Grace like Snow - Jammin' with the Overtones

The Overtones in Blue Pantsuits

The Overtones with Snow Falling (Janice is in the furry hat)

My High School Choir in our Checkered Long Dresses

I was raised in a church with a strong music program.  It seemed everyone, whether musically inclined or not, was in choir.  Each group of singers sang sometimes on Sunday mornings, had their own musicals and tours, and all combined at Christmastime for our huge "Round the Table Carol Sings," eventually outgrowing our sanctuary and moving the show to the LA County Fairgrounds, where over a weekend we offered seven performances of our Christmas extravaganza.  In 1977 the Carol Sings program was even televised.

Over 800 voices, a handbell choir, living Christmas cards, soloists, an orchestra all surrounded the audience, who sipped wassail, ate figgy pudding and joined in to sing many familiar carols.

At the front of the building was a stage on which the Overtones performed.  In my eyes, there were two kinds of choirs:  the Overtones and the non-Overtones (the Undertones?).  This group consisted of 12 or so super amazing, microphone-holding singers.  They toured internationally and even produced their own album. 

While we other choirs stood in rows on bleachers  around the building's edges, the Overtones, front and center, slid down slides, rode in sleighs, performed advanced, seamless choreography and even had snow falling on them as they sang.  Most memorable and creating the most envy in me was what they wore.  The checkered dresses adorning me and my fellow high-school singers seemed so "square" when compared with the slick baby-blue polyester pantsuits worn by the Overtones.  They were just all-around groovy.

I did enjoy choir, but my finding the right note was a little like searching for my car in a parking lot.  It's not that I couldn't find it; I just had to wander around a few places to get there.  Martene, our director, during rehearsals would pick a note and sing out the words "Today is a beautiful day" while pointing to a lucky chosen person who was to sing back the same words (no problem) on the same note (a problem).  My sister Susan was smart and learned to run to the restroom during this part of rehearsal.  But I sat and suffered through our leader's repeatedly trying to get me to hear then sing back the proper note.

Needless to say, I did not ever hold a microphone, and I was quite envious of the soloists who could produce such beautiful sounds with their voices.  I was in awe.  They seemed to sparkle as they sang, drawing an audience in, touching spirits, stirring souls with their voices.

I did not continue to sing in choir when I became an adult but found ways to serve more in line with my giftedness.  That itty bitty bit of envy of the performers remained, however.  I say "itty bitty," but in reality, envy has been a struggle for me for as long as I can remember.  Feeling "less than" or "not okay," often invisible, has been a struggle for me.  God has shown me lots about Him and me and how He sees me, and I've learned and am learning to live under His adoring, attentive eye, my "audience of one."

He had this super great surprise for me one year at women's retreat. I still attend the same church in which I grew up.  I had not planned to attend retreat, but someone canceled, and I was offered a last-minute spot.  Surprise of surprises, I ended up rooming with a darling past Overtone, Janice.  Thirty-plus years had gone by, but she still shined with that wide, sparkly smile with which she once graced the stage. 

We talked in our room until three in the morning.  I confessed to her my Overtone envy, and I was able to get to know her as a person rather than as a performer, a side-to-side sister rather than someone high on a pedestal (a pedestal created by envious me).  I loved seeing her heart, hearing her stories, and our just sharing with each other what it's like to be us.  We had been influenced by some of the same amazing what we call "pillars" of our church, fed by the same pastors, taught by the same teachers but because of our age difference had not become familiar with each other in the past.

Janice led a small group during retreat, and I was in her group.  We would share after meeting times about what God was showing us that weekend.  Two of the women in Janice's group, I learned, were ex-Overtones!  I had shared with them how God was meeting me in simple songwriting, helping me to find my voice while I learned guitar (I can hear notes better when playing) and what a gift that had been to me.  After our group dismissed one evening, the Overtones ladies, now all in their sixties, remained.  I'm sure they got a kick out of how still in awe of them I was!  We together sang songs.  They listened to me sing and play on the guitar a simple song I'd written then learned it and sang it with me. 

Jill sitting behind a desk drumming away, Addie singing and tapping her foot, Janice smiling and singing loud enough for me to at least feel like I was sounding just like her -- all a bit too wonderful to take in.  So I didn't take it in; I just went with it.  We sang more songs while passing the guitar around.  Just four people, not 800, no stages, no costumes or choreography -- and no disco ball like the one glittering in the center of the fair building for Christmas shows, but we all shone like stars to each other.

In the morning, Addie gave me a letter she had written to me expressing what a gift it was for her to share our souls through music the evening before.  We together ate breakfast, and I told her how our time touched, and even healed, some hole deep inside of me, something invisible, inferior and uncool - like something previously blue checkered transforming for just a time into a baby-blue polyester pantsuit. 

If grace falling can be like snow falling, I'm pretty sure I felt grace flakes gently landing on me the evening I jammed with the Overtones.

