, my boss might ask us about our favorite characters in stories as diverse as “House of Cards” and “Star Wars” to “Mary Tyler Moore.”
The Mary Tyler Moore thing grew from a discussion about the preaching rotation (or ROTA), which morphed into “Rhoda,” and of course for most of us, there is only one Rhoda. The entire staff broke out with the theme song, and as it ended, our newest priest, with us only a few months, tossed his collar into the air like Mary did her hat. (No irreverence intended, of course.)
Who does this at work?
Everybody, I wish.
We often leave our meetings laughing, ready to take on the sadness our parishioners sometimes share with us. We’re here for specific jobs — taking care of the building, planning the Sunday anthem, counting pledges — but we listen, too, as we make copies, share lunch and conversation, hearing our people out, even when they think we are not doing our jobs.
A few weeks ago, the collar-tossing priest answered a new call, and we’re heartbroken. He pulled our circle in even tighter, and we will never forget his ministry to and with us.
When we heard he was leaving, the boss opened our staff meeting by saying a friend had asked him what it was like to work with us.
“You know the last episode of Mary Tyler Moore, when they all gather for that group hug? That’s what it’s like,” he said. Later Charlotte posted that image on our Facebook page, and we all wept a little.
Yes, at my office, love is all around, and on most days we try not to waste it, knowing this perfect pitch may be tossed our way again.
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Susan Byrum Rountree is director of communications for St. Michael's Episcopal Church.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author. She can be reached at susanbyrumrountree.com
9/11... again and again
my good friend Melanie posted a picture of the twin towers on her Facebook page today with these words:
The world feels more filled with hate, people fleeing for their lives like so many from these building 14 years ago. May we focus today on Lady Liberty who welcomed so many who came knowing a better life exists with freedom.
yes, the world does feel more filled with hate, and though we pray for peace, much of the world is just not seeing it.
i wish i knew the answer. i do know that many people much smarter than i am are working on that answer, and across the world there are people opening their arms to the children of Syria, giving them water, food, a safe place, far away from violence.
on this 9/11, i always go back to the Sunday of the 10th anniversary, as i sat with my friends on a pew far away from home, listening to a sermon about forgiveness. i'm sharing it again, because i, for one, need to be reminded. i think of the first responders, who turned now away from what faced them, but toward it.
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we sat in upholstered chairs this morning in
in mid-coast Maine. no kneelers, just clear glass windows looking out over scrubby pines dotting the landscape. save for one small stained glass window above the altar depicting Jesus calming an angry sea, and these words: Fear not.
we shared our chair pew with four friends we have met in the past eight years. the six of us are in Boothbay
Harbor taking in the crisp air and celebrating 80 years of marriage between us. at supper last night, we shared memories of our earliest years as married couples, laughed at our naiveté and marveled at our sticktuativeness
if there is such a word. the oldest among us married at 22 and 23, will celebrate 40 years together on Sunday. the newlyweds have been married just 10, tying their knot tightly around each other and changing their world as a couple, just 10 days before our whole worlds changed — 10 years ago today.
the readings for today were about forgiveness, how when Peter asked Jesus how many times he was supposed to forgive someone who had wronged him, Jesus launched into hyperbole, saying seventy-seven (or seven times seven, depending on your translation.) and then He talked about the master whose slave owed him the equivalent of around a billion dollars in today's world. a price he could never pay back.
'we owe God everything,' the priest said. 'just because we opened our eyes this morning, we owe more than we can ever repay.'
i listened, waiting for the lesson about 9/11, and it was there, in the middle of all that need to forgive. how personal forgiveness, which is often the hardest, is based on the illusion that we might have had a better life if the person who had wronged us had not done so. and how as Americans living in a post-9/11 world, forgiveness is not so simple anymore. it was no accident, he said, that our lessons for today — of all days — were about this subject. chosen years in advance, this is just how God works.
