L.A. Phil at Disney Hall with Gustav Dudamel and John Williams and Yo Yo Ma
And I read and I read and I mourn and mourn and I worry and angst and I get angry and make my small little fights with small little metaphoric fists raised and keep trying to provide my small little acts of kindness and cheers for those who fill bigger shoes than I and are trying to do something. And probably like many today, I fight against the tide of absolute depression and hopelessness. And THEN…. a Wonderous Thing does appear. Last Night, Raoul Tawel and I were privileged (and I do mean unbelievably that I was a person of undeserved privilege) to hear a concert at the exquisitely designed LA Disney Hall, where even we peons in the rafters have the most incredible experience of a perfectly designed architectural masterpiece and have a place in the crowd where the sound of music is gloriously imbibed. Gustav Dudamel conducting is always a treat but last night was a special treat we gave ourselves. In one glorious night of music — American music! — by the prolific genius John Williams, who was THERE! all 93 years and probably 93 pounds of him. We were there, big bucks spent for us, even beyond the big bucks we spend for season tickets to the LA Phil, to hear an artist we have long loved and been in awe of — yes! — Yo Yo Ma! Yowza! That guy can play a cello! 😊 So you see, at this point words are failing me and I can not describe an experience that is one of those times that the Wonder, the Ineffable, the Divine merges with the Human Spirit and the Creativity of great Artists merges with the Creator within them and all around us. And again, it came to me as it often does in times like last night, that these are the people and the experiences that truly make me believe that there is a God and that a God Who can create human beings like Yo Yo Ma, and John Williams, and Frank Gehry, and every single one of those horn blowers, and drum bangers, and string players who make up the spiritual community (yes spiritual whether they know it or not) of the L.A. Phil orchestra — it came to me again that A God who can create those almost unearthly and yet human creators must want to be with those people forever somewhere, somehow in what we might imagine to be that New Heaven and New Earth kinda “place” and “time” where the joy and life of Creation and Creativity go on and on and on. Raoul said, “Yeah, but in your worldview here, what does that mean about people like you and me?” I said, “Well, all I can hope is that whatever True Love we little folks put into this world will carry over into the next. I can only hope that Love Remains and so I will just love, and love more.”
Ah, last night was a taste of heaven — no a taste of True Earth, as it was meant to Be, as it can Be. Can you imagine a world where each day, rather than wake up to read the news, we wake up to see Van Gogh paint and Frank Gehry design: where the air is filled not with hate or fear or bombs or cries, but the music of John Williams or the music of Bruce Springsteen; and where instead of producing guns and pollution, we are producing cellos and piccolos and geraniums and rice. We can not turn our eyes away from the fight we must fight today, but we can turn our ears towards the music of the spheres, and our hearts toward that which is full of wonder in the human spirit. I am not saying this well — read some good poetry or a good book today to read people who say this better than I — but I hope you will find your way forward today with some small experience of Wonder, and some Care for Your Soul (Thomas Moore) and some little bit of Hope and a whole, whole lot of Love. Walk in Beauty. Baby steps maybe, scraped knees and bent head maybe, gimpy leg and aching heart maybe, but Walk in Beauty. If you want to find God anywhere, you can be sure if it’s anywhere on this planet, She also will be walking there.
Just a “few” pictures from Raoul Tawel ‘s and my trip to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Tetons National Park. If you have been to them — you know. If you haven’t, get there by all means, by any means. I now call Yellowstone: “Where Creator Most Enjoyed Playing with Stuff” and I call Grand Tetons: “Where Creator Rested and Still Goes Sometimes for a Break from Everything Humans Get Up To”.
Beauty and delight. Wonder and awe. Lots of climbing and hiking and gazing. A bit of a real scare with a bison. A wonderful boat trip down the Snake River. And a great companion and fellow traveler. We have wanted to do this trip for ages. Now I can’t wait to do it again.
