Five Minute Friday :: Gradual

• Five Minute Friday :: Gradual

Intro

Have you noticed many aspects of life surprise us when we realize we've gone from A to Z barely noticing any changes until we're here and now looking back on there and then?

This week I'll reflect on two areas of my relative expertise and even add a Life Stuff tag.

Rather than outlining the gradual journey from teaching myself piano and note-reading as a youngish kid to now, I'll write about the gradual process of learning a new to me difficult piece of music. To brag on myself, I paid my way through my first undergrad working as a vocal studio accompanist. I can transpose at sight, realize figured bass at sight, read all clefs, and I can read open score.


Five Minute Friday :: Gradual

Music

Although I'm an excellent sight reader who used to be a phenomenal one, playing by heart – with or without a score in front of me – and learning a piece of music to public performance level is something else and it neatly defines "gradual." First the basic notes that to me come easily. A dozen times through and I know them fluently, including working through any difficult or puzzling what a long ago friend called "special spots" that take extra concentration and figuring out. Since I'm on my own and not visiting a piano teacher every two weeks, the sonata then gets a rest period. Sometimes a formal month or two, more often concentrating on polishing or learning other repertoire before deciding to go back to Sonata Number Whatever.

The score comes out again. Rather than "just notes," music gradually starts to come alive as I gradually notice patterns and contrasts. I thought I knew the notes before, but now it's coming to life and a nearby listener would enjoy it. Probably some memorizing at this stage, and then it's time to rest again.

Repeat the previous paragraph as often as needed, until at some point I'm ready to program the music for public listening. Imperceptible stages have gradually added up to a proud product.


Scripture-Theology

Long long time ago, when I was in after worship bible study the pastor was supposed to lead, a strange to us individual popped in and said, "I'm taking your pastor to lunch. Are you okay on your own?" That day's guest preacher stepped in and asked "What are you studying?" And immediately he helped us dig into the passage. I remember thinking, "wow!" When I complimented him and said he could be a seminary professor, he told me he'd been an adjunct at a nearby seminary.

Years afterwards I was teaching the adults at that year's Vacation Bible School. Noticing I had a free period, someone told me the teacher for the English-speaking middle school kids was sick and asked if I could teach the class. Contextual note: middle school is my favorite group and what I'd have chosen, but I'd developed a Theology of the Cross series for adults and the pastor wanted me to lead it.

A few minutes later I walked into the room full of middle school kids and asked "What are you studying?" They told me the scripture and we dug in together. Without a doubt I'd gradually learned a whole lot in those inbetween years, and I remember telling myself, Wow! Look what I did! Since then It's become routine and something I expect of myself, yet I know I still have far to go, and I know growth in knowledge and understanding also will be gradual.


Outro

Side note: that pastor said to me, "Leah, you could be teaching in seminary. You know the theology and you have the teaching ability, but you don't have the academic credentials."

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Another Getty Tuesday

Despite not having much time, I decided to trip to the Getty Center to see a new exhibit. Reggie Burrows Hodges is the Los Angeles based artist; his first solo hometown exhibit is A Theater of Passions. The Getty website explains, "Reggie highlights the drama and theatricality behind 17th-century Italian paintings from Getty's collection" (all on display in nearby galleries). The originals are by father-daughter painter duo Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi.

If I'd paid more attention to the website – or maybe some signage – I could have attended a talk by Reggie that very evening. He has local exhibits running from October 20th through February 28th—one at the California African American Museum I visited last winter, and the other at Art + Practice in Leimert Park. He's an intriguing artist I want to follow, though I didn't take pics of the five paintings in this particular installation because the colors overwhelmed and depressed me.

In the color theory class I took (that along with two semesters of cultural anthropology remains the most useful of my life), the instructor told us some color palettes "always work." She mentioned red, yellow, blue, along with red and black. Can they be done badly? Of course. But I've never cared for red and black or even the less pronounced pink and grey. Most likely I would have enjoyed Reggie's art a lot more if he used different colors.

• Pieter Claesz, Still Life with Assorted Fruit, about 1622

After A Theatre of Passions I visited mostly seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish paintings in the same building.

• Jan van Huysum, Fruit Piece, 1722

• Gerrit van Honthorst, A Musical Group on a Balcony (ceiling art!), 1622

You may have heard the Getty Center will be closing for a year come March 2027 so it can become smarter, greener, and more accessible. Yesterday a docent told me because the tram will be gone late December, visitors will take a shuttle bus to the museum. She also said everything will be more disorganized than it currently is. That sounds like some good blog content!

• Tuna Tuesday at Subway

Reformation 2026

In the year 1620 in the month of July, in Leiden, the Netherlands, Pastor John Robinson addressed pilgrims on their way to London to board the Mayflower so they could sail across the Big Pond to the New World. Pastor Robinson observed, "Lutherans have little interest in anything other than what Martin Luther saw. Calvinists aren't interested beyond whatever God revealed to John Calvin. But I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from his holy word."

