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.

Where I've got to

Does anyone know of any spiritual support resources or organisations for church musicians? There seem to be lots of things aimed at fairly keen laity, and lots of things aimed at clergy.

I don't want to be precious about it -- being an organist is not the same as being ordained and the amount of responsibility I bear is much less than that of the vicar. I am, in essence, a "fairly keen" layperson. But learning the music and leading choir and congregation in song is surely a different type of work, too, than reading or leading intercessions every few weeks or helping hand out pew sheets and hymnals. I don't mean to diminish the importance of these other things, but they don't require hours of practice on a daily basis.

All the resources I've found aimed at church musicians seem to be primarily geared toward musical training and certification. That's useful, but it isn't all of what I need. I've been complaining to a friend this week that it's quite possible to have a conversation about church stuff with most organists without anyone mentioning God at all. But we also tend to work in isolation, all being busy on Sunday mornings. Clergy have that problem too, but (in the C of E at least) there are various structures in place which increase their contact with one another. I only speak to other organists at all because I go out of my way to do so. I don't know any of them well enough to discuss matters of heart and soul. Gentle Vicar is wonderful but he is also my boss, overworked enough as it is, and not a musician.

My stepdad has had a bereavement. I find it incredibly difficult to pray for him, yet it seems like something I am meant to do. Mostly I try and quickly revert to just wishing he didn't exist and then I feel incredibly guilty for it.

Things are not going well with my spiritual director. I am thinking about other options, while trying to think of what I can bring to this relationship that might be constructive.

I have been talking about all this stuff to a friend of mine who I think would be a wonderful spiritual director, but who isn't in a position to offer formal direction for a number of reasons.

I am cycling a lot and my physical health is mostly good, though I am still very tired.

Gentle Vicar had surgery recently and so we have not had our mid-week said Eucharist since the first week of January. I miss it more than I thought I could; last week I had occasion to be in town at lunchtime on a weekday and went to a service at one of the city churches. The sense of unconditional welcome was wonderful. I'm not sure if I need to make a point of doing this more, or just find a way of hanging onto that feeling.

Always at church I am conscious that I am in a certain role, that to be a good organist, to serve this community well, I need to be gentle but firm, kind but truthful, that I need to listen to others, that I need to think before I speak and comment constructively or not at all. Communion is one time when all of that goes away and I am just there as myself, bringing with me all the cares and concerns of friends and community and family, yes -- I don't generally feel like I'm approaching the rail only on my own behalf, it's hard to explain except to say there's only one bread -- but it's a time when I'm there as me, not as The Organist; where I'm not concerned about trying to coordinate anyone else's responses.

The other time is when I'm improvising on the organ after the Communion hymn. Then I'm very much aware of the rest of the community, very much aware that what I do can support or detract from the liturgy, but I'm absorbed in the here-and-now of playing and somehow it works and even though I am quite clearly being The Organist, I am there as me rather than hiding behind a role.

Or maybe I just feel good after receiving Communion.



Or perhaps it comes to the same thing.

Lead me?

Had a meeting with my spiritual director yesterday.

I'm not sure if it's working very well as a direction relationship. That's not really something I want to discuss in much depth here. Suffice to say that in this, as in so many other situations, I find that I am not being led, but leading. I feel that our conversations challenge and stretch her but don't offer me a whole lot beyond the reflection I already do. She's a wonderful person and in many ways I enjoy our chats, but I don't feel I am being directed.

I join choirs and end up playing instruments rather than being part of a section of voices. I join a church and end up an organist.

I am trying to figure out how to live a semi-monastic life in a largely secular world. My partner, my housemate, many of my friends are not religious; I am someone who needs regular and structured engagement with God. Sharing that with others is important to me, but people with similar needs to mine seem to be few and far between. We talked about this. And I mentioned that a few people I know have commented (some in more depth or with more vehemence than others) that I could be a priest, and that I don't really feel like that's what I'm called to but I'm not saying "never" because the last time I did I was wrong, and because, well, Mary didn't. (And there, now you know too, dearest internets. Is this a surprise? Am I going to get a rash of comments along the lines of "of course"? I'm curious.) We talked about confirmation and preparation for confirmation and the difficulty of finding appropriately-timed classes of a suitable nature, and drew the same conclusions I'd already drawn.

I would dearly love there to be a local Morning Prayer I can get to. Long Walk Church is, well, a long walk, and taking two hours out of my day (which is what it is by the time I've walked there, prayed with the others and walked back) and walking so much is not always workable. We talked about this. One of the things I have mentioned before in our chats is that we could have Morning Prayer at Nearest Church, but I don't feel I can ask for that without ending up leading it, and I don't want to take on too many additional leadership roles (in addition to being the organist and choir director). I go to the weekday Eucharist even though there is no music at all specifically so I can be involved in a service where I'm not taking a leadership role. Half the time, I get asked to read. Big sigh.