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in the past week, my husband and i watched several specials about that Tuesday 10 years ago none of us will ever forget. it was harrowing to watch once again, as planes that seemed to come out of nowhere hit the Twin Towers and forever changed our lives as Americans. as i watched and listened to survivors and our nation's leaders tell their stories, i said a silent prayer that nothing like this would happen again.ever.
our daughter lives in NYC, and last week, she and her husband moved into a new apartment. her Upper West Side home is far away from Ground Zero, but as the anniversary of that day approached, i knew it is much on her mind. when i talked with her yesterday, they were staying home. traffic had been horrible since Friday, when the only news, it seemed was about a new, credible threat.
she was a senior in high school the morning of 9/11, and i was set to teach writing to members of her class later that morning. at home, preparing for the day, i saw the second plane hit in real time. then the Pentagon plane. it was almost impossible to pull myself from watching to get to my work. a little more than an hour later, after both towers had fallen, and as i walked up the steps to the high school, i listened to a silence so absolute I could not remember a time when my world had ever been so quiet. a man i didn't know came out of the building and we stared into each other's eyes for more than the split second strangers allow.
six months later my daughter and i visited Ground Zero ourselves with my best friend and her daughter. we stopped in at the office of one of my husband's colleagues, an Indian woman who told us the story of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge toward home and how it took hours to get to her little boy. 'the smell is gone,' she said as we stared into the canyon that still seemed to smolder. it was not gone. she was only used to it.
we were deeply moved awhile later by the thousands of fliers and bouquets of flowers posted on the fence that surrounded
the nation's oldest public building in continual use — which stands across the street from where the towers once stood. the minutia of the grieving, put there by families searching for loved ones missing when the towers fell.
from September 2001 to May 2002, St. Paul’s opened its doors to firefighters, construction workers, police officers and others for meals, beds, counseling and prayer.
Doug Remer, a former associate rector at my church and a family friend of my friend Anne Boone, was a relief worker at the chapel and invited us in. we knelt in pews where George Washington worshiped. we read some of the hundreds of letters lining every pew and wall, written by children from all over the world and sent to relief workers, thanking them for their service. this is not something you ever forget.
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the priest today said people have approached him in the years since 9/11 saying: where was God in this? why did God cause this to happen? "i don't know what kind of God you believe in,' he said, 'if you think God caused it to happened." he did not believe in that kind of God. nor do i. i can tell you where God was. in every single fire fighter and police officer who entered that building. in the couple, as the priest reminded us, who jumped out of the burning buildings, holding hands, knowing this was something that could not be done alone. there, in the community of strangers who huddled together for comfort, in elevators, in stair wells, on the top floors unable to get out, in those airplanes as their fuselages broke the windows of the towers, my God was there.
i found myself weeping — i can't remember a sermon in a long time that has made me weep — for the 3,000 souls gone, for the children of 9/11, for my daughter living in a city targeted yet again by terror. and closer to home, for the man sitting next to me, whom i have failed to forgive too many times, but who never fails to forgive me.
10 years ago, i had not yet met the friends that occupied my pew today. we were all in different places in our lives — Tim & Linda living in Birmingham, Lee and David living on base at Fort Bragg, NC. Lee had not even unpacked her belongings when David — who was supposed to be on vacation — came home to tell her he would be needed at work. (last week, as we recalled our 9/11 memories, several of us spoke of the quiet. Lee could not help thinking of how at Fort Bragg, there was no silence at all. just mayhem.
within five years of 9/11, the six of us would be brought together by church, and as Tim said over dinner last night, our connection to each other has changed us all.
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after church we took a car ride to a beautiful little island and found a tiny church built in i think 1918, nestled in the pines and rocks, right by the sea. inside, i knelt, finally, and said my prayers, once again, for having safely arrived at this spot, on this day, with these people. for my children, husband, parents and siblings. for the world, and peace.
this afternoon, we sailed in 12-knot winds aboard a three-masted 60-foot schooner. i braced my feet against the side as we heeled, her rails almost into the chop, tried to take a few pictures. and i thought about how to connect all the moments of this day: the church, the priest's message, the friends, my marriage and this sail.
i thought about the small stained glass window of St. Columba's, depicting to me, Jesus calming the waters during the storm. "fear not' read the words in one corner of the small window.
i didn't know until just now this about the window: "
the theme 'fear not'
was adopted (by the church) soon after... 9/11.
It also takes into account that we are a seafaring town. the touches of green signify the headlands of a safe harbor as the angel speaks peace from a bruised and stormy sky."
well. after 9/11, we are all bruised. though it's a gift to be married so many years, sometimes it bruises us, too. as the priest said: God is in the midst of them. and us.
fear not. angels speak peace from a bruised and stormy sky.
