Natalie Kertes Weaver

A Moment of Silence by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited In my last post, I shared with you my wonderment at the power of music to speak for us when we lack speech and to touch us when we are beyond reach. Now, I experience wonderment at the power of silence. For, it was silence that in the end helped my father-in-law, who was truly my father, to shed his mortal coil. After the noise of caregivers and nurses, of talking and encouraging, of wailing and whispering, there was a window of silence when I sat alone with him, stroking his forehead lightly. I knew he would be free in that quiet to exhale, and with that final breath, he too became silent.

Silence then filled the house, until it was punctuated by the tidal sounds of grief. And, just like the tides, the grief now ebbs and flows between moments of gentle motion and moments of crushing force. Behind that grief, though, and behind the rituals we perform to externalize that grief, there remains a giant silence. It is strange to me that the silence is not experienced as emptiness. It is not a void or a vacancy or a nothing. It is an active presence, that is, the silence itself. It is a deep mystery to be experienced in its own right, without the error of imposing upon it the productions of noise. For, the silence of bereavement is a fathomless place from which to hear something we could not have heard before. The silence is holy. Continue reading “A Moment of Silence by Natalie Weaver”

We Are Music by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited When I was about eight years old, I dreamed one night that I stood inside the workings of an immense instrument, so big it filled the sky. It was crafted of wood and gold, and although there was no obvious source of light, it was brightly illuminated. I could have confused it for the inner workings of a clock except that I could hear the sweet music it produced resonating throughout its cavernous hollows. It was curious to me that there seemed to be no atmosphere there either to breathe or to carry sound. Within it, I did not perceive any movement. And, there was no actual melody that it produced, which could be sung or repeated. There was only an enveloping harmonic thrumming. The sound was multiplicative and voluminous although not piercing. I understood it in the dream to be cosmic, structural, primordial, and generative. When I awoke, I had the feeling that I had seen something divine. It was not heaven. It was not God. It was more like the instrument of the universe, or the universal instrument, created as a first work among creation

It was puzzling to me that I had such a dream because I was not then a musician. I felt that I understood its meaning, but I was surprised by its discontinuity with things in my normal frame of reference. My mother played piano, but she had no music theory in her background. She surely did not have any training in musical cosmologies, such as those produced in antiquity by the philosophers and theologians. I occasionally mentioned the dream over the years when context seemed to warrant it, but, more or less, I filed it away. Continue reading “We Are Music by Natalie Weaver”

A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver

Natalie edited Last Tuesday marked my fourth day home in over two months. I was researching over the summer in Europe. When I was not working, I was climbing up castle ruins or carrying groceries or creatively managing my children’s laundry with very modest facilities at my disposal. Unlike all of my other summer colleagues, I had elected to bring my children with me, so my summer was work intensive in both the professional and parental capacities.

Arriving home from our journey late in the evening Friday, we went straight to bed. But, the following day, I began again the task of laundering and grocery-ing, now made more mundane by the absence of castles to climb. It was a good thing that the jet lag woke me around 4am. For, I needed to buy juice boxes, sandwich bags, cookie treats, fruit, and so on for lunch the following week. I ran out in between loads, remembering also that we still needed to eat over the weekend. I bought Stouffers. Then, still between loads, I began the tedious task of labeling individual crayons, markers, glue sticks, safety scissors, tape roles, pencil packs, and the like. Somewhere in all that, I read an addendum to the supply list that said the kids needed headphones for their computer work. So, I threw another load in the washer and ran back to the store. About 5 pm, I began to feel really tired, but that is also when I discovered that the uniform pants I had purchased didn’t fit. I began scouring last year’s batch for a temporary fix. Then, I labeled the gym shirts, got the lasagna out of the oven, fed everyone, cleaned up, and readied the lot for bed. That was a Saturday. Continue reading “A Mother Not Feeling Guilty by Natalie Weaver”

Woman – The Essential Other by Natalie Weaver

I am writing from Oxford, England, where I am privileged to be staying this summer while attending an institute on the theme of “Otherness” in medieval Judaism. Our readings have focused on a variety of topics, including: the development of Christian anti-Jewish polemics; the development of Jewish anti-Christian polemics; the development of medieval Christian visual representations of Jews; and the European medieval expulsions of Jews. The well-planned program, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, has been illuminating for all – speakers and participants alike, I think. It has also been, at least for me, an occasion of intellectual sadness. It is not that I am surprised by how ugly polemics, pictures, and history can be. It is that I feel myself coming to a deeper appreciation of the dangerous power dynamics in religion, driven by political and economic aims, that strike me as the underlying cause of practical conflict, yet cloaked as principally theological tensions.

