Meandering update

The old demons I was fighting last week are... well, not conquered, but I've done all I can for now, and my brain seems to be letting me have a rest from that until I find out what the next step is.

Meanwhile everything else is still shifting, and I wait.

I went to Evensong at a church in the next deanery, and was asked if I'd read. I did. Afterward the organist mentioned, after we'd chatted about other things, that during the reading he'd thought I "really should be ordained".

This keeps happening. It's disconcerting that others see this so clearly in me. It's disconcerting that so much of it depends on others, on circumstances, is beyond what I can even try to control.

I mentioned a new spiritual director, a while back. She is excellent; slightly daunting, perhaps, but in a good way. And very near by, which is such a relief when so much of my life involves commuting in one form or another.

The radishes have bolted in the garden. The flowers are so pretty I haven't quite had the heart to pull them up, even though I know the sweetcorn needs the light.

I've been writing more music recently, not a great deal more but some. It feels important, and I've had some encouragement from unexpected directions.

I am terrified by the politics in this country at the moment.

I'm not sure yet what I'm using this blog for now, or where it is going. When I started it I needed a place to try out ideas, a way of interacting with a community I couldn't easily reach in person and didn't know I needed to seek, a space to reflect. I've made some wonderful friends as a result. But the real heart-on-sleeve stuff feels too precious now to put online, even somewhat anonymously. Other spaces to reflect have become more comfortable through being less guarded. I have got "stuck in" to various church communities locally, to the point that I think it is the non-church communities that I need to make an effort to engage with. I no longer have a daily commute which lends itself to reading blogs.

But I still have a feeling I don't want to leave this abandoned, I don't want to break contact. So I post a sort of "still alive" thing every once in a while.

Turn and return and turn again

Oh dear, it's got to the point where people are leaving me comments asking me to come back and I don't even see them because the most recent post is more than two weeks old.

That, in and of itself, is mildly distressing. Many apologies to any of you who might worry about me. I am well.

That I can't say I've been blogging much anywhere else is perhaps more telling. My career-related blog is getting posts even more intermittent than this one; my locked journal (which had several posts a day for many years) is all but abandoned. I'm not even really leaving long rambly comments on Nick Baines' blog (which has more than once been the cause of my not having time to blog here). My e-mails to various dear friends have become shorter and less introspective, very much more "I did this and that and the chard is still growing" than they once were. I'm not even doing pen-to-paper reflective journaling on my own (I tried for a few months early spring but it isn't good for my elbow to do that much longhand writing).

I'm not doing badly -- my physical and mental health seem to be pretty good at the moment, I'm doing lots of work, I'm mostly getting enough rest (although as always there is this battle to catch up, this temptation to be busy on days off). But given how much I have previously relied on reflection and analysis in a written format, I'm starting to wonder what's up here. Am I really just too busy, or am I avoiding something? Is this about finding a voice (I typed "void" the first time, Freudian or what?!?) for my career-related blog, or giving myself space to speak at all? Is this about being more private, more circumspect now that some of my job is so obviously tangled with my religious life, or about being honest with myself? Is this about busy-ness or about not allowing stillness? I don't want to be precious or dramatic about this, and maybe I just need to accept that it won't be perfect and I can't do everything, but I have written hundreds of words per day for several years and don't seem to be doing so now. It isn't that I can't think of what to write, as evidenced by the verbosity of this post. It's that I'm not sitting down and starting.

I think I need to work out a Rule again. I have sort-of had one of one sort or another since my last year at Academic Institution, where the Rule consisted of "practise two hours before anything else" and I built everything -- my prayer life, my social life, my work, even my love life -- around that.

I don't have anything like that focus now. I have some things that are major -- the organist job, the teaching, a chamber group -- which will always take priority over other work. I've tried to shape my days sensibly and I'm not generally spending hours and hours online talking when I should be working. But there are things that are getting neglected, including this blog. Some of the neglected things are optional; some are not, and I wonder if some of my tiredness is not from being too busy but from being a little ungrounded.

Do you have a Rule of Life, or a set of intentional habits for your daily life? How specific is it, and how flexible? How do you decide when, if ever, to make changes to it? How do you make this fit around variable working patterns?

Back from Greenbelt.

Half a week holiday isn't very much for someone who usually gets one day off per week (if that) and hadn't had a holiday of more than 3 days since January.