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writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
homemade heaven
Evelyn, who works in the room next to me on Mondays, is a baker. i watch her Facebook posts (well, i DID before their new algorithm took over my news feed) enjoying pictures of her creations. last week her posts about making baklava for the first time with her Lebanese mother fascinated me.
i've never worked with phyllo dough, but i know from watching others that it can be maddening. paper-thin sheets of dough kept damp, as you layer and layer and layer. making yeast rolls seems like making instant pudding by comparison.
but Evelyn, who shares a connection to my home town that we didn't discover until about a year after she began working with us, does not take shortcuts. she documented her time, working with the phlyllo, measuring the squares of baklava with a yard stick so that each piece was a perfect parallelogram. assembling the baklava took two hours, she said, and her mother had already made the filling.
so when Evelyn presented me with my own piece of her handmade baklava, i felt honored. i treasured it, examining the layers and marveling at the masterpiece this small piece of dessert was. i'm not a dessert eater, so i tried to take a sliver, to save most of it for my husband, but my efforts destroyed her work, so i guiltily ate it all
later, Evelyn brought me half of a slice to share with my husband, and i wrapped it up in the Christmas napkins she provided, excited to share this Christmas surprise.
another gift of Christmas, and we have 14 days yet to go.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.
these people
until about 10 years ago, i never worked in an office. of course i began my career slugging it away in a newsroom, and i worked in two of them for a few years until i didn't anymore. then i worked from home, raising two wiggly children who until that point were my most colorful of coworkers.
as i raised them, i carved out a sort of work like for myself, staking claim to a small room at the top of the stairs that was supposed to be the 'nursery' in the house we bought 25 years ago. it soon grew into my office, with built-in book shelves and a Pottery Barn desk with room for all of my files, a small closet where i could store all the accouterments needed for the life of a writer at home.
i loved this life, getting out of the office long enough to meet with writing students or interview very cool folk, but knowing i could retreat to my space by the end of the school day and collect whatever jewels my children chose to share with me about their day.
and then, college happened.
just about that time, my church called a new priest, a young man whom i might have babysat if i'd lived in his neighborhood— he was that young. but in time, he began to build a team of people who would lead him through a period of tremendous growth for our church. some of these wonderful folks were already at work there. others joined their ranks a few years in, tapped by my priest because he found them to have a particular talent he felt we needed.
when he approached me about joining the staff for communications, i was reticent. i loved my freelance work, my free time, going to church but having little responsibility for it besides my monthly pledge. but then he took me to lunch and talked about that 'call' thing, and well, that got me, so i signed on.
i had not worked in an office with anyone since 1981, and in those first months, i found myself in a tiny corner spot filled with somebody else's filing cabinets. then he hired another, and the two of us picked out a soft purple color to paint the cinderblock walls of our new 'office.' he hired another and another, all i imagine taking them to that important lunch when he talked about 'call' and 'purpose' and leaving no room for 'no' in the conversation.
today we are a team, communicators and administrators and financial folks and children and youth ministry folk, priests and others, all of us forging deep friendships as we go about what i have truly grown to understand is a ministry.
i think too often when people here the word 'ministry', they think of hands folded, voices low, whispering in serious tones. grief.
and where i work, of course there is that, but.
we gather around the table at our weekly staff meetings, and we begin with prayer, surely. but as the meeting progresses, we might be asked who we are in the Star Wars trilogy, our favorite song from the Sound of Music, or we might find ourselves breaking out in song to the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore. there is method to this madness (the MTM thing grew from a discussion about the preaching rotation (or ROTA), which morphed into 'Rhoda' and of course most of us are of the generation who would remember that Rhoda was MTM's best friend. that meeting ended when our newest priest took his collar and tossed it to the air. (no irreverence intended, to be sure)
who does this at work?
i hope everybody.
i love these people. and i hope everybody has staff meetings like ours, because it's therapeutic, particularly for those of us in ministry work. (and by that i don't mean ordained ministry, b/c 90 percent of our staff is not 'ordained'. but we have been called, to be sure.
and the joy of it is, we leave our staff meetings laughing, ready to take on the sadness many of our parishioners share with us daily, and maybe to offer them some hope. we are there to listen, to make copies for them, to share lunch and conversation, break bread in communion, to hear them out, even, when they think we are not doing our jobs.
tonight we gathered with the leadership of our parish to celebrate the end of what has been a challenging year — january brought a heart attack and open heart surgery for our priest. and each month that passed brought further challenges, either for our parish or for the Church at large. and because of the people i work with, we met the challenge.
tonight i want to thank these people (only a few of whom are pictured here) for welcoming me, for being my friend and for being a minister to me. blame the MTM song on the guy who photobombed the picture.
but be sure of this:
love is all around, don't need to waste it, you can have the town why don't you take it? you're gonna make it after all.
try singing it. see what happens.
(tossing a priest's collar is optional of course.)
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.