On Keys: Material and Metaphysical.

Last week was the week of keys at my place. It started when I locked myself out. Cold morning: I’d thought I wouldn’t need a jacket; I’d only be out a few minutes with one of the dogs while the other dog went for his walk. It never crossed my mind to take a key for a short time. Then the dog walker came back, put the dog in the back yard and locked the door as she left. I didn’t wake up to this until I tried to get in.

            So here I was shivering: I was able to get to the front garden but not into the house. Fortunately I had the mobile, and a text to the dog walker sorted out the key, which now lives in my pocket forevermore. But that was just the beginning.

            Someone else forgot a key on Sunday. This key turned out to be locked in the boot of her car, along with music she needed to sing at a concert immediately. A kindly partner travelled to rescue her music and keys so she could sing. These are physical keys: the kind I was urged to get cut so a copy could be left with  neighbours. Who has the key? Who can open the door? Do you need a key to get into your workplace? What about keys you need to open doors for others?

            Then there are electronic or digital keys, far too many of them in this sceptical and dubious age. Your computer passwords and your PINS are keys, and you find that without them you’re persona non grata. One of these keys also failed for me this week, one of the passwords, which required a visit from the computer repairer, who fortunately restored access. I couldn’t have done it on my own. There isn’t much arguing, explanation or complaint possible with electronic keys.

            I wonder about metaphysical keys. Peter is famously given the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, though these might be metaphorical rather than metaphysical keys, or maybe both. These keys unlock the treasure-houses of the Kingdom: Peter is made free to give of God’s treasures as perhaps Pope Francis would hope to do today. The angel in the book of Revelation bears a key to lock up the dragon (or serpent): the devil. The binding and loosing power of Peter also has this quality of restraining what is harmful and giving freedom to what is restrained. Keys: protection (to lock) and release (to unlock).

            There may be magical keys (the Key of Solomon, a textbook which is different to the Wisdom of Solomon the Queen of the South travelled so far to hear) and musical keys, of course, and keys to codes and maps, and keys to life from the Egyptian ankh to DNA, which is itself a code. Anyone who reads the Wisdom of Solomon will recognise, alas, many politicians and polluters among us who ‘make use of creation’ and oppress the poor, not sparing the widow or regarding the grey hairs of the aged. They believe that might makes right, and that everything weak is also useless.

            How different is Wisdom, the key to creation: all things being created so that they might exist. What a simple and profound idea. Wisdom is described as ‘a breath of the power of God’ in these lovely verses: “There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from all anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all … because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things … and she orders all things well.’

On Taking Care: Accidents and Angels.

A young man I know had a motorbike accident last Sunday: head on collision with another bike, week in hospital, lots of broken bones, repeated surgery, and a worrying amnesia (although he remembered his parent’s phone number). Can’t remember the accident, can walk around, wants to go back to work right now, in spite of broken right arm, smashed eye socket: gave his girlfriend such a fright she wrote off her car two days later as she backed out into a busy road. The brain has received a shock.

            This story is repeated all the time, as insurance companies know. They levy high rates for young people. knowing older people are safer on the road. Take fewer risks. Take more care. But then, how much care do we take walking on our feet? Should pedestrians need licenses to cross the road? What about the footpath? Lurking skateboards, mad cyclists, leaping dogs? Vehicles as we brashly cross against the lights? In the middle of the road? Uneven pavements, slick wet surfaces? Why should we have to take such care?

            Then there’s the home accident. This week also I went into the backyard to call my dogs in for the night. As I was ascending the ramp, one dog shot up behind me so fast he passed between my knees and brought me down onto my knees. I had my hands on both rails and so fell onto the ramp with less force and the dog himself broke my fall. I crawled around until I found the step and levered myself up on my feet, so I could help the other dog, who was so shocked by all this he couldn’t get himself up the step.

            My guardian angel works overtime, it seems, and I’m not helping, being so careless. I turned my back on this dog, a witless beast. I knew he likes to rush about. Our knowledge about risks in many circumstances doesn’t translate to our behaviour. Where young men think they’re immortal, older people know we’re mortal and still don’t process the information.

            Why should we take care? It’s only us, isn’t it? Or is it the world, and we’re part of it? Do we have a fictional cinematic impression of floating freedom as if the world is a friend? Are we not sinners? No, I mean seriously. Refusal to understand limitations — which may be moral as well as physical — misplaced confidence, especially in our own wisdom, power or authority, refusal to ask for help or guidance. An impression of ourselves as persons too gifted to take care.