So I decided to take the rest of August gently. I did some practising, but blew off paperwork and other tasks. I had a weekend away with Sweetie and actually did not go to church on Sunday for the first time in... over a year, I think. I went to Greenbelt, which was great.

Everything starts again tomorrow; phoning students to arrange my schedule, practising in earnest, printing music lists, planning Christmas services (or at least the music for them), trying to coordinate rehearsals, the lot.

I've blogged on my public, professional blog about some of my experiences at Greenbelt. It feels very strange to do so, like I've exposed some of my spiritual innards. But I think it's necessary if I'm going to find a voice on that blog.

I'm not planning on disappearing from here, but the more I blog about music here the less anonymous I'll get, so I'm going to try to keep the music stuff more public.

If I "know" you here and you want to read it, let me know your e-mail address and I'll give you the url to the other blog. But don't out me, please.

Blogging about not blogging, again

So, I've not been blogging much, here or elsewhere.

It's partly that i've managed to get to that point where I don't want to post something that isn't finished, isn't quite what I wanted to say, isn't perfect. But that perfectionism degrades the medium somewhat, and certainly makes the quantity of my output plummet.

What have I been up to?

Lots of rehearsing, a bit of performing here and there, still teaching, more projects than I have time for and I don't seem to stop having ideas for even more. I went up to visit Kathryn of Good in Parts and had a simply grand time, as always.

I was going to write a post about keeping a strict Sabbath when I was observing Jewish law, and how that experience affects my attitude toward days off etc now (especially as I am a self-employed musician who works most Sundays), but I haven't taken an honest-to-goodness, all-day, Proper Day Off since 7th May, and I kindof stayed up until 5am watching election results the night before, which meant it was perhaps not as restorative as it might have otherwise been. I'll do better this week.

I'm still behind on reading blogs, too, but still thinking of and praying for many of you.

I'm going to try to do a post-a-day thing to get myself blogging again, but most of that probably won't be here: my public, identifiable-as-me blog needs more of that attention.

One year blogiversary

I'm probably writing this so late that everyone else has said it already. I've been trying to write it for the better part of a week, and I keep tripping over the words.

I read the Archbishop of Canterbury's address to General Synod on Tuesday. I read it, and my soul hurt.

I share some of his vision, I think. I agree that some of the language around so many debates within the Church is so adversarial, so us-and-them, that it seems people are saying "yes, we want you, but only on our terms", and I wonder whether this is really constructive.

++Rowan Williams speaks of a vision of Church where we all consider how our behaviour affects everyone else before acting. That is commendable. I share such a dream; so do many, many others, I think. How many times have I written about the ultimate interconnectedness of things, about the fact that none of our actions, however small, are in isolation from the rest of the world? What I eat for breakfast does actually affect you who are reading this, in some very small and immeasurable but definite way. What you do can show me, in small ways and large, how I might act for good in the world.

I love the Archbishop's vision of mutual care and learning. But I do not think it can be enforced; I do not think it can come about by people following "guidelines" to fit into one "structure" or another. I think freedom is something we already have, not something we can grant or withhold from one another. He speaks of restraint, as if the imposition of restraint (or not granting certain freedoms) will make people think of others before themselves... I think obedience without freedom is meaningless. He speaks of an Anglican Covenant as something which will encourage people to judge their own actions with more care, but he forgets that many people will go along with it for fear of being found unworthy by human judges.

I think that ++Rowan Williams has confused causation and correlation. He says:

To be free is to be free for relation; free to contribute what is given to us into the life of the neighbour, for the sake of their formation in Christ’s likeness, with the Holy Spirit carrying that gift from heart to heart and life to life. Fullness of freedom for each of us is in contributing to the sanctification of the neighbour. It is never simply a matter of balancing liberties, but of going to another level of thinking about liberty.

but he does not explore the possibility that those he calls to exhibit "restraint" have followed their own very valid discernment processes; he does not acknowledge that the gifts of the Holy Spirit may be exhibited differently in different people, different places, different contexts. He does not seem to see that just because diligent, caring consideration of the whole Body of Christ sometimes leads to restraint, does not mean that it always will. He does not seem to see that imposing restraint externally, rather than leading to open hearts filled with the Holy Spirit, is likely to close them.

The whole thing puts me in mind of a parent trying to sort out a squabble between siblings, not acknowledging why either did the things they did and telling one and then the other to say they are sorry. The result is surly, forced apologies, and lots of resentment for the next round of squabbles.

