Confirmation

Hi folks,

I know I just wrote one of these, but I've been promising a post about my confirmation, and I thought I'd better get that done before I start to forget the details.

It was a wonderful experience, and one I'll always remember.  Angela emphasized that, from the church's perspective, I didn't need to do this to be part of the community, which I really appreciated.  I wanted to do it because I felt that it was a way for me to enter this community, and also to recognize how my faith has grown and matured since I've been here.  That's why I wanted to do it.  And I'm so glad I did.

Just a quick note on what this is all about:  If you're raised Anglican (which I wasn't), you get baptized (usually) as a baby.  At this ceremony, your parents, godparents, and the church community make a commitment to raise you well and do their best to teach you about what they believe is true and important.  There is also a belief among Anglicans that God is actually acting on the person in some way at the baptism.  It's definitely not your "ticket to heaven," but it is a sacrament--"an external sign of an internal grace."  God claims you during a human act of submission.  Then, when you're older, you decide when you're ready to return the favor and make your own commitment to God, so you take a confirmation class to discuss what you're actually committing to, and then you get confirmed.

My upbringing was a little different.  In the Baptist church, you get baptized when you're older, when it's your decision, like Jesus did when his cousin John, a rabbi, baptized him.  We emphasize that it's not a magical ceremony, it's not the price of admission to heaven, and it doesn't change how much God likes you.  It is like a wedding.  When I was baptized at 13, I was saying that I was going to do my best to follow God for the rest of my life.  We do it because we're told to.  Jesus said it's good to be baptized, so we get baptized.  So the "what happens" of baptism differs a little bit, but we agree that it's a good thing to do, it's important and a duty, and it's representative of becoming a follower of God.  Baptists don't have confirmation because that public promise is at the core of our baptism ceremony.

So I had already made the promises involved in confirmation at my baptism.  For me, Anglican confirmation was a way to learn about the tradition in which I now find myself, a way to join the community and participate fully, and also just a personal statement: a reiteration of commitments I made twelve years ago but continue to hold to.

Still with me?  Excellent.  The rest will be lighter.  :)  I'm going to give you a slightly irreverent account of some of the features, but be assured that at no point do I mean to be contemptuous or dismissive.  Some of you who read this might not know me very well--I love finding whimsy in situations, including situations I think are meaningful and important.  Please don't mistake my amusement for disrespect.

I showed up for rehearsal at Christ Church Cathedral on the afternoon of the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.  John, a priest at the cathedral and someone of whose I am a big fan (give me a second to recover from that disastrous game of grammatical Twister), asked me if I was ready, spiritually and otherwise, and I went off to the side to let the little butterflies of stage fright accumulate and gather speed.  The Bishop of Oxford, who would be conducting the ceremony, wasn't actually there yet, so for a lot of the time John had to go through the program and say in effect for each item, "We're not going to rehearse this part now because the Bishop isn't here, and I don't know how he's going to do it, but it will be fine."  Move on to the next item in the program, and: "We can't rehearse this part because the Bishop isn't here yet..." and repeat.  So a lot of the rehearsal was us going through each thing in the program and not rehearsing it.

When the service started, it was of course before Easter, so we were observing that period of time when Jesus was dead.  They constructed a somber atmosphere to reflect this, with each congregant holding a candle to dimly illuminate the otherwise dark and gloomy cathedral.  The fire for the candles came from a little symbolic fire lit outside using some kind of scented wood that smelled really good.

As I learned only last week, the Anglican church celebrates the start of any particular festival at sunset on the previous day, so at a certain point in this service, it was suddenly officially EASTER.  And boy did we know it.  All at once, in the same sudden moment, the lights blazed on, the choir brought forth a fanfare, somebody in the back shook bells like he'd just stuck his finger in an electrical socket, a choir member whipped a pair of giant cymbals out of nowhere and crashed them together, and the organist--oh, the organist.  It was like bam lights on PLAY SOME LOUD STUUUUUUUFFFFFFFFFF.  I bet he looks forward to that moment all year.  I would.

For the confirmation itself, each candidate was presented to the Bishop by the clergy member responsible for preparing him or her for confirmation.  Angela Tilby, a canon at the cathedral, had given me my confirmation class, so she presented me to the Bishop when the time came.  Then the great Bishwop himself asked the eight or so candidates a short list of questions, asking us to commit to a few basic ideas.  Each of us went up to him individually to be confirmed after this.  When I went up, he looked me in the eye and said, "Anna, God has called you by name and made you his own."  He pressed both his hands onto the top of my head and prayed.  I got a little slimy oil smeared on my forehead for good measure and returned to my seat an Anglican.

