Wednesday 21 May 2014

On Taking All of Me



A child across the street is playing with a ball. I hear him practicing with his football as I sit practicing with my piano. He does seem to get more joy of it, too. It’s uneven, not regimented, taking its path with the path of the ball, that falls where it will. And he can play like this for hours.
            The piano teacher makes the remark: “You have the knowledge to play this piece, but you don’t yet have the skill.” The word skill, which once meant ‘understanding’, comes from an Anglo-Saxon past where the meaning was ‘distinction’. And ‘distinction’ refers in its turn to discrimination or distinguishment between things that are separate, or distinct. Hence, understanding. Yet now it preferences its secondary meaning of superiority, or particular favour. The idea is that skill, dexterity, mastery, is specially favoured and distinct.
            ‘Dexterity’ contains a fluency, or flowingness: the grace with which right-handed people use the right hand, while their left acts comparatively awkwardly. In the not distant past, right-handedness was considered natural, so the idea of a dexterous left hand took time to assimilate. Alas for me, playing the piano requires the dexterous use of both hands.
            It’s said that mastery of any skill takes at least 10,000 hours of practice. I’ve tried to become skilful at many things in my days, and at 10,000 hours each I get the feeling that each of them wants to take all of me. Of course there’s not enough of me to go around. The main difficulty is time for practice.
            There are many kinds of skills: physical skills, like riding a bicycle, relying on balance and muscle memory below the level of consciousness; mental skills like arithmetic and spelling that call upon and interpret symbols. And there may be spiritual skills, like the ‘skilful means’ of the Buddhists who practice the noble eight-fold path. Anger, for example, is generally one of the less skilful ways of dealing with other people.
            Paul invited the Galatians to ‘live by the Spirit.’ This would produce the ‘fruits’ of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And he particularly warned them against being ‘desirous of vain glory’ (St. Ignatius Loyola agreed with him, thinking this was Satan’s portal), or competitive, or envious. If we take a look at our own culture, and people we see in public life, aren’t these the distinguishing features of society: competition, envy, lust for fame?
            We have plenty of time to put in the 10,000 hours of practice on patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control and all the others. We don’t need a bicycle or a piano or even a football to practice. You can do it all day, even on public transport, even on the road. Living in the spirit results in the fruits, but it also is the fruits. And you can play with it, like the child with the ball, following the Way, that falls where it will.

Sunday 11 May 2014

On Hands and Voices



I’ve been reading the biography of Sabine Baring-Gould, author, in his own day, of many best-selling novels, but now remembered for a number of hymns that are still sung. A man slated by his father to become an engineer, who counted on his fingers, alas, to the end of his days, he went to Cambridge as a classicist and fell in love with the Oxford Movement, only being allowed to take Holy Orders after his two younger brothers declined their father’s invitation to take the younger son’s place in the Church.
            Baring-Gould spent the last forty-five years of his long life, according to his biographer, doing nothing but exactly what he wished to do. His living of Lew Trenchard, where he was the loved and honoured Rector, was also his manor, where he was the respected squire. He had fifteen children, some of whom he didn’t recognise when he met them. He wrote standing at a writing-desk all day: novels, histories, lives of the saints, theology, church history, poetry, antiquities, translations. His lovely translation of the fifteenth-century hymn “Come down, O love divine” remains in the hymnal, while “Onward Christian Soldiers” has fallen out of favour, perhaps partly due to Sullivan’s stirring (imperialist?) tune: Baring-Gould wrote it for Sunday-school children to sing, and set it to a slow movement from Haydn. “Onward Christian Soldiers” was controversial in its time: the line, “With the cross of Jesus going on before” was considered too papist for some, especially since the hymn was written for the children’s procession.
            He set his hand to many things. He was an amateur archaeologist — especially of his local district — when amateurs were held in high regard. He considered his most important work the collection of English folk-songs; he compiled an immense volume of the old song-men’s repertoire, rushing to the side of these aged singers to catch the works before they died. His biographer believes he could have achieved more lasting work had he restricted his interests: he might have made his mark in literature, theology or history. But he set his hand to many things.
            This is Baring-Gould’s story. Story, of course, comes from the voice and makes meaning of events as we tell them to ourselves, whether past or future events.Thus a baby may be predicted as “Daddy’s little princess” or a father remembered in “Dad’s mission was to take care of his family — and he did!” Stories we tell in preparation, celebration, commemoration.
            The work of hands is somewhat different. Hands make the present, repair the past, structure the future. The presentness of hands is made present to me whenever I play a wrong note on the piano: everyone can tell what I’m thinking! (or not thinking, as is often the case). Keeping the eyes on the keyboard to assure a fingering or a rhythm I can see time: past time flowing into present into future. Is it better to set our hands to many things, or to attain the starry skies by handing on only one thing?
            One thing only is necessary, according to the Gospels, and maybe Baring-Gould did just as well setting his hands to many things, and doing exactly what he wished to do, in the context of a verse he wrote that was left out of Hymns Ancient and Modern:
            ‘What the Saints established
            That I hold for true,
            What the Saints believeth
            That believe I too.’

Too papist? Or maybe not.
           

Thursday 1 May 2014

Graduation Day: On Cleansing the Thoughts of the Heart



I have just completed a course of New Testament studies that has taken me five years in its latest incarnation. During this time, interrupted by illnesses and events having as much to do with spirit as text, I have finished a master’s degree and passed a test of my character. Or so I think.
            I learned a great deal about the values and ideas of classical antiquity, for the sacred scriptures are thousands of years old. And I was made to question my own values. Things like honesty, loyalty, humility and perseverance proved important.
            Today we know that the heart is a pump, moving blood around the body, and so mechanical. It symbolises feeling or emotion, from hot-blooded passion to icy broken-heartedness. Blood, naturally, both symbolises and is life, and when the heart ceases to beat we die.
            But for the ancients, the heart symbolised mind, or thought, from the wicked mind of violence to the righteous thoughts of the blessed. The heart is a storehouse of memory; thinking happens in the heart, unless the heart is so hardened that a person’s judgement and personal relationships are closed off, for the kind of thinking done in the heart isn’t separate from feeling. Indeed, the thoughts of the heart must be informed by feeling, most especially the feeling of reverence towards God.
            Why undertake a course of study? To get a job, a ticket to work? If the subject has no likelihood of future prospects, how then are you spending your time? I came to the conclusion that cleansing the thoughts of the heart had something to do with it.
            The heart, in this ancient sense, can become fouled like the bottom of a boat covered in barnacles and seaweed. Our judgement can be clouded by regrets, uncompleted actions, wrong turnings, bad decisions, and even worse, the arrogance of an unrealistic sense of responsibility as if every matter in the universe needs to be referred to us for improvement. And a heart that thinks no wrong of itself is obviously out of touch with real life.
            Study forces you to clear out some debris. You have to refine ideas, to separate the strands and make choices. You may learn both how much you can do, and how little you can get by on. You may find friends in unexpected places, recover from betrayals, be given second chances, get up to fight another day. You can gather grains of wisdom.
            Cleansing the heart is a spiritual effort, informed by the spirit, leading to right reverence and clear thinking. Study, then, isn’t a matter for the intellect alone. Indeed, without love, we may say that study is empty, void at the heart. And love is never lost.
            I think we must inform the mind, or heart, as to our best love, to love what is worthy,
lovely, and sacred, apart from mere advantage and overcoming others. Look around the world, and away from yourself: imagine in your heart, how much there is to love.