If it were not manifestly obvious that procurement and retention of resources, goods, and position drive personal/familial commitments and tribalistic frameworks for meaning and ultimacy, one of the clues – at least for me – has been the repetition of charges and accusations across polemical perspectives. And, what is more, one unmistakable commonality in the charges and indictments seems to be the accusation of effeminacy. This accusation need not be directly stated, such as, “Your people think like women,” or the like. It comes across in the overlap, speaking specifically concerning Christian writings, between discussions of women and discussions of Jews. The phenomenon, though, is not unilaterally Christian. Continue reading “Woman – The Essential Other by Natalie Weaver”

Mid-Life Genesis by Natalie Weaver

My mother-in-law, quoting her mother, has often said, “a woman who tells her age will tell you anything.” I think the “anything” here she is referring to is sexual disclosure. She may be correct because I am not above or below talking about that, but that is not what I am talking about today. Today, I am talking about age, since I am on the cusp of my fortieth birthday.

Still two months out, I am surprised that this birthday registers for me as much as it does. The experience has caused me to plumb my mind in search for vanities that I had not previously noticed. In the depths as on the surface, I have observed, for example, subtle changes in my skin and muscle tone. I will catch a glimpse of my profile and see my mother or my sister, occasionally even one of my grandmothers. My feet look a little, well, bonier somehow. I had to buy glasses recently. However, when I go spelunking, it is not really these things that trouble me. I actually like myself more as an adult than I did as a child or very young woman. I developed a wonderful sense of my body’s strength when I bore and nursed children as well as a compassion for its limitations when I had surgery. I seem more suited to my own flesh these days, and sometimes I actually feel sorry for my younger self who did not know how to appreciate herself. In twilight moments, I occasionally drift backward mentally to a previous iteration just to offer her a little affirmation. It is not really the getting older that I find myself snagging upon nor (and I think I am being honest here) the loss of youth per se. What is it then? Continue reading “Mid-Life Genesis by Natalie Weaver”

Boys Don’t Cry (or at least the shouldn’t when they are interviewing you for a job) by Natalie Weaver

I want to begin by saying that I am grateful for my work. It is no small thing to have a relatively secure academic position, especially in a climate when tenured and full-time appointments represent a disgracefully small percentage of all teaching positions throughout the country. Nevertheless, a certain degree of professional movement is welcome for the purposes of growth and renewal if and when opportunity arises. It is on this basis that I have been receptive on a few occasions to apply for appointments at the invitation of search committee chairpersons. When I have been solicited for an application, I have in turn applied.

It is a curious thing because when you are contacted out of the blue you think something like… “ah, they must like me… they must know something about my work.” And, it is true that on the occasions when I was asked to apply for something, I was invited to come in for an interview. This furthers, of course, thoughts like… “great, this is going somewhere.” And, in my case anyway, I start thinking about and even planning in a tentative way for what a move would constitute, the logistics of change, the impact on my family, the disruption of my current obligations, and so on. Showing up for an academic interview midcareer involves much more than preparing a research presentation, which is also no small task. The whole affair is psycho-socially weighty, and that reality is intensified by the fact that it drags on for months. It can take more than six months from the time of the initial contact to the interview to receiving news of the final outcome. Continue reading “Boys Don’t Cry (or at least the shouldn’t when they are interviewing you for a job) by Natalie Weaver”