I was so grateful to be surrounded that night by good friends.  It meant a lot to me to have them there.

This memory is on my mind today because this morning I had the privilege of going to the University Church to witness Rachel, a friend of mine from choir, being confirmed herself.  The Bishop conducted her ceremony as well and gave a magnificent sermon based on two assertions: all this stuff only matters if it's true, and all this stuff only matters if it somehow makes you, your life, different.

Rain Boots in the Cathedral

and other reflections on English weather

A few weeks ago we had a period of seventeen consecutive days during which it rained every single day--often for most of the day.  The world is wet.  And yet, in all that rain, we could hardly seem to manage a respectable storm.  There were two claps of thunder on April 22, and two more rumbles on Tuesday, but really.  If it's going to rain this much, I think we at least deserve a good rousing storm.

The wellies/rain boots have been given a near-daily outing during Monsoon Season 2012, and have been worked to the point of springing a leak.  But they are mighty and shall endure.

I have been criticized for wearing my wellies into church on multiple occasions--both in Wadham Chapel where our choir sings and in Christ Church Cathedral.  While I agree that pairing sky blue fake wellies with so-called "church clothes" and an academic gown is one of the more daring fashion statements I have attempted, I would also like to remind everyone that here in the land of walking miles on cobblestone through a neverending procession of five-minute rain showers, sensible footwear is next to godliness.  Make fun of my fake wellies all you want, but at the end of the day, you will look great and be freezing, and I will look silly and have dry feet.

Today is Ascension day, which if you're an Anglican is apparently a separate event from Pentecost.  I got up this morning at the crack of dawn* and trekked down to Harris Manchester to sing a little service on top of THE TOWER.  We were given a health and safety speech ("This tower was built nine bazillion years ago and has never and will never pass any safety inspection.  If you die, you may not sue us.  Try really hard not to jump off the tower because it's not good for you.") and then crept up the teeniest, creepiest, most claustrophobic spiral staircase I've ever seen.  We sang a ten-minute service, complete with prayers and readings, for a congregation of exactly zero people--which is only slightly smaller than last Monday's congregation, when we had a choir of 7 and a congregation of 3.  We pack 'em in at Harris Manchester.  Anyway, we had a good time, and the view speaks for itself.

*I use the term "crack of dawn" here in the figurative sense.  As we creep towards summer, the sun does not, in fact, rise at any hour that I would expect to be awake for.  The other night I didn't bother to close my drapes before going to bed, because I was getting up at 7:00am.  That's pretty early, I thought.  The sun won't have been up for long, surely.  It will be fine.  Next thing I knew, I was waking up at 5:00am to blazing sunlight setting my room aglow.  Fail.  We are currently at 16 hours of daylight and climbing.  I hate my skylight more than ever.

Spring has sprung.  The grass is riz.  I wonder where the daisies is.

Siyahamb'ekukhanyeni kwenkhos'

It was a month ago tomorrow that I found out I get to stay here for three more years.  In that time, I have borrowed an opera from a famous conductor, gotten confirmed as an Anglican, unwittingly watched the equine equivalent of dogfighting on BBC1, stayed up late with the Titanic victims to witness their demise, and conducted a choir in a performance of African music.  Just another month in Oxford.

Earlier this year, I got it into my head that I should write an essay on an opera called La Esmeralda by Louise Bertin (1805-1877).  This is a terrible idea for several reasons, which I shall now list for your disapproval:

1. I do not speak French.
2. No one has heard of this opera or this composer.
3. The opera was a catastrophic failure and closed after six performances, and has only been performed once in its entirety in the 176 years since its premiere.
4. The orchestrated version of the opera is unpublished and unavailable.
5. There are exactly zero English-language books in existence devoted to either this opera or this composer.

Armed with my list of reasons why this was a bad idea, I launched myself into research.  I already own a copy of the only recording of La Esmeralda.  What I really needed was the score, which it is not even published, much less in print. So I tracked down Maestro Lawrence Foster of the Orchestre et Opéra National de Montpellier, the conductor on my CD, and wrote to his personal assistant asking for advice on where I might be able to find the score.  Then something unbelievable happened--Maestro Foster totally lent me his score.  It arrived from France a few days ago.  I think we can put that one down as a win for the Oxford email address.

I went over to the dark side and got confirmed as an Anglican the night before Easter, but I think that dude deserves its own post (too much to write about here already), so stay tuned.

