On Ambition: Realising Our Dreams

The recent sudden unexpected death of a lovely young woman brought to mind the advice of the music professor when I was at university: he was speaking to a young cellist whose parents were concerned that she would never make a living as a musician. “They say I have to think about what I’m going to be when I finish my education,” she said. But all she wanted to do was play the cello. The professor told her: “Suppose you fall under a bus tomorrow: then it won’t be question of what you’re going to be, but of what you have been.” Music gave her joy, he said, it gave others joy to hear her play, where then was the harm in studying music?

            Ambition comes in many forms. Ignatius Loyola had military ambition: he wanted to win fame and glory on the battlefield. What he got was a severe wound that laid him up at home for a long time with nothing to read but the lives of the saints. Ignatius had to confront the idea that there is more than one kind of glory, and he could still win some of that, but not for himself. He changed his ambition, and spent the rest of his life seeking God’s glory.

            Maybe our youthful ambitions are the most valuable, as long as they lead to consistent action. As an adult student, I heartily wish I’d spent the hours of piano practice that were open to me with my earlier teachers. Even if I had the time and strength, the loss of those earlier hours would always set me back in what’s possible for me to learn now. Something called life tends to intervene. But even when it doesn’t, and skills have developed and careers brought to pass, all worldly enterprises fall apart eventually. What then are suitable ambitions when we’re older?

            The professor’s advice holds good at any age. It won’t be what we’re going to be, but what we have been. Some persons have had the ambition to build a church to stop a plague. Too many have wanted to kill all their enemies. Some who have wanted to win a million dollars have seriously regretted it when they did win.

            The professor thought it was good to do what gives joy. Beauty, harmony, love and attention give joy to others as well as oneself. Even in a small way, every day, we can build happiness within and around us through acts of beauty and mercy and kindness. We could have the ambition to reflect God’s glory through what we have been, rather than trailing regrets and lost causes behind us. Even if no one remembers, we have been part of the music, in the time of the music whose notes were sweet for as long as they lasted, sounding somewhere in the ear of God.

           

On Envy: The Worst of Vices.

I was listening to the radio as I drove home from work one night last week, and they were playing Handel’s Joseph and His Brethren. An aria struck me, where envy is described as ‘the worse of crimes’ because from it all others arise. I’ve known personally of someone who was prepared to murder for envy. It clearly leads to theft, deceit, false witness (a way of life in ancient courtrooms, and in some places testimony can still be bought and sold today), adultery, treachery, and greed. The final item will then lead to oppression of the poor, cheating in business, slave labour, and despoiling of both land and sea. Joseph’s brothers, of course, sold him into slavery out of envy. And the last of the Decalogue forbids it: do not covet anything that is your neighbour’s, because out of this all the other sins will appear.

            What do we envy?  Do I want a beautiful house, a beautiful car, or beautiful clothes? Do I want it enough to steal a car, for example? Why? Will I be more beautiful, or will my life be more beautiful? The person who was prepared to murder acquired a life in prison: that was envy’s reward. This is the secular answer.

            The spiritual answer might be more complex. Why envy at all? Every person is in a unique situation with all its faults and blessings. If I say that ‘other people’ have better health, for example, I forget that millions are dying every year around the world from malaria: the bite of one mosquito. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The rich have their sorrows as well as the poor, and some of these are not redeemable through money. The beautiful often carry their beauty as a burden, overwhelmed by the illusions of others.

            What we ourselves have is often as valuable as anything we might envy.  It can all be lost in a day, too. Do we envy what is present, what is past, or what is to come? Sitting in the pews at St. Peter’s Eastern Hill today, I heard a magnificent choir singing Arvo Pärt’s Beatitudes, and how could I envy the finest seat in the greatest opera house in the world?  I had my hearing: isn’t this enough?  And it all can be lost in a day. Life is too fragile for envy. Let us then bless God.

           

           

On Buildings: The Wear of Time.

I note that my church has awakened to a roof crisis. Yesterday was Stewardship Sunday, and among other facts that came to light, the vestry indicated how big loans had had to be taken to repair a heritage roof on a heritage building, and how dealing with the costs of maintaining historic buildings is a major item of expenditure, that needs to be identified in the ongoing budget. How often do we take account of the tendency of roofs to decay, and of other things to dismay with the inevitable wear and tear of time?

            I was reminded of a class I took in Anglican Studies when I was doing my theology degree: the lecturer advised his students to look first at the roof of any church where they were thinking of taking a clergy position. If the roof’s not sound, he said, you’ll spent all your time there raising funds to fix it, and getting nothing else done. Ironically, this professor soon found himself in England, raising seven million pounds for the roof of a venerable church in Oxford, many centuries old, a historic building if ever there was one. (I believe the writing of many grant applications formed part of this process, and the money, astonishingly, did appear).

