I Feel Pretty / Unpretty (After Lent, and No Makeup)

This Lent I gave up makeup. My paintbox was tucked away, all the powders and pencils, my mascara, my beloved eyeliner (the one that makes my eyes blue-grey and full of smoke) neatly put in a drawer. Forty days of no makeup made me cringe in the beginning. Why had I done that? I thought for the first few days of startled recognition.

And at first I was a stranger to myself. Cold water and traces of apricot scrub were the only addition to my freckled English skin. When I got up in the morning, the routine was simpler, quieter. No frantic smudging bronze speckles across my cheeks. No pulling eyelids down to swipe a smooth black line across my lower lashes. No sweet gooey lip gloss to accidentally smudge on my chin.

It was forty days of blushing from my heart. Forty days of my eyes reflecting only the colors of the cloudy sky or the dress thrown on after oversleeping, or the mood of my day. Forty days of smiling, dimples and all. Forty days of fresh skin scrubbed clean of the old definition of beauty. Forty days and then the glorious celebration of Easter and...

(Thank you, Hannah Cochran, for capturing us makeup less)

I don't really want makeup any more.

I was watching Glee last week and the episode was all about learning to know ourselves. To be truthful. To look makeup-less into the mirror and marvel at what He has made. Two of the characters sang this duet - the song 'I Feel Pretty' from West Side Story, and the TLC song, 'Unpretty.' I couldn't get it out of my heart after I had heard it. The song talks about that word, "pretty" - and how it twists and wrenches and how we feel so unpretty, so unsure, how we teach ourselves to hear the word and doubt it.

But I sit here blogging in the piles of books and questions, looking over at the mirror, thinking... what if we start to believe in the beautiful in us? What if we took back the word "pretty" - so that it meant full of heart, lovely, delicate, "pleasing by delicacy or grace"? What if we made that word mean overflowing with His grace? 

What if I keep makeup in its drawer?

As the tulips outside your window open their petals to the good spring rain, as your laundry sits in a towering stack in every room, as you fix macaroni and cheese, as you drink a glass of good red wine... Imagine with me all the wondrous things we could do to take back the word pretty to be a word of joy. To be a word of grace. To be a word about love.

Love, from my makeup-less, wondering self,
Hilary

When Your Heart Skips a Beat

I am standing in the sandwich line. I am ordering the same sandwich I always order, chatting with the same lovely lady about peonies and the month of May. And because it is what everyone talks about, because two billion people watched the parade, the vows, the kiss on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, we are talking about England.

And my heart skips a couple of beats. The others in the line are laughing at the hats, discussing with rapture the lace dress, the veil, the Queen's yellow dress. I am reeling, the weight of remembering suddenly heavy.

Sometimes I forget what I am carrying around with me. I am carrying her inside me, my English grandmother, and carrying inside me this new and strange reality: she is gone. She is asleep in the Lord. She is in a mystery of love, a mystery of knowing and restoration and peace and all of these good words that should taste like water but today taste like dust.

And there, holding my sandwich in front of me with a hesitant look on my face, I remember.

I remember her smiling at me, maybe catching glimpses of her younger self in my twirling skirts and staunch refusal to do anything but read, read, read. I remember her pouring tea, and her house slippers, and how she looked concentrated when she cooked. And how she used to feed the black lab sponge cake. And how one Thanksgiving she made a turkey for me and Mom and we ate it in the living room by the crackling fire and she proudly displayed an apple pie, "for us Americans."

Why do we remember? Why do we watch London on scratchy video footage and ache in our guts for a home, a grandmother, a self that has slipped beyond our grasping fingers?

I am standing in the middle of my twenty year old life aching to run back to age seven.

And I wrote yesterday about jumping up and down as an Easter girl, and I want to, but how? How do we slip into joy when we hold in our hands the hard things? I wonder all of this as I walk back up the stairs to work, as I feel the afternoon drift by me, as I look in at spring. And I remember how all of this joy keeps marrying itself to homesickness. I sat on the T on Saturday night and suddenly longed for the cool female voice of the DC Metro ("Step back, doors closing"), and for Lincoln Park in October, for the swift wind over the Atlantic at Lillie's house listening to her play the piano...