I watched the Grand National on BBC1 last weekend, but I'll refrain from describing it here.  Horse people: call me.  I'll just summarize by saying that it's always a treat to have equestrian competitions on TV, but I was shocked by how violent and barbaric this event was.

I'm sure the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic has escaped none of you.  If you haven't already, you should definitely check out the new drama miniseries on the subject (online at ITV for the UK and ABC for the US).  You may also be aware of the bizarre reenactment that went on during the last week.  For the low, low price of about $10,000 you could dress up in Edwardian costumes and board the one ship in the world that fully intended to hit an iceberg and sink.  One of the less historically accurate features of this strange cruise was a constant procession of tweets issuing from the ship, documenting in real time the detailed goings-on of the original Titanic voyage.  These began before the ship sailed and continued through the time at which the Carpathia would have arrived to rescue the survivors.  Many of the tweets were from the point of view of various passengers and crew members--some historical and some hypothetical.  This, while fascinating, was also problematic.  The tweets conjured images of people dodging explosions, being trampled by mobs, plummeting into the ocean, clinging to floating shrapnel, convulsing with hypothermia, drowning in icy seawater, and periodically pulling cell phones out of their pockets to tweet about it.  Oh no, I'm trapped in boiler room 6 and the water is up to my chin!  Hang on, Ima just send a tweet real fast.

A splendiferous choral opportunity came to me this week in the form of an invitation to teach and conduct a few rousing African pieces with the Wadham choir.  I can't tell you how much fun that was.  We did "Siyahamba," "Hamba Lulu," and "Si njay, njay, njay."  Gesundheit.  You should have seen our English chapel choir moving and dancing and improvising and giving that joyful music every ounce of enthusiasm it deserved.  My choir was thrown unsuspectingly into a choral tradition that is in vivid contrast to the one in which we live and function, and they committed to it wholeheartedly and totally rocked it.  I couldn't be prouder of the choir I get to sing in.  And it was just so much fun.

I will conclude with the latest development in my endeavor to learn English as a second language.  Tonight's subject is the word practice.  Or practise.  See, apparently here in the land of black pudding and mushy peas, there are two ways of spelling the word, depending on whether it is being used as a noun or as a verb.  So I go to practice to practise.  I feel that this is unnecessarily complicated, and it leaves me with two dilemmas:  How do I spell the word when the noun becomes an adjective, and when the verb becomes a noun (gerund)?  Is it a practice room or a practise room?  Is practicing a necessary part of my day, or is practising?  Or maybe in these cases we're supposed to use an entirely new spelling.  Maybe my pracktassing in fact takes place in the prægtizz rooms.  Or maybe--

No.  You know what?  I quit.  I just quit.  Any language that considers semihemidemisemiquaver to be a reasonable and legitimate word has serious issues that should be addressed.  I mean, that's on par with some ridiculous imaginary language that has sixteen forms of the, thinks pineapples are female but girls are not, and lets you invent compound words on the spot that aren't even in the dictionary.  Oh wait...

She practises during practice in a prægtizz room because she likes pracktassing.

At the end of the secret week

I have no intention of publishing this post today.  I'm not even sure when I will publish it.  The exact date depends upon the speed of the combined efforts of the Royal Mail and the United States Postal Service.

Let me explain.

You see, there's a letter on its way to my parents' house right now, maybe somewhere over the Atlantic, explaining that I've been accepted into the DPhil program at Oxford.  And I want a few days to live with my secret news before I make it public.  The arrival of that letter will be my cue to share this with everybody.

Here are some animals who feel the way I do about this news.

I've been waiting for this answer ever since I found out last March that I was coming here for the one-year MSt course.  It's been a year of learning to live in a state of uncertainty without being afraid of it; of learning to wait and trust and listen and follow and put down roots knowing that they might be torn up.  Of doing good work not because it will earn you a prize, but because it is good to do good work.  Of enjoying gifts like carol services and nights in the pub and the smell of ancient buildings without knowing if these things would be repeated or if they would remain little fixed gems in my memory.  Above all it's been a year of living in the present and getting into the habit of saying thank you for today.

I have felt a little like a balloon, floating around in this amazing place, not knowing if I was allowed to actually stand on the ground or if I would simply drift away.  In past situations I've joked that "all that worrying paid off."  But that is one thing I will not say now.  Nothing has paid off; nothing has been earned.  I have been given a gift that just about knocks me over, and I will respond with gratitude and good work and an ever-deepening trust.  And I will say over and over for the next three years,

Thank you for today!