Some of my best lessons from the trip include: 1. “Be like an otter. Enjoy life. Have fun. It’s great to be alive.” (also, probably “fish. good” haha) 2. Try harder (wherever I go) to: “Leave only footprints. Take only memories.” 3. If you wonder how God and Evolution work together, go to Yellowstone National Park. 4. It’s great to have someone to explore with. On one of our hikes when we found ourselves alone in the woods, we were told to keep together and to keep talking so the bears would hear us, so with hearts beating, we took turns talking so the bears would know we were humans (just in case they might think we were lunch). I entertained the quiet woods with the poem “Us Two” by Milne, that Raoul Tawel and I had read at our wedding, which ends: “What would I do?” I said to Pooh, “If it wasn’t for you,” and Pooh said: “True, It isn’t much fun for One, but Two, Can stick together, says Pooh, says he. “That’s how it is,” says Pooh. 5. Seek more wonder and awe. We are created for wonder and awe. We just have to open our spirits to it. 6. There have been many American saints: Teddy Roosevelt, Ansel Adams, John D. Rockefeller, just to name a few — who have protected some absolutely incredible, nowhere else in the world like them, national parks for the American people and visitors from around the world. It is good that despite the rather bad things we have done, we can be proud and happy with the good things some Americans have done and gifted future generations with. And have you noticed, that when people are in and out in Nature, they are really nice? I think all the leaders of the world should just go on lots of hikes together in beautiful places and then we could just all work together for world peace and enjoy our lives. I hope we can turn our attention to preserving the planet so we can gift future generations with opportunities to see trees, and rivers, and wild, wacky geysers, and otters and beavers, and bison, grizzlies, and eagles, and rainbows and waterfalls and….. so for now, the final lesson to try to remember is: “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”
So, dear friends: Pictures don’t do it any justice at all, but here are some (hopefully) hints to entice you to plan your next trip to somewhere beautiful and inspiring. As a final word of advice from the First Peoples who discovered and lived in and cared for and enjoyed this area: Wherever you roam today: “Walk in beauty”.
A Somewhat Incoherent and Rushed Amount of Thoughts on a Trip to a Stunningly Beautiful Part of the World
By Jane Tawel
May 3, 2022
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Here are some random thoughts on a recent trip I was privileged to take with my husband to Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah, U.S.A. This was our second trip there and if you have never gotten to go, well, find a way. Go. Now if possible. Our trip was a celebration of my husband’s birthday, but it also turned out to be a retreat for our marriage and relationship, and a spiritual adventure for our souls.
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If you have never quite been able to believe in a Creator-Being, some call “God”, then you just might after visiting Bryce Canyon. And if you need to find solace, inspiration, and joy in putting one foot in front of the other, both literally and figuratively, then head to this area of amazing and incredible natural and glorious wonder. And if you want to learn about both the incredible creative Spirit that shapes towering red glowing rock formations and vast purple and yellow canyons, but that also shapes each human heart and lives within each human open to Spirit and Truth, a Quixotic and Incomprehensibly Wise Creative-Father that also shapes men and women into creative sources as well, then go to Bryce and Zion. You can just “be” there, which is the best, but you can also hear and read about the miracles of creation, both divine and human, that make this place a continual, evolving, and ancient as earth and native peoples – a story of glory and grace, determination and awesomeness, and practicality and natural magic.
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After a week of hikes and picnics, rest and play, Raoul and I drove the long day’s drive home and talked about our “take-aways”. Here are some of mine, in no particular order.
Sometimes you have to rest from trying to learn, in order to learn. Sometimes you have to play to let the hard work of relationship grow into something fruitful. And sometimes, you have to stop thinking, in order to understand – to understand others, to understand the Mystery many of us seek and call God, and to definitely, at times, understand oneself.
Forgiveness of others is hard, and forgiveness of oneself is even harder. The difficulty is why many of us never try to forgive and many of us never do it particularly well. True forgiveness means the annihilation of past judgments and the desire to avoid any future judgment.
Acceptance does not mean condoning, but it is better to remain silent about not condoning actions and let your voice speak loudly and lovingly of your acceptance of the person. It would be good to try each day to do this with myself. “Hello, dear Jane. I do not condone the fact you over-ate yesterday, nor do I condone the fact that you gossiped about that workmate or had that negative thought about that loved one. I do however, lovingly accept you – slightly chubbier, a little bit anxious and worried you – and I love that you are still seeking and going to try to do better today. I forgive you, Myself. I accept you myself. Jane ole Pal, Go out there and love!