And I keep waiting for the small voice that usually speaks from my left ventricle, a voice of rationality, a voice of theology, a voice that says what is true about God's goodness and His love and what is true about practicing joy.

But I find myself instead just waiting. No words to ignite, no story to spin. I'm waiting for Him. And as I wait, I hear the Psalm 63, verses 1 through 8:



 ¹ You, God, are my God,
   earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
   my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
   where there is no water.
 ² I have seen you in the sanctuary
   and beheld your power and your glory.
³ Because your love is better than life,
   my lips will glorify you.
⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
   and in your name I will lift up my hands.
⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
   with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
 ⁶ On my bed I remember you;
   I think of you through the watches of the night.
⁷ Because you are my help,
   I sing in the shadow of your wings. 
⁸ I cling to you;
   your right hand upholds me.


Love, in the midst of waiting, 
Hilary

Sunday is a Day to be Thankful! (Reminding Myself)

The Orthodox Church has a treasure trove of true things that every so often creep into my frenzied brain and park there, patient. Among them are the words, theosis, eucharisto, kyrie eleison... and there are also the ideas: the desert as a place of spiritual clarity, the cloud of witnesses as a great deal closer to us than we think, the Resurrection as victory and rescue in addition to propitiation.

Today, I remembered something Father Constantine told me my freshman year, in the midst of exploring Orthodoxy. "Every Sunday, Hilary," he said while smiling congenially at me from across his desk, "Every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection." I don't remember being floored by the idea at the time, and I imagine I nodded after he said that and filed it away to be considered later. But now, the idea comes back to me two years and many seasons of self later. Every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection. 

Last week was the liturgical calendar celebration. The one that we mark with annual traditions, with the seasons of the year, with the hymns we save for just that one Sunday. And there is grace in this yearly celebration. It is like watching our life, the purpose of our whole becoming, written out in bold and beautiful script. On Easter Sunday, we put a magnifying glass to the truth of every day: that He is not dead but alive! 

But today I remembered Father Constantine's words to me, and it made me wonder if I live out Easter thankfulness and Easter joy in all the nooks and crannies of my life, or if I save it, like my favorite hymns, for just one day a year. I woke up this morning with prayers of need: God, I whispered as I shrunk into my covers, I don't know why you've put all this on me but I need your help so you better help  me. I pray prayers of frustration: BUT WHY DON'T I KNOW THAT ALREADY? I pray prayers of desire: I really just want... 


But Sunday is a day to pray thankfulness for the Resurrection. A day to marvel at how the tulips in my front yard shiver in the warm sun and the breeze. A day to marvel that I have been surrounded by miraculous people, who buy me cupcakes and drink tea from chipped family mugs with me, who challenge me to behold beauty with them, who read this blog and teach me how to hear my own words. A day to marvel that things exist.

And when I really begin to celebrate the Resurrection on this Sunday in Easter season, on this Sunday of ordinary proportions, I want to run outside and dance in the afternoon sun and jump up and down because I have been freed and made whole and I am an Easter girl all the days of my life. 

(Thank you, Hannah Cochran)

Sometimes I forget that I can make all of my life a conversation about Easter. That I could make every thought, every action, every sympathetic or exasperated sigh and nod of my head, every giggle and every word - all of it could be about the new life on the vine. 


So I end praying with you, not from a prayer book, and not from a liturgy, but just from me:

Heavenly Father thank you that life begins with the Resurrection. Thank you that you remind me in the moments when I am tired of it that it is a gift from you. Thank you for the mercy that you teach me. Thank you for the people you entrust me to. Thank you that although I am weak and weary and though I can only lift my eyes up to the next hour you lift my whole self up to the sunrise. Thank you that above all, you make known to me in this beautiful world and in these small prayers the reality of your presence. Make me obedient to you, and may we ever yearn to live and grow into the promise of life and the celebration of the Resurrection. For you are holy, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Love,
Hilary