The Fire Alarm

I don't know what I ever did to the St Cross fire alarm, but it's out to get me.  The first time it went off, I was in the shower.  The second time it went off, I was in my pajamas and no one else was.  The third time it went off...oh, the third time.

I was out late last night for a string orchestra concert, and by the time I got to sleep it was about 12:30am.  At 2:00am, the blaring fire alarm ejected me from my bed.  It's the kind of noise that is so offensive that it causes you to throw yourself out of bed and stand up before you actually stop sleeping.  Then when you do wake up, you find that you are standing, and you have to figure out a) why you're standing and b) what that horrible noise is.

I stumbled blearily around my room for a minute, trying to figure out how to put on flip flops and struggling to distinguish between my bathrobe and my keys (I was pretty sure one was for wearing and the other was for locking the door, but I wasn't all that clear on which was which), all the while under the relentless assault of the fire alarm.  I achieved a reasonable level of organization and shuffled down the fire escape to join a huddled gathering of similarly delighted-looking flatmates in the rain.  Facebook was promptly updated on mobile phones, and we stood around and shivered while we waited for the fire department to materialize.

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I am less than impressed by the reaction time of Oxford's Finest.  The firemen took nearly a half hour to show up, and they came in carefully disorganized waves of giant men with ever-so-slightly differing job descriptions and the same clumsy questions.  One of the "early" arrivers had the nerve to issue some kind of threat about the bad things that would happen if we dared to go back inside before permission was given.  I thought that was particularly helpful at 2:30 in the morning.

It took our huddle of freezing half-asleep students about forty-five seconds to figure out what had happened to trigger the fire alarm.  Our neon-clad heroes, by contrast, stomped up and down the same stairs and asked us the same questions repeatedly for about twenty minutes before it was all over.

Their confusion was surprising, given that there was a smoking pot of charred pasta sitting on the stove in the kitchen.  They were deeply troubled by the fact that there was more smoke in the hallway than there was in the kitchen.  Well, Einstein, you took a half hour to get here, and all that time the windows in the kitchen have been, as you might observe, open.

They were so disturbed by this that they decided the fire must have occurred somewhere other than in the pot of smoking charred pasta on the stove.  Because the fire alarm itself was physically located in the hall near my door, they decided that the fire must also be in my room.  This seemed to me to be a case of confusing cause with effect, but they were thrashing around with too much enthusiasm for me to explain that the location of the fire alarm does not actually influence the location of the fire.  So I stood outside my room, in my pajamas, at 2:30 in the morning, while about seven well-meaning giant neon men clodhopped through my room in big muddy boots.

It was at this point in the proceedings, and not before, that someone thought to turn the fire alarm off.  Eventually we were given permission to re-enter the building.  The firemen continued to stomp around as we all crept back into our rooms.  I locked my door from the inside, having very little interest in any further interruptions by firemen poking their heads in to ask questions that were answered forty-five minutes ago.

Ah, dorm life.

I could have danced all night

This Saturday I took the plastic cover off of the burgundy ball gown I got four years ago in Vienna, pulled on a pair of flat black shoes and ivory ruched opera gloves, and sat in front of the mirror for about an hour while my lovely friend Serena pinned my hair on top of my head in a chaotic tangle of twists and curls and braids.  I met Andy (in white tie) outside, and off we went to the ball.

Yup, the ball.  As in:

(Look out for the couple at about 0:17 with the woman in a blue scarf.)

His Excellency the Austrian Ambassador Dr Emil Brix brought himself and his impressive title here from London to host the Grand Viennese St Valentine Ball in the Oxford Town Hall.  We waltzed and polkaed and quadrilled and marched and galloped and polonaised and mazurkaed as a vivacious orchestra frolicked its way through three hours of Strauss and company.  It all evoked the strong sensation of being in Vienna again.  I danced two dances--a staggeringly athletic polka and waltz--with a French friend, and spent the rest of the time hanging out with my date, dancing and having a wonderful time, enjoying the fabulous music.  We ended the night dancing to An der schönen blauen Donau.

Just like that time four years ago in Vienna when I went to the ball in the Hofburg palace with my roommates, I have caught myself in the days after the ball absently humming songs like "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "Shall We Dance."  I've earned some odd looks, but have made no effort to do anything about it.  I intend to hang onto this sensation of having visited a fairy tale for as long as possible.

The photo album is here on Facebook, and there are two more very short videos from the ball: waltz and polka.