I know as well as anyone that it is possible to find freedom in structure. I am someone who needs a lot of structure in my life, in order to do my work effectively. Thinking about every action I take and the full range of consequences of that action would wear me out in about half a day: there are infinite possibilities, and infinite repercussions of every thing that I do, and my awareness of that is overwhelming. I need rules to systematize that, and I follow what could, I suppose, be called a Rule; I have consciously-chosen routines for different times of the day and for the most part I follow them. And on a day-to-day basis my reasoning has to be "structure says it's time to do the washing-up, so I'm going to do the washing-up now". Contrary to making me feel trapped, this structure is, for me, very freeing. I have chosen the rules as a useful strategy for getting through each day and they free me, at least partly, from the endless cascade of "what if...?" that I would get stuck in without them, or from the disengagement of just allowing routines to happen as a reaction to everything else, an unconscious set of habits. Rules for me are a strategic adaptation to the fact that every second of every day I must decide what to do next and I must often do so with insufficient information.

But a structure or set of rules that works for someone else wouldn't work for me, and what works for me might be disastrous for someone else. There are things about my structure that are useful for others, and things others do that would be useful for me. And every so often I find that I've failed to take account of something, that my strategic rules aren't working so well any more, and I have to stop and evaluate and make some changes. This is all considered quite normal, and as an adult it is recognised both that choosing my habits and structures and rules is my responsibility, and that I will sometimes mess up or need to make changes. People might have opinions on my actions, they might want to give me advice or indeed I might want to ask their advice, but ultimately I am the one who has to make the decisions. Every second of every day, I am choosing... even if what I'm choosing is to follow the rules I've chosen for myself.

Organisations, too, choose structures and rules, laws even, to navigate the intricacies of daily life in an uncertain world. Different communities in different contexts will arrive at some different conclusions as to the best way forward. So why does the Archbishop of Canterbury think that it's appropriate to chastise and scold those who re-evaluate some of their rules? Why does he think that imposing a structure externally will bring about the lovingkindness and awareness he so desires?

Lovingkindness isn't something that can be legislated, something that can be enforced. Compassion isn't something we learn by being told explicitly how to behave in a given situation; it's something we pick up by observation and example, something we might catch, like 'flu but longer in duration.

One reason I've struggled to write this post is because in my reaction to this is so full of questioning others and thinking I know some of the way. That isn't a particularly loving response. Love does not say "you are wrong" but "what can I do that would be constructive?".

I'm not sure about the answer to that. I think it does mean continuing to stay involved with local communities, continuing to do the work I do and to find out what other work there is that I could do. I think it means continuing to blog, not from a perspective of saying what I think is right but from a perspective of reflecting, of exploring. And I think it means hanging onto hope, letting go of fear, reminding myself that love is stronger than death.

Today is my one year blogiversary. I was surprised by the warm welcome I got last year; I continue to be surprised by the friends I've met and the things I've learned. Thank you all for making it such a wonderful year in so many ways.

Wow... and a serious invitation.

So. Future Housemate, Sweetie and I went to view one house today.

It's... well. It's not perfect. But I don't think we'll find something that suits our needs better, not at that price. It's... Future Housemate referred to it as dignified, and that it is, with a bit of history and character. It's in reasonably good nick. The amount of storage space is wonderful, and will be even better once we get bookshelves in. There's room for my teaching studio. There's one more bedroom than we were looking for. The location couldn't be better, literally around the corner from one of my dearest friends, with a wonderful grocer at one end of the road and ancient parkland at the other. I can't tell you more than that without sacrificing anonymity.

I know it's hasty to rent a place without having looked at other houses in the area. I know it's a renter's market and we have the clout to find something really spectacular. I know they may decide not to replace the shower, and might balk at our request for a gas hob rather than electric. I know the kitchen is a bit smaller than I'd like (but there is an Actual Dining Room, something I've long yearned for, and I think that will make smallish kitchen okay). I know the rent is a teensy weensy bit higher than we'd planned. I know the garden is north-facing and not as large as I'd hoped for (though it is not without promise... the roses, jasmine and honeysuckle can all stay, in any case).

But I'm rather smitten. I know what houses in that general area are like, having visited a few friends, and this one does feel special. It seems to just be begging us to move in and fill it with life and music. It feels like somewhere that will become home. Future Housemate feels the same. Sweetie likes it too, especially the flexibility of having the extra bedroom.