            Don’t we stand in need of mercy? And receive it so often. I could have fractured bones, slipped a retina, passed out with only two dogs for company; my friend could have broken his neck. Where’s the sin in this? you ask. Aside from grief caused to others, there’s the damage to one of God’s creatures — oneself — and then the idea we’re too good to be on a level with other creatures, being careful.

            Are accidents our fault? By definition, they befall. No: events are the consequences of earlier events. As those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not worse sinners than others: they were only in the wrong place at the wrong time. As to why one is saved from catastrophe while another is not, I find it comforting to reflect on Psalm 131: ‘O Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me.’ Oh, good, I’m spared the need to know all about everything! NRSV has ‘too marvellous for me’. However the world works, it’s marvellous and complicated and also often dire.

            However, if we do not amend our ways, both individually and collectively, and employ more gentleness and care, we may become the cause of later events. Then we’ll be called upon to repent, to seek more protection for ourselves, for others, even for the marvellous world we inhabit: such is condition of our forgiveness.

On Invisibility

I remember the moment I realised I was becoming invisible, some years ago now: I had gone to the counter at a café to give in my order, and some young men came up beside me and captured the staff’s attention. This was a gentle surprise to me, though perhaps reasonable that young men be more noticeable than older women in most circumstances. Recently I began to think about invisibility again: when we are overlooked, or sitting by ourselves in a new place, or when what we do goes unregarded. A friend recently asked me to pray for her injured partner, saying, “Since I don’t go to church, I don’t have a right to pray, but you can.” Here the idea of invisibility to the church becomes invisibility to God.

            There can be pain in invisibility, but also advantages. Myths, folk tales and literature sparkle with stories of magic rings and cloaks of invisibility. As a street photographer, my invisibility allows me to appear just an insignificant tourist with a simple digital camera, where someone with heavy gear might be questioned or challenged. And people who think they’re being photographed may be frozen or awkward: the invisible camera can capture their real image. Nature photographers, after all, sit in blinds in hopes the wildlife won’t see them.

            Missing things are also invisible, it seems: the keys, the glasses, the timepiece. The notes on the page when the light shines in your eyes: since the piano teacher got a new light shining over my shoulder onto the page instead, the formerly invisible notes can be seen and so played. Then there are invisible thoughts, the thoughts we don’t see ourselves thinking. I have a lot of these thoughts around the anniversaries of deaths — marked in past centuries with family religious services — that cast a gloom over me days before, until I remember what the coming date recalls.

            Invisibility also has its dangers. The future, for example, is invisible, and the ancients believed it disrespectful to second-guess the intentions of God, hence in the Bible fortune-tellers, necromancers, and seers are generally in bad repute. The future itself came upon people from behind, and overtook them: a very different perception from the vista of a future spreading out before us today. Nevertheless our vista is filled with invisible events, both sinister and unexpectedly brilliant, and like the notes on the piano score, we won’t know them until we see them.

            Fortune-tellers are of course different from prophets, whose vision of the future is directed to rulers and their peoples, with the speech or voice given to prophecy by God. (God’s voice, or more accurately the echo of God’s voice — since human ears can’t hear divine speech — was called ‘the daughter of a voice’ and was spoken by an invisible speaker, as for example at Jesus’ Baptism and Transfiguration.) While the fortune-teller seeks to know, the prophet does know and what he or she does know is what you must do. In the canonical prophets, what you must do is most often called justice, although mercy is another requirement and these are not expected to be invisible.

            Invisibility can lead most usefully to humility. Humility is the natural state of humanity before the divine. The seeing should come from ourselves towards those rendered invisible by injustice and lack of mercy, and I fear that all too many examples will come to our minds, both now and in the future.

On Haste: All Soul's Day

Learning music is painfully slow for me. Even reading music is slow. When I can read the notes, I can play them, but I would classify myself as a really bad reader. The piano teacher yesterday stopped me: “Don’t beat yourself up for being a bad reader. You’re reading, and you’re playing: the eyes are reading the notes and the brain is sending them to the hands, only not fast enough. So slow down, until you reach the point where the eyes can read and the brain interpret and get the notes to the hands in time.” Slow down.

            This is so frustrating. Learning anything proceeds in such an incremental way, not to say a glacial pace, with what we learned yesterday so often having to be learned again today: in music, in sport, in life. And my instinct when confronted with problems is to try to solve them immediately, to restore some stability and resolve some discord. Most problems, alas, don’t solve so fast.