More than 200 years later, George Rawson wrote a hymn based on those words:

We limit not the truth of God
to our poor reach of mind
by notions of our day and sect,
crude, partial, and confined.
No, let a new and better hope
within our hearts be stirred
the Lord hath yet more light and truth
to break forth from his word. Amen.

• Jeremiah 31:31-34

Grace to you and peace from God who dwells in the midst of the city [Psalm 46:5], God, whose word runs swiftly [Psalm 147:15]. Amen!

The festival of Reformation is a celebration particularly for the church as we reclaim our identity in the Holy Spirit as a people of the book.

Martin Luther famously saw God as lover of the world in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God in, with, and under almost every passage of the Old and New Testaments. The scriptures showed Luther a God of mercy, love, forgiveness, grace, and compassion.

Scripture never says God's word became a book. Not even a book made up of 66 books! Scripture itself tells us the word became flesh, a human person who walked, talked, lived among us.

Red is our color for festivals of the Spirit Pentecost and Reformation. Red symbolizes fire! Fire burns, sears, purifies, and destroys. We need fire to create a good meal, to bake a loaf of bread. Living in wildfire country we've learned some seeds need to be broken open by fire in order to germinate and grow so a new world will begin in the ashes of the old. Fire is one of our symbols for the Holy Spirit.

On Reformation the church reclaims its identity as a people of the book in the power of the Holy Spirit. Scripture brings us at least two other narratives of God's people in a similar situation. Maybe you know of more?

• Good King Josiah in 2 Kings 22 after the priests discovered the Book of the Law in the Temple.

• After the return from Babylonian exile, priest and scribe Ezra and governor Nehemiah read the Book of the Law at the Water Gate, as recorded in Nehemiah 8.

When we hear the word "law" in scripture it usually means the ten words or commandments of the Sinai Covenant. In an informal sense we often identity "law" with the five books of the Pentateuch from Genesis through Deuteronomy, but the Pentateuch as we know it didn't happen until after the return to Jerusalem after the exile.

Lutheran theology often contrasts law and gospel, sometimes referring to the bitterness of the law and the sweetness of the gospel. The law, the ten words or commandments, actually are gifts of grace, but because we find them impossible to do, they become bitter and need the redemption of the gospel.

God gave the exodus desert wanderers the working papers for their lives together after they'd been freed from slavery in Egypt. They'd learn to live together in community, journey together into the future, and keep their freedom despite being surrounded by (centuries of) empires.

Today's focus scripture is from the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah, familiar with kings, family with God. God spoke these words through Jeremiah during the exile in Babylon. The people were gone from the bounty of the land of promise. They were away from the temple they'd mistakenly believed was God's main residence. In fact, the temple had been destroyed.

Through Jeremiah God promises a new covenant, a new way of being. A thread of covenant runs through the witness of scripture. Covenant is God's particular way of coming together with humanity and with creation. If you're in a marriage or a committed relationship, it's probably a covenant. Your church membership is a covenant. But God covenants differently because we're not equal partners with God.

Jeremiah announces the new covenant won't be like the old one that the people broke because they couldn't keep it.

In Exodus 19:8 we hear the people promise, "All the words the Lord has spoken we will do." But they didn't because they couldn't. We may promise to do all the words God speaks, but we don't because we can't.

The new covenant will be written on our hearts. In Hebrew biology, the heart is the seat of our will, intent, and resolve, rather than emotions as we think of heart.

On Reformation we reclaim our identity as a people of book—as people doing the word. Reverencing God by serving our neighbors, whether human, animal, or other aspects of creation.

When the worship is over and the service begins, will the world see God's love for the world in, with, and under our actions, words, and attitudes? Will the word again become flesh in us? Will we reveal more light and more truth?

Today Jesus again invites us to the Table of Grace. In Matthew's account of Jesus' last supper, Jesus tells us the bread is his body—we are what we eat. Jesus says the cup is the blood of the New Covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The past is gone. The past is over and finished. Now we can move into the future. Amen? Amen!

Five Minute Friday :: Approach

• Five Minute Friday :: Approach Linkup

It's always the approach to the next new thing. Or maybe the approach to my current destination. Train tracks, railroad depots, Mass Pike and other interstates, a lonesome song from past times to remind me not to look back but to try to approach the future God will show me when I get there.

How can I approach something if I don't know where it is? What it is? Isn't it often true that aspects of life approach us first, almost as a tryout to see if we'll respond? Or show any interest? That's not what I had in mind. My fervent prayers asked for a different particular but – ya know – this one feels comfortable and even approaches "just right" for my current needs and situation.

"Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight." I've ridden plenty of kilometers on plenty of Eurail stock, but somehow North American trains carry a greater sense of yearning and nostalgia for me. In the USA I've had at least my share of north shore and south shore of Boston commuter train rides and San Diego Los Angeles Amtrak trips, though I've only read about more major excursions. Latish night driving alongside train tracks north to south in both California and Utah are poignant memories, but more than anything it's the train whistle that tears at my heart and causes tears to cascade down my cheeks.

Where what who do I need to approach today? Is there a person I want to approach? A new activity to approach and discover? A new city? Please Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight. Where. Is. Home?