I may not make it to Evensong tomorrow at Default Option Church. Last week I had a rather dismal and discouraging experience there involving sexist comments, being accused of stealing a hymnal and another sermon I couldn't quite follow (not all the same incident I might add!), but that's not the reason for staying away. I have a friend who had surgery last week and the only time I can get up to visit her is going to be tomorrow night after I'm teaching, so if she's feeling up to visitors I will be going there instead of to church. I figure God understands these things.

That said, I didn't want to miss it entirely. So today I went to St Paul's Cathedral for Evensong there.

The tube was running late of course and I arrived just after the last stroke of five, almost too worried about disturbing things to have the nerve to go in at all. I've lived in London for nine years but for most of those I was chasing Judaism or not really engaging with any structured spiritual practice... I'd not been to a service in a cathedral before. I needn't have worried, it was full of tourists. After I sat down I realised there was an area nearer the front where people actually had service sheets and so on, but I was feeling a bit too shy to go up and join them. So I sat, and I stood, and I sat, depending on which part of the service we were in--I could hear enough of the music to keep track and the spoken prayers were on a speaker system. It's also very echo-y in there and I didn't hear everything clearly, people around me were talking a lot which didn't help much.

But I'm very glad I went, and I'm glad I participated on some level.

Once in a sermon at Leafy Suburb Church, the vicar mentioned a blog I read and comment on. I had a slight panic and then realised that no, she probably doesn't follow back to commenters' blogs and read them all, she might not be able to identify me for sure from what I write here, and even if she did I don't mind her knowing who I am. And it struck me today in St Paul's that I wanted to write about being there, but any number of you lot could have been there too. Do I identify myself or not? I'm trying to remain somewhat anonymous here because it gives me a freedom in my writing that I do not think I could have if my professional life and my blogging here were to overlap much. I'm less clear about where my social life and my blogging are allowed to overlap, and how comfortable I am with the people I meet on my in-person spiritual explorations having access to my more vulnerable, private musings. Do I say that I was there, I was the rather tall lady in the purple skirt and dark blue top and the rather dirty light blue hat? What are the chances? This is London... chances are rather high. I'm undecided. Only I've gone and done it now, haven't I?

This leads into a slightly knottier problem.

One of the things that is very much a part of who I am, no matter which online identity or personal or professional role I'm stepping into, is my work as a student and a performer of music. It's unavoidable.

Not too long after my Big Final Exam Recital I'm having a more personal, celebratory recital. I don't want to put the place and time online, but it'll be in London, at a church reasonably close to a central location. I've struggled somewhat with making this event personal but not exclusive; I don't want to turn away anyone who would like to come, but I want it to be clear that this concert is primarily for me to have the opportunity to play for colleagues, family, teachers and friends, new and old. As concerts should be, it's a gift I'm making to the audience, not a product I am selling. So I've invited pretty much everyone I know, though I'm late getting invitations sent out. And every time anyone says, "Oh, can I bring so-and-so along?" I say yes, of course.

I have been surprised and delighted by the guidance, support, encouragement and, yes, friendship, that I have found through blogging here. So if you are in London, or think it might be possible for you to be in London during the summer, and you would like to hear me play: please contact me, and if I recognise you and trust you not to blab all over the internet about who I actually am, I'll send you invitation details. I mean it. I am absolutely serious about this. My getting this degree (okay I don't have it just yet, but you give me a few more weeks...) has been very much a group effort and I am honoured to include some regular readers here in that group. You might not think you've done much but a kind word here and a bit of encouragement there have been lifelines, and then there is everything that I have read... even when I can't keep up, these words on screens are important, are necessary. It would be a joy and a privilege to play for you. It's the closest thing I have to sacrament, in this line of work.

I'm happy to give you the option of remaining anonymous yourself. I know lots of you have higher stakes in the anonymity gamble than I do, and I respect that. Lots of people at this concert will be people I primarily know online, though many have gone on to become wonderful in-person friends; everyone there will understand if you say, "Oh, I know the performer from conversations we've had on the internet". For that matter, you don't have to talk to people at all if you don't want to, you can leave the second the music stops or even slip out early. Hiding in the vestry for the entire concert is another option, although of course if I get many of you all wanting to do that it won't work very well as a hiding place!

But please, if you read this regularly, consider coming if it's at all practical.

and breathe

Got the assignment in, but a day late, for which I will lose 10%. It's not as if I really think the numbers have much to do with the learning any more, but I'd like to jump through the assorted hoops as well as I can and get the bit of paper at the end that says I am a competent musician. And for this, I have to do paperwork. 44 pages of it today.