            The Latin proverb Festina Lente expresses the ideal balance between haste and accomplishment: “make haste slowly.” I’ve often felt that many of my troubles in life come from not having consistent energy. Either I run around full of ginger, or I collapse with fatigue. I suspect this comes of making haste until I hit a brick wall, so to speak. Since I’ve reached such an advanced age I would seem to be a slow learner, not to have worked this out years ago.

            How do we spend our years? Sometimes they seem to be spending me. Where do we go in such haste? Does it matter if it takes two years to learn this piece, or two weeks? Probably a concert pianist has nothing more important to do, but a lot of other things are claiming my attention every day. What are we called upon to be, and how much haste does this require?

            All Soul’s Day. All out of time. I think of so many I have known, beginning with my family: father, mother, brother, uncle, aunt — all when I was so young — mothers-in-law (two of them), father-in-law (only one in my time), brother-in-law, sister-in-law — quite recently, following quickly one after another — then my own husband, concluding their generation: and dear young Rachel, laid in her grave by a killer. And the extended family, cousins, colleagues and friends. And enemies, too.There is now no need of haste.

            Festina Lente. Where are you going in such haste? Slow down. Take your time. It’s all the time you have.

On Notes: Taking and Giving

I recently had the opportunity to review a book I read six months ago; I took it off the shelf prepared to read it again. Then to my surprise I found an envelope inside, covered in notes! A moment of pleasure and relief. What is it about taking notes that seems to be so helpful?

            Notes, of course, may be mere lists: shopping lists, appointments, the music teacher’s notes on which scales to practice this week. These are notes on things too frequently encountered to be worthy of memorising, because they’re going to change next time around. They might be long (the shopping) or succinct (the dentist). You don’t want to miss anything out, however, forgetting the eggs or the day of the week.

            Then there are study notes: since my book for review was neither my study nor my profession, I was surprised that I’d gone to the trouble to take notes. Study notes are usually about things we ought to remember but know quite well we can’t — at least not without a lot of revision — and even about knowing which things we ought to know. Sometimes also about where to find them. Study notes are typically about things that lack an emotional charge that might help us remember without notes.

            Some moments are easy to remember, like the time the guy blasted his horn and jammed his tank in front of me on St. Kilda Road, giving the finger as he did so. He was then stuck in traffic for the next ten minutes with the satisfaction of being in front of me instead of behind me, until he made it to the parking station that was his ardent destination. Remembering his rego number was instinctive, as such moments of hot resentment tend to stay with you, as do those when you let yourself down, or let other people down, and though you might like to forget them, you often don’t need notes to remind you of your mistakes.

            If note-taking is truly helpful, perhaps taking notes would serve to remind us of the good memories that tend to slip away if we don’t watch them. For some years I’ve kept what used to be called a Commoplace Book, a collection of quotations and references in this case on spiritual topics, all together in one place: notes on my readings. For example, this from Lao Tzu: “Act; don’t compete.” Or this, on discernment: “Obstacles, for Ignatius, were often a sign of the correctness of the undertaking … His conviction was that a great thing awakens contradiction.” (Lambert noted that). Or this, from the Commonplace Book of W. H. Auden (citing a Welsh poet): “Virginal exquisite queen, of long gentle thinking, the colour of breaking day on a deserted sea.” Such notes will surely help recall matters well to return to contemplation.

            Perhaps notes written at the end of the day could reawaken the appearance of grace, even of beauty, in our immediate past. It seems unbalanced to remember our anger, grief, or shame so readily and to forget so easily peace, inspiration, or comfort. God, after all, can forgive: how can we forget all the giving?

On Driving: Angels and Strangers.

I spend what feels like a lot of time driving the car. It may take me an hour or more to get to work, to church, to a party or an entertainment. This probably isn’t any longer than it takes most people, I know. Although driving is a skilled occupation, something about it doesn’t engage the whole mind, as perhaps it should. So what happens to the driving time?

            The time management issue arises when someone cuts you off rushing to be at the next red light before you. I’ve noted that all traffic appears to be slower on a Friday — odd, that, you’d think it would be faster, as people gallop home for the weekend — although it seems to be quicker and less complex than public transport. But driving does count as a waste of human time and the earth’s resources. And it carries its own decisions. How do you dress for driving? Not in the dust veils motorists once needed, but I’d prefer to avoid tight skirts or high heels for an hour behind the wheel.