BOOK REVIEW: Amy Wright Glenn’s Birth, Breath, & Death by Natalie Weaver

Amy Wright Glenn’s Birth, Breath, & Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula is a mid-life memoir of the author’s personal encounters and professional insights drawn from her work in the spaces of birth and death. Glenn gleans from her formative experiences as a daughter and sister, her trained experiences as a teacher and doula, and her wisdom experiences as a mother, chaplain, and friend. In an accessible voice, Glenn reflects compassionately on her early life in a Mormon family. She considers critically the nature of religious worldviews that are doctrinally dualistic and apocalyptic. Glenn further describes the therapeutic and illuminating value she found in the scholarly study of religions as an anthropological phenomenon. Glenn explores how religious discourse both expresses human joy and grief and also aids us in our encounters with life and death. Glenn intertwines her academic study with personal narrative and achieves a professionally-informed and experientially-based “thinking out loud” about the bookends of human life. Her writing is tender, and her vision is thought-provoking.
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Sanctuary of Echoes by Natalie Weaver

Tomorrow I will have the unique opportunity to hear my son recite a poem I wrote before his class. The students were invited to select a poem to memorize and perform along with props or costumes as suited the material. The only conditions were that the poem be a minimum of twelve lines, published in a book, and in good taste. A poorly chosen poem, he said, would result in perpetual detention.

I was excited when he expressed enthusiasm for the assignment. I asked him what kind of poem he would like to learn. Something humorous? Something dramatic? Something tragic? Something about love? War? I read to him first those famous opening words of Virgil’s Aeneid: Arma virumque cano (I sing of arms and a man…). I thought surely he would be intrigued by the rhythm and the promise of such a tale. He asked for some other options, so I presented favorites from the Medieval Hebrew canon. I taught him Adon Olam, since he was curious about learning poetry in a foreign language. He liked it quite a bit and learned how to pronounce the Hebrew, but this was not his choice. I pulled out selections from Catullus’ eulogies for his brother. I searched Sappho for something playful. We read more contemporary options from the usual suspects in an anthology of poetry that I had used in a college course: Frost, Dickinson, Poe. I even introduced him to the seductive “duende” of the great early 20^th century Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca in his Poet in New York.

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Goodnight, Sweet Friends by Natalie Kertes Weaver

Yesterday, to this day of my writing, two of my friends died. Both endured years of struggle against cancers, and both finally yielded to death at nearly the same hour. I received notices of their passing within moments of one another. We sat vigil with the family of one of my friends until late in the evening, while the other friend was prepared for repatriation in the land of her ancestors.

In the home where we sat vigil, I entered the room where my friend had passed away. I wanted to feel the last fading traces of her physical presence. I don’t know whether any part of her was there or not, but I was grateful to be in the place where she had been. The room was very full. It held the medical equipment that had briefly sustained her life for the last few days, but it was mostly stuffed with the clutter and the souvenirs of a life. Porcelain trinkets, formal family portraits, travel photographs, colorful shot glasses collected from the cities she had visited, and everything covered with a fine layer of dust. Continue reading “Goodnight, Sweet Friends by Natalie Kertes Weaver”

Give Away All That You Have, and Then You Shall Receive…by Natalie Kertes Weaver

One of the loudest refrains I perceive in the Bible is the message that good spirituality means giving everything away. It is a radical concept that begins in an obvious way with material things, especially those that we have in excess. The wisdom here is not too difficult for me to grasp: one cannot meet the Lord if s/he is wrapped up in the routines of acquisition and hoarding.

But, this is only the beginning. The teaching reaches down much deeper than the critique of riches and speaks in some totalizing fashion to the very essence of personal being. It seems to say to me that good spirituality involves letting the self be so entirely poured out of the ordinary instincts and behaviors of self-consciousness and self-preservation, of the self qua self, that it is capable of receiving the inpouring of God’s wisdom and light.

Put another way, the self has to condition itself to receive that which is genuinely extrinsic, that which is outside itself, and that encounter cannot occur so long as one is self-absorbed. This insight, of course, is not exclusively biblical or Christian. Indeed, it is perhaps the most common point of agreement among all the great spiritual traditions. Continue reading “Give Away All That You Have, and Then You Shall Receive…by Natalie Kertes Weaver”