Might post something sensible tomorrow but for this evening I am going to have dinner with Sweetie and look at cat pictures on teh internets, and chase up a few threads of new and shiny things to learn...

Placeholder post

Too many things to think about, let alone to post about! My brain, at the moment, is all about big ideas, general concepts, broad careless strokes of a chunky brush dipped in searingly bright colours. It's in my practising, my teaching, even composing (such as it is) is coming at me in big forms and harmonic structure rather than melodic line and fine nuance.

Typical, then, that this week in my academic work I need to write a report on Big Project, a meticulously detailed report of what I learned and how I learned it, complete with appendices, tables and charts. As someone who normally does that sort of learning in a more organic and intuitive way, I'm struggling a little to identify these things, but as a teacher and a musician I can do self-scrutiny well enough; as someone who thinks the structure of the assignment is not actually that helpful to the learning process I'm resentful of having to jump through the hoop. But the biggest problem is really that I keep getting distracted by big ideas.

The way I usually work through ideas is to talk about them or write about them.

Things I would like to write about, right here and right now, but for which I really haven't got the spare brain cycles:

-How my spirituality/beliefs relate to teaching music; how I can be more generally supportive of the families I work with, through music teaching and not in any overtly religious framework; how to pray about teaching
-I've touched on it a bit before, but more on music performance and spirituality and my current understanding of the relationship between the two
-Chronic pain and how I deal with that and various other physical and mental health difficulties. I'm not actually sure I can do this without turning it into a whinge-fest or completely destroying the fragile anonymity I'm trying to maintain here.
-Words and meaning; images and meaning; sounds and meaning. In the beginning there was the Word, we're told--but do we mean the word, or do we mean meaning itself? And how does this relate to our being made in God's image, and being creators of meaning ourselves?
-Psalmody and how/why it seems to work so much better for me when chanted or sung; the line between speaking and chanting, and between chanting and singing. I'd quite like to do lots of research into chanted/sung psalmody in the Jewish tradition and how that relates to the worship patterns of the early Church. And I'd like to get to know it all so much better, and find or help create an authentic, aesthetic and accessible sung/chanted Psalmody for English translations. Yes, lots of work is being done on this already; I'm essentially playing catch-up, in an academic sense. Meanwhile I keep singing them in Morning Prayer, and one day indeed pours out its song to another as in Psalm 19 this morning.
-Material poverty (of others) and asceticism (the temptation to it in myself, and a certain pointlessness). I really haven't ironed out my thoughts on this.
-FaceBook, Twitter, blogging, other ways of keeping in touch and building communities online and how I see (and how I use) these various tools.
-Food and prayer and (especially shared) meals, and an assortment of thoughts I've been having on these recently; Eucharist and sacrament within and without standard liturgy; this also relates to creating a welcoming home, and to being spiritual/religious in a pluralist/secular society, creating rituals that can be shared and meaningful without excluding anyone or making them feel uncomfortable.

The assignment will have to come first, I'm afraid. And I've got a busy week in other terms as well, so need to be careful not to commit to too much yet. But I might be able to write about one of these by Saturday-ish. Which would you like to read?

Housekeeping

My hospital appointment on Thursday had mixed results. The short version is that I need to see the vampires at least twice more before they're even willing to make a decision as to how to proceed. I'm glad that the specialist is being thorough rather than dismissive, but I do grow weary of so many appointments.

Today I have mostly been doing housekeeping. I tidied my room some; there's a way to go, but the once-only-a-rumour floor has been sighted, and I have some clean laundry hanging up to dry for the week ahead. My internet access at home has not been working today so I've now retreated to the pub to sit in the sunshine, eat delightfully unhealthy food and use the wifi.

Some online housekeeping, then:

I do have a Twitter account. My username there is, predictably, song_in_heart. I am trying to maintain some semblance of anonymity so I'm afraid it's not public; if you want to follow me I'll have to approve you. If you've commented at all regularly here I'm almost certain to do so, if I can figure out who you are.

One of the things that ends up on my Twitter posts is haiku. This started as a joke among friends sometime last spring or summer and I've mostly kept at it, at a rate of two or three per week (more in summer, fewer in winter). They aren't necessarily very good but I like writing them, I like having to focus on what is in front of me and make it fit the syllables. In case some of you would like to read those without the rest of the chaff that ends up on Twitter, I've decided to start sticking them on a blog, Wandering Haiku. I'll probably update it once a week or so.