There aren’t really any good words to describe Nature’s beauty. But I am so happy that people just have to keep trying to describe it anyway. There were a couple times I slightly embarrassed Raoul by bursting into the verses from the old hymn, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” I sing this to myself some nights when I feel anxious about my kids, or the world, or myself. I sing it sometimes when I can to stop myself from cursing other reckless and naughty drivers on side streets and freeways. I sing it to myself sometimes when I feel God moved off far-away too long ago, and I keep wondering when She will return to save the planet and the people in Ukraine and all the angry people in America. But…. There was something about singing it to Raoul and me and the red rocks, and the impossibly- surviving trees hanging on cliffs, and the chipmunks that find enough food each day to scamper along the dusty trails, and the American antelopes, that aren’t antelopes at all but a unique deer-like creature that has had its own completely unique DNA since God said, “Let there be!” – and it all came into being. Which brings me to this:
It is good to be “becoming”. If even rocks are still changing under the glory weight of a God Who Is, then so can we be “becoming”. So am I still becoming. It is good to be alive and as long as there are rocks standing in Bryce Canyon and waters flowing in Zion, there is not only hope for our planet, there is hope for you and me.
Surely the Psalmist was right, when she wrote, “For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His dwelling place.” But it is good to tell oneself when returning to the ugliness of a city street or the boredom of a 9-5 job or the angst of a world gone headline-mad, or the fears for a child or loved one, that God also lives in us:
So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. (I John 4:16-19)
I couldn’t stop looking at what the world and nature– from the large towering impossibly colored rocks to the small, delicate flowering plants –what all reveal about a Mind, a Spirit that is beyond my comprehension and yet Who somehow created a planet that is not only perfect for life, but perfect for exploration and awe-inspiring and wonder. The Psalmist also wrote these lines that kept zinging through my head while in Utah:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. …
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Dear fellow travelers: Today may be a day when like I, you get up and do the same old thing and feel the same old way– if not even a little achier or crankier or scared-er. And beauty may seem long past or remembered as a dream that you can’t quite bring to mind any more. Some days, or many days or most days –hope may seem to have hit a years’ long drought in the living waters department and God, well, He might truly be hiding out in places like Bryce or Zion because He doesn’t always seem to be on our speed dial any more. I know if I were God, right about now, I’d be taking a centuries long retreat to Zion and waiting to see if old Jane or the rest of the folks on the planet decide to stop warring and waging war and causing mayhem or just creating irritation in people they say they love.
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And so perhaps the best thing to do is to realize – if you are reading this – you still have the miracle of your eyes, along with the miracle of your hands and thinking brain – “Look, See, for the Lord is Good to have given you eyes that can see and hands that can work and a brain that can remember and envision something new to create today, even if it is just to create a perfect cup of tea.
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Breathe deeply and mindfully, some might say that is all prayer is, and then realize today is yours to live as you choose. Choose now. Choose joy. Choose love.
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Finally, no matter where you are, there is a dandelion growing in a sidewalk crack to remind you that the Earth is full of life and hope and beauty. And as long as you can see a wish-flower or hear a bird or taste a drop of honey or smell the morning air or touch your very own hand to your face, then you can trust that God is good and you are good to go.
And as long as people keep trying to create word-pictures that express the beauty of God’s creation and the beauty of God’s love, and the beauty of an hour more to live, and the beauty of our love for each other – well –then no matter where I am, or where my day will take me, or how simplistic and ineffectual my words may be, then I can have the teensiest taste of hope and glory and trust that “God is on Her throne and all will be well with Her World.”
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For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth over and around us lies; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
2. For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night, hill and vale, and tree and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
3. For the joy of ear and eye, for the heart and mind’s delight, for the mystic harmony, linking sense to sound and sight; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
4. For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild; Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
Jane Tawel 