Peter Pan

“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old, she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”

I wore a long white nightgown embroidered in rosebuds. I can still sing the songs I had to belt out. I was in grade eight and I played Wendy in the school performance of Peter Pan. My best friend at the time—who played Tiger Lily – informed me that she could be Wendy if she had really wanted the role.

Today I can still sing word for word most of the songs from the musical. Peter Pan is by now a figure in psychology for the person who refuses to grow up, the one who wants to live forever in a kind of Neverland with the Lost Boys.

Peter sings, “I won’t grow up. I don’t want to go to school, just to learn to be a parrot and recite a silly rule. If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow u—up, no sir, no me, I won’t, no sir. Never gonna be a man, I won’t. Like to see somebody try and make me, anyone who wants to try and make me, turn into a man, catch me if he can…” 

I remember the angst I felt about growing up myself, that somehow it was a kind of betrayal of my parents, and specifically of my mother, who really enjoyed small children and who insisted on making sure that my brother – ten and a half years younger than me – had a full childhood. It occurs to me only much later that as a result of this – a laudable goal – I was now in uncharted territory as a parent. I had a childhood that extended until adulthood when I left home. When my kids became teens, I learned the kinds of activities that teens choose to do, figuring out what is good and healthy and what is the equivalent of eating cake for breakfast every day.

I never got to see my parents’ nest empty little by little. I was focused full steam ahead on getting out into the world. I was no Peter Pan. I was Wendy who, with her two younger siblings, flew out of the nursery one night with Peter Pan, leaving behind grief-stricken parents.

But in Neverland, Wendy takes on the role of mother, and so did I, gladly. If I think long and hard about it, I wonder how this play shaped and formed me. Me, who played the role of the one who sang the lullabies and wanted to take all the little ones under my wing. Me left in the nursery after my children have flown away, wondering if I still remember how to fly myself.

Faithful in Florence

I wrote this piece the week after my husband and I were in Florence for the first time. It became some of the raw material for Renaissance, but my character and I made quite different choices about how we would be faithful in Florence. I thought it would be interesting to share here in the days after Easter. I’m curious about your experiences too, traveling and entering sites of worship whether as tourists or worshippers. What’s your experience been?

Dave and I were climbing the seemingly one thousand steps to the church at San Miniato in Florence. It was our last day and we had hours to wait until dinner and San Miniato was right around the corner and up the hill from where we were staying. We went to listen to the Vespers service being sung in Gregorian chant.

The service was held in the dank, dark crypt of the church, below the presbytery. We were probably a third of the audience, who came and went during the service. The music, sung by only seven monks, standing in semi-circle behind bars was mysterious and holy. I felt privileged to witness it. But also conflicted: what did it mean for me as a person of faith to enter into the churches and sacred life of the citizens of Florence?

We had decided we would walk into the Duomo because it was there and we were there and it was magnificently grand. It was hard to picture worshiping there, ever though, and both Dave and I felt the grandeur of the church as impressive but not something that led us to God.

I had woken up early on Sunday morning in Florence to hear the nuns singing an early mass, and I recognized one of the tunes their organ was playing. But I did not join them for any of their services, even though the sign posted in our room said we were welcome to do so.

I wondered about the monks of San Miniato and the nuns of our convent. They were few and mostly older (except for one monk who looked remarkably like our friend Wes and who wore Birkenstocks under his robe.) I wondered about the vocational call to monastic life and whether it was often heard anymore. I wondered whether these monks and nuns tolerated our presence or whether they resented being observed as objects.

Part of me wanted to stay to bear witness to their faithfulness, to sit in the chill of the church and have the faithfulness to stay until the end of their song. I recognized the irony in the fact that they did this faithfully day in and out, and we could not stay to hear them out even once. But then I remembered that they were not doing this for an audience aside from God. I did not have to stay. I was neither confirming nor denying faithfulness by staying or going. I thought too of the Old Order Mennonites of our own area, who are often viewed as tourist attractions, simply because they have continued to live their call faithfully. I wondered what posture faithfulness would take on my part.

We decided we would go to an English church the Sunday we were in Florence. It looked like a street front, but inside was a small cavern of gold and marble, with puffs of incense clouding the air. The mass was sung and it was beautiful. The music director sang Our Father in a way that opened my ears and later sang a song about peace in the Middle East that dovetailed with the sermon (given by the Bishop of Europe, no less) that moved me to tears as I went forward to take communion. But Dave was daunted, put off by the smells and bells of the service, and for the first time since I’ve known him, he stayed in his seat for communion. He explained to me later that it was too different for him.

Violets and the Whiplash of Holy Week (2021)

I love violets. I love their delicate smell, their regal beauty against the grass, their unexpectedness. I’ve been looking hard for them and the other day I found them.

I read recently that in some Christian traditions, “the alleluia is not sung during Lent.” Alleluia or Hallelujah means praise the Lord. During Lent, some people refrain from praise in order to lament and repent. The idea – like every other kind of fasting – is that you store up the longing to praise and you burst forth in splendor-filled worship on Easter Sunday morning.

I don’t know about you but that’s not quite where I am at today.

Holy Week is always such a whiplash week – Palm Sunday cheers, Maundy Thursday feasting and then betrayal, then the crucifixion, the silence of Saturday and then the beautiful triumphant surprise of Easter morning. It’s a roller coaster of a week.

Last Sunday, I biked to a garden not far from me and I thought about that idea of not singing the alleluias, and I put on the singer we all think of when we think hallelujah, and I sang along with Saint Leonard, only I left out every single Hallelujah. And that’s where I am at this Easter: my garden is not in full bloom but if you look, you can find violets, impossibly blooming. My Hallelujah today is cold and very broken but it is still a hallelujah. I’m wearing today a dress for the occasion. It’s the dress my daughter said is perfect if you have a funeral at 5 and a fiesta at 7 – it’s black but it has an insert in the skirt that has all the colours of the rainbow pleated inside, ready to burst open.

My runner kid yesterday told me the secret of getting through that last 100 metres: you have to turn your brain off and focus on putting one foot in front of the other, staying in your body. It strikes me that that is so very Easter, the returning of Jesus to his body, to eat, to be touched, to walk with friends, to break bread. I think too of the two movies I’ve seen this weekend (Shawshank Redemption and Of Gods and Men): in both movies, there’s the broadcasting of music leading to stillness and near ecstasy. So, that’s Easter Week, the cold and broken hallelujah, inhabiting the body by looking for those violets, that music, that turkey, those chocolate eggs, the funeral/fiesta dress, those kind masks we wear that tell the truth of our bodies, their frailty and beauty and the hope of resurrection.