            Even my own local house has a tendency to cost me every year on things like painting the fascia boards (wha...?) replacing weathered doors, fixing broken locks and rebuilding crumbling steps, not to mention installing guard rails and better access features due to the faults of my health. So while the building is subject to the onslaughts of time and weather, my body is also showing signs and symptoms. I won’t discuss my car, superstitiously, since it’s booked in for service this week and some major item always needs to be replaced.

            I’ve tended to run my finances on current expenses only, and I suspect this is what happened to the vestry before the roof enlightenment experience. The revelation has occurred that there’s actually less money in my banking for current expenses than I thought, given that more than you’d imagine has to be set aside to combat the depredations of time. Everything decays, as the Buddha says, not only buildings but health, relationships and even spiritual signs. Unless the worn parts are renewed, the eventual account is startling.

            How much time and concentration, then, needs to be set aside for renewal of our spiritual relationships? Do we still dream on, with an image of God formed in our childhood, drawing from a depleting source of energy and life? How much reading, spiritual conversation, liturgy and meditation do we need to do to increase our understanding and commitment to divine matters? How much more love of neighbour do we need to show forth, and in what form? Because mark my words, things are wearing out, and we don’t want the rain coming in.

On Horizons: The Junk View

 My brother has embarked on an operation that reaches most people sooner or later; he’s helping with the dismantling and sale of his late mother-in-law’s Boston house. They’ve allotted the clearance task a week. It can be done faster than this. I remember when he and I cleared out our mother’s apartment in one weekend. That was pretty drastic, too.

            My brother remarks that the biggest job will be clearing off the horizontal surfaces. “The horizontal surfaces are full of junk. Clutter all over. The junk on the horizontal surfaces is the stuff you want to look at all the time: photos, souvenirs, collections. It’s going to be painful because of the memories.” He points out that it won’t take long to clear out the closets: “Some things may be worth something and can be sold — we wouldn’t trust her sister, she’d just throw it all in the bin — but every cupboard, shelf and box is crammed to the top with junk; it’s going to take a week to get rid of it all.”

            I recall that in our mother’s apartment there were a lot of books, which were taken to the local library, and that brings me to my job at the Carmelite Library where my boss, Philip, collects libraries. Specifically, deceased estates may show forth magnificent volumes under threat from anxious lawyers and uninvolved heirs who threaten the tip to substantial and often valuable collections. (We don’t know how many of the dresses in the Boston closet may be designer items, a pity to destroy). But this, of course, leads to the problem of insufficient space to house all the library’s new treasures.

            I look around my house at my own books, pictures, photographs and dear possessions, and I feel sad at their eventual fate. Things on the horizon point to a future destination: the junk on the horizontal surfaces is the clutter of the memories, loves, desires, and joys of your life. These objects are part of the unique you that ceases to be in the world. One hopes for a gentle hand to have some consideration, but the horizon lies at a distance, a distance from all we have valued, as we move into the past: a different world.

On Haste: Travelling the Road

Travelling down Punt Road on the way to work I heard the screams of an ambulance, and was luckily able to pull out of the far right lane to let it pass, its lights flashing fiercely. But it didn’t get far. Five or six vehicles shifted out of its way, but then it was blocked in on three sides by chunks of traffic, that was stopped at lights and unable to find spaces to allow it through. As the lights changed it would gain a little, only to be halted again a few cars later on.

            Was it going to or coming from an accident? By the time I reached the top of the hill at South Yarra I could see it below, still hindered, apparently heading for the hospital. Its back windows had been painted with an appeal for the paramedics’ pay rise, and I noticed that several times under our stop-go regime the opposite side of the street held no oncoming traffic, but the ambulance never was tempted to cross the double line.

            What is haste? How frustrating it must be, in a life or death situation, to be held up by road rules, and the frailty, bewilderment, and inflexibility of the general public behind the wheel of a car. Nothing seems to be happening fast enough.

            Slowness, it’s said, comes from God, and haste from the devil. Would taking the time to think have allowed some of this traffic to move aside, like a shoal of fish — even into a side street or a driveway — to make a way for this ambulance? Or was the lack of a collective mind and its values the holdup? Speed is a resource of time, but the scarce resource here was space.

            Both space and time belong to God: we only think we count them and allot them. Your resources are not your resources, although there are more of them than you may suppose. Sometimes they could well be combined with others to make a more godly path for those in need to travel.