Monday, December 19, 2011

What makes life worth living? The Talk.

My favorite book of the past six months is a novel by Muriel Barbery called THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG. It follows two narrators, one, Renee, a middle-aged lump of a woman who is the concierge of a high-end Parisian apartment house inhabited by the opulently rich and powerful. The second narrator, Paloma, is a precocious, strikingly lucid 12-year old girl who belongs to the rich family on the fifth floor.

Paloma who sees adult life as an absurdity, informs us in her first chapter that she is going to commit suicide and set the house on fire on June 16, her thirteenth birthday. She writes: I‘ve set myself a little challenge: if you commit suicide, you have to be sure of what you’re doing and not burn the house down for nothing. So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I’d better not miss it, because once you’re dead, it’s too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.”

She suspects that life is only worth living because of love, friendship and the beauty of Art. Paloma is referring “to the beauty that is there in the world, things that being part of the movement of life, elevate.” For both Paloma and the older woman, Renee, art is “the vision of a camellia on moss, the enchantment of literature, precise grammar, a well-placed comma, a classical piece of piano music wafting through windows, a sweet impromptu . . .lifting the veil of melancholy.”

It’s been months since I finished this novel, but the question has lingered with me: What makes life worth living? What in this coarse and violent world is elevating?

High art is on my list. Seeing Raphael’s Madonna of the Meadow lifts me off the museum floor. Seeing a basket of fruit painted by Carvaggio is sublime. In fact, just saying Caravaggio’s name is a spiritual experience.

I know this is not for everyone. We took Sam as a young teenager to New York City, where we suffered him to walk through the Metropolitan Museum with us. He followed me closely, whispering continuously in my ear, “This is boring, so boring; when are we leaving, this is so boring—Oh there’s Van Gogh’s A Starry Night—There was excitement in his voice for a short second. Then it was back to “this is boring.

Happily art exists outside of museums. Art is a pot of blossoming geraniums on a wooden porch. It’s Jerry Brown’s double row of trees on either side of South Jordan Parkway. It’s a 3-year old grandson’s flirtatious smile when he burrows up through your bedcovers in the morning to ask, “How’s your day going so far?” It’s a baseball park at twilight. It’s the full moon rising over City Hall, a humming bird making its way to an 8th floor balcony. Sometimes it’s simply a new pair of patent leather shoes or the red white and blue trax train as it whizzes by. It’s an angular boxwood hedge. It’s the glass roller coaster curve of the Salt Lake Library and the gold onion domes of the Greek Orthodox Church. Beauty is all around us when we’re looking.

The Utah Symphony opened it’s season with Beethoven’s Ninth. The last movement is a rousing choral number to the words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy. Here’s some random lines: ”Joy! be embraced! Can you sense the Creator, world? Above the canopy of stars, a loving father must dwell. All sinners shall be forgiven and hell shall be no more.” [It’s a thousand times better in German]. It’s so beautiful it makes me cry. I feel connected with the audience, the musicians, the chorus and the conductor. I feel connected to all humanity. I feel less lonely.

When I clean my house I put on the Greatest Hits of the 50’s and rock and roll around my apartment with a Swiffer. Beethoven elevates me and so does Chubby Checkers.

Here’s a spoiler alert. In THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEGEHOG, Paloma finds that beauty love and friendship are exactly what makes life worth living. She is spared suicide.

It is difficult for me to separate love from friendship. I have a pillow in my living room that states “Happiness is being married to your best friend.”

I fell in love with Tom because he was kind to old ladies, because he was smart, because he played the piano well and because he had a dark, perverted sense of humor. These still seem like good criteria for marriage.

But anyone who's been married a few years knows that affection for your spouse runs along a behavioral scale that has to do with moods, children, money, sex, aging, the weather, voice tone, humor or lack of it, punning, food, the wrong movie, interruptions, exhaustion and its opposite, exhilaration.

Sometimes we tire of each other. I can say that, because this is not one of those times. We seem to have come to grips with aging, money, pain, although not the volume of the TV or the temperature of our apartment. He likes hot air blowing through the vents. I don't like it when the furnace turns on. Period. I tell him to put on more clothes. He tells me to go naked.