Diane Mann, 2014

Here's a link to a video of Pomona First Baptist Church's 1977 Carol Sings

My Third Ear and the Way God Made Me

     I was born with three ears.  So went the family story often repeated during my childhood.  My mom gave birth to me, her fourth child, phoned my father and said, "We have a baby girl with three ears." Surgically removed a day later, an ear-shaped skin tab occupied the space just in front of my right ear.  I didn't super much love hearing this story when I was a child because it left me feeling "wrong" somehow. However the story has a new frame from which I view it and now holds much meaning for me in my occupations.
     I am a stenographer.  I report public meetings, depositions, court proceedings and hearings.  I record each syllable spoken by every person in a room.  My job is at times tortuous, exhausting, impossible yet fascinating and educational.
     I am also a spiritual director.  Prayerfully, attentively, with focus I listen to people share their journeys with God, their experiences of Him, their longings for Him, their questioning where and whether He is.  It is difficult, way beyond me, and a calling I consider blessed.  The times I and a directee sit together listening to her heart I consider sacred, I consider holy.
     So I have these two occupations, one left-brained, one right-brained, one secular, one spiritual, both requiring me to listen attentively -- in court reporting, for each word spoken and in spiritual direction, for the heartbeat of God.
     Until recently I thought of my court reporting job as not spiritual, as more concrete.  But I recognize now, since the spirit of the Living God is inside me, I carry His and my spirit into the workplace and reflect Him in a way unique to me.  Even in this left-brained, detailed, uncreative job, I am able to be present to another person, sitting just a couple of feet away, listening to their recitations of losses, descriptions of their families, careers, vast knowledge of subjects varying from duties as a construction worker or mariachi musician to scientific facts about fringe-toed lizards.
     Most tender is when someone talks about how life used to be -- before her husband died, before an accident left her forever altered -- and what life is like now as she adjusts to the losses suffered.  A young woman in court three feet from me paints a picture with words of how she buries her partially amputated foot in the sand at the beach so others cannot see, how she was unable to dance with friends at a wedding because her dress shoe, though duck taped on, would not stay on her foot, the inspirational part about her pursuing her master's degree in industrial design while recovering from the accident involving her car rolling, skidding as it swerved to avoid a big rig suddenly in its freeway lane. Her foot had been on the dash while her friend drove.  Tom Petty was playing on the radio.  The metal of the car was sheered away as the car skid on its side.  Her toes were also sheered away.  This happened on Day 2 of her full-of-promise road trip toward graduate school, where she planned to learn engineering and design of medical prosthetics.
     I am present to listen, to hear, to record.  I use machinery, yet I am not a machine.  I am a human being with a heart, a soul, a spirit.  Only a couple of times have tears escaped from my eyes as I have listened (I have also had to bite my lips hard to hold in laughter),  yet beneath my secretarial, editor face and just a few inches down is my heart, a human heart welcoming and responding to the person before me.
     When I do not hear properly because people are speaking over each other or the speaker is too quiet, I must say, "Please repeat that," or, "Excuse me?"  Once in a while what happens when I do so is, the person shifts her attention from the attorney to whom she is speaking and begins answering the questions looking straight at me.  "Ever since my husband was taken from me" -- the story unfolds, and I am able to receive it, in a sense hosting the speaker, providing a space for her to be heard.
    I administer an oath at the beginning of a deposition.  "Please raise your right hand."  The witness looks me in the eye and says, "I do" after I've concluded with, "so help you God?"  Once I had a witness who at the end of the proceeding looked at me and said, "I came in here planning to lie.  I have no idea why I told the truth."
     Then there are the attorneys.   It is incredible to me how often attorneys talk about their lives while I am setting up my stenograph machine.  One attorney reports to me how he's doing on his new discipline of gratitude and how God is changing him.  Two others during a break share about their vacations.  One, a non-practicing Catholic, had just vacationed in Ireland, so he and opposing counsel spoke of the Catholic-Protestant tensions existing there.  His son's mother-in-law had just died, and he went to the funeral.  Having written off religion, at age 70, he found himself thinking about God often.  Why?  Because he said, despite everything he has had against the church, what impression won't leave him is watching the funeral attendees sing worship songs.  "They seemed to really believe what they were singing," he said.  "And people brought food to my son's family and to the funeral.  It's like they really do love each other."  I am collecting needed spellings from the witness, running to the restroom, gathering exhibits during breaktime, but I get this peek into another person's experience of God and how He is getting his attention, wooing him to His love heart.
     A court reporter can arrive to a job, introduce herself, administer the oath then not utter a peep the entire day.  Being seen and rarely heard, she makes herself unnoticed.  She is an onlooker sitting along the fringes of the scene, yet more attuned to the matter at hand than anyone else present.  She catches the story, discerning what punctuation to use, when sentences end and begin.  This is a skill, and this is an art, especially because most people do not speak in grammatically sensible ways.  The spiritual director also uses few words but notices much, asking questions to help the directee define her experience of God.  In a sense this act involves choosing what to punctuate, where to explore further, dive deeper, when to leave a huge paragraphical pause, waiting in silence.  I as a director am an onlooker, a witness to this unfolding story of God's pursuit of another and her responses to and resistances of Him.
   So it is that both of my occupations require super-keen hearing.
  At times I picture that new baby I was, presenting myself to the world with my extra ear-shaped skin tag.  It was a shadow of who I would be, and it is a picture of who I am continuing to become, a holy listener.

Diane Mann 2014


   

Eye Lift

We've all heard as kids and perhaps spoken as parents, "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" said sternly. What if Jesus says these same words to each of us but with kindness and desire to engage and be with us? 

"Look at me when I'm talking to you. See how I look at you and the situation you are in. Notice my heart here, my responses to you, my face, my eyes, my expressions." 

I love how He flipped this around for me this morning -- and what I saw when I bothered to look.

diane mann 2014

Come, Weary Ones

Come, weary ones
To me, you bearing heavy loads
Not meant for your tired shoulders
I have a gift for you!
It won't add another ounce to
The weight you bear
Nor another item to your to-do list
Or your how-you-ought-to-be list
I promise!
Come, your efforts exhausted
To me, your hope untraceable
I have a gift for you!
Something for which your soul longs
Something I eagerly offer
From my storehouse of grace
And love (my very heart toward you)
Custom made
Your name on it
I have a gift for you!
Come, I'll receive you
To me, I'll restore you
Here you will find rest
A pillow
For your very sleepy soul.
Come
To me, you
Come.

Diane Mann 2013