This is a short post, so I will now provide you with an appendix of relevant youtube videos so that you can waste as much time here as you normally would if you were reading one of the long effusions I usually write.  The following three videos sum up Saturday night quite nicely:

Address to a Haggis

The evening gatherings in pubs are becoming less like events worth recording and more a routine part of this surreal life in Oxford.  They're not any less joyful, but they are less surprising.  There is less of an urge to document every moment so that I can relive my time here later--which is kind of a problem, because when I'm not here, I know I'll want to relive every moment.

My two biggest accomplishments since we last spoke have been submitting my DPhil application to Oxford and turning twenty-five, both of which happened on the same day.  Doing battle with an online application system does not the best birthday make, but I had a lovely evening out with friends and saw War Horse in the cinemaaaaaa.  And as we all know, watching a horse movie DOES a great birthday make.

The next day I attended a gripping recital of my supervisor's compositions, and that weekend my mom arrived for a ten-day visit.

One event I will document in gory detail is the Burns Night dinner at Wolfson on the 26th.  A brief context for the benefit of the Great Unwashed:
Robert Burns was an 18th Century Scottish poet who has since become a national hero and the inspiration for a glorious holiday.  Those who require more historical detail may take advantage of the bibliography at the bottom of this post, but what I want to talk about now is the dinner and what followed.

Burns Night is a highly scripted ceremony that is observed with a strange combination of self-deprecating amusement and almost religious reverence.  The guests followed a bagpiper into the hall where long tables were laid out for a formal dinner.  After we found our places, the bagpiper established himself directly behind me and blasted those ungodly notes for all he was worth.  This led me to the conclusion that bagpipes, while delightful, are really an outdoor instrument.  Next a nearly-intelligible prayer was recited:

Some hae meat and canna eat,

And some wad eat that want it,

But we hae meat and we can eat,

And sae the Lord be thankit.

It was now time for the pinnacle event of the evening: The Piping In of the Haggis.

I mean, really.  We start with the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep ground up with some oatmeal and onions, and this is all smashed into the poor sheep's stomach and boiled.  Which pretty much sums up the philosophy of British cuisine, as far as I can tell: when in doubt, mash it up and boil it.

(I hope my English friends will forgive me for that.  I love your country--I really do!)

So this bulging sack of boiled sheep guts is plunked on a silver platter and paraded around the perimeter of the hall in a procession of bekilted men, lead by our favorite bagpiper, who is still honking away from the bottom of his plaid little heart.

Oh, don't worry, it gets better.  Now we address the haggis.  I am NOT making this up.  Robert Burns wrote a lengthy poem, not about some haggis but rather to a haggis, in the same non-English as the above blessing.  I understood about four words of it.  Maybe if you record it and play it backwards it turns into English...it's worth a try.  Or maybe it's the same backwards as forwards.  I don't know.

Having said all those nasty things about haggis, the food was actually really good.  I decided to go in a spirit of adventure and eat whatever landed in front of me on my plate, which turned out to be cock-a-leekie soup, a flap of beef, a pile of haggis with neeps and tatties, and typsy laird for pudding.  Don't ask--I have no idea what most of that is.  After finding out what haggis was, I decided to stop asking "what is this?" and just eat it in blissful ignorance.  Eating the haggis was more of a mental exercise than anything else.  I can honestly say that I enjoyed it.

After the meal, a few more people stood to perform various poetry recitations and toasts.  The highlight was the traditional Toast to the Lassies.  A Frenchman and an American put on their best Scottish accents and delivered this raucous tribute in the form of a hilarious poem that was rather determined to rhyme.  Our friend Sneha retaliated with the Toast to the Lads.

We went upstairs for coffee and returned to the hall before long for the ceilidh.  Rather than make you give yourself a hernia trying to pronounce that, I'll just provide the IPA:

['keI lI]

This is essentially a Scottish squaredance.  The band played folk music while the announcer called out the steps and we all hopped and spun around the dance floor.  I think the announcer was a little mystified by our general inability to follow the dance steps.  The great minds of Oxford found it extraordinarily difficult to form a square.

Make world-changing discoveries and publish them in academic journals?  Sure!

Stand in a square with three other couples?  Easy there, skippy, don't let's get carried away.

Figure out how to do-si-do right shoulder to right shoulder?  No one can live at that speed!

It was another one of those enchanted Oxford nights.  Any day now I'm going to wake up and find that I've been working in a car wash all this time and happened to doze off and dream up this unbelievable adventure.

Well, that's enough for tonight.  Sometime I'll have to tell you about the classical music pub quiz, Spamalot, Iron Chef Wolfson, and the Wadham Choir ladies' night, but this is plenty for now.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Wikipedia: Robert Burns

2. BBC explanation of a Burns Night