            Some have pleasant experiences driving: the exhilaration of moving freely down country highways; the sense of independence and agency as I get myself from A to B all by myself after a period of illness when I couldn’t even get myself out of bed; the personal concert the radio or car music player will give a variety of folk with a real variety show of musical tastes: Brandenburgs to keep me awake (slow music hypnotises and the music for a massage will put you to sleep); heavy metal for the church organist; Broadway musicals for the lawyer; trumpet voluntaries for the carpenter; Eurovision for the priest. But in spite of this valuable listening time, a glance at one’s fellow commuters demonstrates all too clearly the charm and delight they find in their daily travel.

            Some of these joys are mechanical, such as driving with a flopping or scratching noise somewhere beneath the car. But more are caused by our own irritation at having to deal with so many companions on the road, with pushy elbows and blurting horns, with the risks posed by vertiginous pedestrians and other road hazards, including but not limited to cranes high in the air swinging over building sites enclosed in barricades and warnings.

            Does driving find out our failings? Do we have to be first at the light? What about our need to know what’s going on when traffic stops for ages, and we’re blocked by a matron in the civilian equivalent of an armoured personnel carrier from finding anything out? Is the need to engage with strangers getting on our nerves?

            Driving is a state of transition, a friend once said. As a widowed person, I’m in a permanent state of transition in any case, transition to an unknown destination. Would it be more relaxing or interesting driving around with company, or not? True enough, I might not trust another person’s driving, even in a taxi. The expressions ‘driving you crazy’ or ‘driving you wild’ may be sometimes accurate descriptions of what goes on behind the wheel, whereas ‘driving you peaceful’ never seems to come to pass.

            Driving is training for life, I think. It has constant change, moments of aggression, flickers of sweet acknowledgement, blockades, road works, delicate individuals in exposed positions, delays, surveillances, anxieties and rests. So our guardian angels are kept busy, as the only prayers we can offer while driving lie in our consideration and care for our neighbours on the road. And this is enough.

On Saying No: Noughts and Crosses

Sometimes, more rarely than the ideal, I find myself having to say No to someone, some project or responsibility. Some of these Nos have been draconian, and have earned me the disrespect of a number of those affected. Some were slight: easily forgiven. Some have left me with lingering regrets, some with self-congratulation. Some have seemed inevitable, as the task was just too big for my compass; some have required introspection and discernment. Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could always spread joy and relief by saying Yes?

            Why do we find it so hard to say No? How do we feel when someone says No to us? How many Yeses does it take to fill a concert hall, for example, and how many does it take to keep a committee going? Do we sometimes prevent the solution to a problem by saying Yes in a situation actually requiring systematic restructure from the ground upwards, so that a communal burden can be effectively shared? Or so that bad design can be exposed and a whole new way of action be brought into being?

            I find it especially hard to say No to people’s expectations, and this may be the result of my own daring. I have a tendency to overestimate my strength. A few basic maxims are useful here, such as ‘You can’t be in two places at one time’ and ‘There’s only one of me’. One of my serious regrets may seem a small thing, but to my neighbour it was a real disappointment: the day I had to say I couldn’t drive her to a long promised dog show because I was so exhausted I could hardly get out of bed. My neighbour couldn’t drive, and she’d been training her dogs for ages. How could I let her down so? Such regrets are going to stay with me, for my neighbour died long ago.

            Composer Gustav Holst gave his daughter Imogen the advice to put her health and physical fitness before any other consideration — Imogen Holst became a composer, conductor, teacher, arts administrator, and the amanuensis of Benjamin Britten, so there were eventually many considerations — because you can only get the best out of yourself if you are in good condition, just as you can’t get the best music out of a broken-down piano: what’s needed, he said, is ‘a proper mechanism’. He felt this should come first, and he told his daughter to stop before she became tired. Now this is excellent advice. How often do we stop before we become tired?

            It’s a fact, attested in the Gospels, that Jesus said No. He said No to the Kingdoms of this world and to their glory. He said No in the first instance to the devil, the old tempter, but he said the same No to the people of Jerusalem who welcomed him as their King. He told Pilate that if he had been that worldly King, his followers would be fighting for him. Instead, he was lifted up on the cross prepared for him by the Roman authorities.

        There is in art a concept called ‘negative space’. This is the space between the shapes in a drawing, the silence between the notes in music, the emptiness at the centre of the wheel in the Tao. If we don’t take proper rest by saying No, we won’t be able to say Yes when occasions require it, often without warning, and so fulfil our obligation to be fully present for others. To get the best out of ourselves, we need a proper mechanism: we can’t drive ourselves to the brink by always saying Yes.