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Five Minute Friday :: Abandon

My photograph of tulips from Easter 2025 edited by Grok on twitter
• Five Minute Friday :: Abandon Linkup

Like an abandoned dwelling place or a dream too extravagant to keep believing, the life I expected to continue in a recognizable form suddenly was no more. I say "suddenly" except I have no clue when or where it happened. I still can't fathom what happened. I kept on keeping on as usual, somehow not comprehending "insanity is expecting different results from the same behaviors." Evidently I kept chasing a way of being in the world that had abandoned me, because I was too stubborn to admit to anything other than a brief intermission. Dramatic? Yes, and you can't change what you don't admit.

Life hadn't become simpler. It had become smaller. I was lost. Abandoned. I'd expected the rhythms of my days to continue—or return, but now I know they were gone.

I need to figure out how to rebuild the last place and the last time my world made sense to me. I need to try to find a way out of the silence and the stillness. Do you think a therapist or a life coach could help? I'd planned to start spiritual direction, and I've reached out about it, but it can't begin with my current life-work schedule.

How do you count all those years of new mornings without a purpose during the day? Yet I still wait upon the life that disappeared.

I keep trying to replicate the way it was before my world ended. No wonder I hanker for Y2K! For life with a pulse and a rhythm. Chaotic, purposeful, meaningful. Messy and healing.

As I exist in the space between what I knew and what I don't dare hope for, the silence sometimes feels accusatory. On the other hand, sometimes the silence is wide and spacious and almost welcoming.

Is there a new shape to my life? One that embraces, doesn't abandon?

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LACMA Tuesday

LACMA has several new exhibits; here are highlights from my Tuesday day off outing.

Textile Alchemy: The Art of Reiko Sudo & NUNO featured large format textiles and several videos that showed the production process. Given the bright energy of so much contemporary Japanese design, I was surprised the colors, textures, and patterns were so bland I'd banish them from my wardrobe and living spaces, but the descriptions and the environmental stewardship involved were good to know about.

These pics are from the on-site retail shop that was beautifully arranged and had a few offerings I might enjoy, after all.

Home of the Future, 1925-1985: Designing Domestic Utopias

brought together everything: design; engineering; culture; history; imagination, life. And it had a sub-show, The Kitchen and its Discontents. I don't know if that was disCONtents or disconTENTS. All of it was North American and Western European.

They had real examples of various home furnishings from the represented decades (more chairs than anyone could count), some small scale model houses, about a dozen short videos, and they admitted the kitchen hasn't become more automated but everything we do in the kitchen has become more complicated. You've likely seen or used some of the older kitchen appliances and phones, entertainment objects like record players, CRT televisions, and transistor radios. I had to add in the radio because I had a couple of cool ones I still miss.

I'll close with three posters. This one is from the USA's Rural Electrification Administration that I need to read more about.

General Electric Tomorrowland Carousel of Progress

Danish artist Aage Sikker-Hansen (1897-1955) declares the kitchen Denmark's biggest workplace, repositioniung domestic work as a professional pursuit. Circa 1950s

Five Minute Friday :: Comfortable

• Five Minute Friday :: Comfortable Linkup

Sweater weather already has arrived in most of the Global North; it soon will be sweater weather here in Southern California. Kate's cozy knit illustration is exactly what I love about dressing for winter. As much fun as bright sundresses and retro preppy shorts can be (can you tell I'm trying to stay stuck in Y2K?), even when it's not business attire, even when it's for everyday errands or casual classroom wear, even when you haven't been shopping on High Street or finding high end thrift store surprises, cool weather clothes feel and look more classy, better quality.

If I wondered what to say about comfortable, did that intro just decide for me? Maybe not.

As adults with a degree of agency – a concept that's become popular recently – speaking for myself, of course, many of us still spend too much time caught up in longings to feel more comfortable about ourselves, our abilities, our decisions. Today's sunshine didn't last long enough and in addition, it's almost fall back time. I finished the project on time, the client seemed happy, but I could have included certain details. After lunch I found out the restaurant on the other corner had a better special just for today. Those minutiae keep leading to discomfort and discontent and I keep forgetting where I might find real comfort, a.k.a. The Bigger Picture.

I'm comfortably at home at the beach and in the city. The weekly Sunday assembly partly – or better – gets who I am. They like my art, enjoy my musical offerings, appreciate my theology. All that leads to some level of comfort.

Last Sunday after worship, our seminarian met with a few of us as part of the preparation for his first ever sermon that I understand will happen on Advent 2. The scripture he chose was Acts 17:22-28—the apostle Paul addressing the Athenians at the Areopagus.

He beautifully explained about God with us, God among us, God within us. Paul's audience heard:

²⁴"The God who made the world and everything in it…²⁷…is not far from each one of us. ²⁸For 'in him we live and move and have our being,' as even some of your own poets have said, for we, too, are God's offsetting."

Isn't that a keystone passage when we seek to become comfortable? It works almost every time!

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Blessing of the Animals 2022

Blessing of the Animals 2019