Love is active. We have to remember to put down the laptops and look into each other’s faces, to embrace, to touch, to tell our stories yet again.

It is the same with friends. Texting can take you only so far. Look into each other’s faces, speak to each other.

There are two nights a month that are sacred to me: The first Monday of the month when I play cards with my sisters and we laugh about growing up in “the orphanage.” (It was a benign orphanage). And the second Monday of the month when Tom and I play board games with our best friends, the Bracys. Christine suggested it saying, we could drop dead anytime, we better meet regularly. And so we do.

I need to see Peggy and Jerry on a regular basis. I need to have breakfast with Ann. I’d like to see more of Mary Ann. I need to lunch with David and Sharon and gossip about our kids. I like seeing Rick Horne in the same pew every week. He makes me feel safe. I like receiving a hand written note from Anne Plummer to let me know she is not dead.

So is Paloma’s list enough? Art, love and friendship?

Last week, Saturday, I decorated our Christmas tree and listened to the Tabernacle Choir sing through the carols. They sang the most soulful rendition of Silent Night and I was, unexpectedly, caught by joy and the Holy Ghost, who whispered with non-words: Fear not, Louise, Jesus Christ is real. He is real.” And I prayed for forgiveness for those dark moments of doubt.

I need Christ in my life, and I need that part of my life to remain sacred and private.

I am appalled that Jesus has been co-opted by politicians, who sell his name like a hemorrhoid ointment; that his name appears on billboards and bumper stickers, cartoons and t-shirts. Vote for me and you vote for Jesus.

But I’m not running for office and this is not a caucus. Here we are together, friends, only because we are a community in Christ. We worship in his name. We are believers of the word. And as Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

This is a season of glad tidings. Our whole lives are glad tidings. “Arise, shine for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. He is our salvation. And his name shall be called wonderful, counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, the prince of peace.”



20 comments:

  1. THIS is art. This whole talk. Wow. I love it. And I love that Christ is in art, in love, and in friendship. Great reminder that He is what makes life worth living. Beautiful words!

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  2. Hooray! I could hear your voice giving this talk as I read.

    Also, you shouldn't gossip.

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  3. Lovely. Truly. It hit my cold spot and warmed it nicely, like the grinch's heart melting. I didn't know I needed this until I read it. Thanks so much for sharing.

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  4. Oh, Louise. How beautiful. Made me weep just a little weep.

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  5. Lovely. I read it hearing you speak every word. I love that you love your sisters. I'm sure you love your brothers too, but nothing is like a sister or two or three or four.

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  6. Thank you - loved the reminder to slow down and savor both the journey and the community of saints that I enjoy.

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  7. Thank you for posting this, Louise. It was a brilliant talk. One of your very best. I felt nourished by it.

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  8. You have the wonderful gift of weaving the sublime,the ordinary and everything in between with humour and truth. Because you are authentic, you inspire others to become so. I think this is a talk that should be recorded right along side Bednar, Oaks and Scott. You'll need a middle initial.

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  9. Thank you. Wonderful. I'm thinking now about what makes life worth living...

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  10. Dearest Louise,
    thank you for refreshing insight, humor, and openness. And, I too enjoy your husbands dark sense of humor.

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  11. Reading this gave me goose bumps. The good kind. Thank you.

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  12. Thank you, thank you for posting this! It answered questions I had given up on and made me cry thinking of the love I am lucky to feel from God (when I haven't put too many walls around my heart). I rushed home from church that day and started making a joyful list, which is different than a grateful list. I can be grateful for any old thing but it takes some thought to create a list of specific moments or details in life that make me smile without even realizing it. Thanks again!

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  13. Please move into my Colorado ward and speak each Sunday! I am sending this link to my sisters.

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  14. Thank you for the reminders. Of truth, of God, of love, of friendship. And for the whispered testimony of Christ. Music does that for me when I take the time to listen. My soul is a bit more whole for having listened to your words.

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  15. I love me some MoTab. I must dry my eyes now; your talk made me a bit emotional. You're the very best.

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  16. It's amazing how aware God is of the dark little corners of our minds and how He seeks us out through the spirit to make things right. Loved this post.

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  17. After this post, I decided to read this book. I was so glad I did! It's a wonderful book, and I love your thoughts about it. It's easily a book that can change your life.

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