Last night after talking with this lady who is "directing" me I asked if we could say Evening Prayer, since it was getting late. (One of the reasons I am not sure about this relationship as one of spiritual direction is that we never pray together.) She couldn't stay any longer due to another appointment but a colleague was meant to come just under an hour later for Evening Prayer. I asked if I could stay and practice the organ, in that case... so I did that. My phone battery died and my wind-up watch had wound down, so I had no idea what time it was. Evening Prayer was meant to be at 6pm. I practised, a lovely instrument in much better repair than the one I usually play. It got dark outside. Some people came and had a meeting in a back room. No (identifiable) clergy about, though, and nobody saying Evening Prayer.

So I said Evening Prayer on my own. Again.

When I got to the train station 20min walk away it was nearly 8pm. I'd waited two hours.

It felt like a pretty pointed message that if I want daily prayer to happen locally I'm going to have to do it myself, or at least ask, and may well end up leading it, and is it really so bad to lead if the alternative is praying alone?

I do not like this. I don't like the feel of it. I don't feel ready to lead and I think there is a huge amount of confusion among other people about what sort of leader I am. I am a musician and I am happy to take the lead, sometimes, in music. I don't know what it is that other people see or feel or intuit about me that makes them think I am a leader of prayers. I don't know why after at least a year of praying that I'll find people to pray with in some sort of local setting, the answer still seems to be "here, you do it".

Is this really something I'm supposed to do, or is it just that I'm not in quite the right place? Am I meant to take the lead in this or find somewhere that will have the kind of support I seem to need?

Guess I'd better get on with things and find out. No sense asking God to lead and then refusing to follow, even if I'm not sure of the path I tread.

Keeping on.

Still ticking. Last day on the stronger tablets today, though I've been managing with food rather better this week than the one before.

I'm working on a project. It has to do with psalmody. Ultimately it's going to be something I'll attach my real name to, which means I can't discuss it much here. If you do want to hear about it let me know. I'll e-mail you if I have your address. Some of you have heard about it already.

The more I do research for this project, the more I let the psalms get into my head and my heart, the more it seems really important that I do some sort of direct voluntary work with people who are homeless. I wrote about this before, at the end of January. I don't know what the connection is; I don't know if my interest in psalmody will mean that the psalms are somehow directly involved in the work I eventually do, or if they "clear the lines" somehow so that discernment is easier for me, or if I'm going to need to know the psalms inside out and backward to deal with what I might find and this is a sort of preparation period for that. I only realised there was a connection fairly recently, after I'd written that other post.

This is way off the beaten track for me. The psalmody project itself is far more research-based than my usual work, but I can at least see a connection, a drawing together of various threads. But direct work with the homeless is unfamiliar in just about every way possible. Using my existing professional skills doesn't seem to be the requirement, and everything I can think up that uses them is definitely not the right thing.

I've spoken to some friends about this. I've spoken to my spiritual adviser/director. I've prayed. I've thought and thought and chased my tail.

I've found a night shelter/day centre within walking distance of where I live and printed out a volunteer application form.

I'm just going to have to try it and see what happens. I can't think this one through any further without taking action.

Right then. Thy will be done, and I hope I don't screw it up.

Worth it...

I wrote previously that I'm teaching a dear friend of mine and we had a bit of a discussion about whether she should pay me.

That brought a lot of things into focus for me in terms of how I look at money and time and work. I had a lot of talks with various friends in person and online, trying to figure out how to respond specifically and more generally. In the end I came to the conclusion that any money anyone gives me as a concession to the fact that I cannot live on air, rather than anything approaching fair compensation. Money is just not the motivating factor for my work, and I do work based on whether it seems fulfilling and worthwhile, not based on whether or how much I will be paid.

But with that said, with the establishment that money I receive from this student or from anyone is a concession, a gift, I should have been comfortable about it, yes?

What I realised is that I'm really not. It's a little easier to accept money from people I don't have such a strong fondness for, and from people whose financial situation is clearly much better than my own, but I still run into all sorts of internal objections about value and worth, despite the very pragmatic point that at the moment I am not yet earning enough to pay my own rent. That's partly about thinking it's impossible to put a monetary value on human labour, but it's also about thinking I don't deserve the good things of this world, rejecting the gifts I have been given. Since we need money to live in this society, it's in some twisted way a rejection of life. I was thinking about this over the weekend, wrestling with it really. How can I judge what is worthy and what is not, who is worthy and who is not? I can only experience the world as myself -- and that experience says the world has pain and joy, bitter and sweet. And there are people far more deserving of sweetness who only get the bitterness, people who should have only joy and instead endure terrifying pain. And as much as I yearn for joy and sweetness, as much as I have some human drive to meet my basic physical needs, I don't honestly feel I deserve them.

My refusal to engage with financial issues in a constructive way is either a rejection of the world or a rejection of myself. Maybe a rejection of the idea that I have any right to be here...

So, yesterday I saw a spiritual director. I met her a few weeks ago and we had a chat and some lunch and I decided that yes, this would be a constructive thing to try. It's not that I don't think God can tell me whatever God wants me to know about what I'm meant to do, but more that I have such difficulty listening.

I wasn't sure, on my way to our meeting, what I would bring up. So many of the things that were weighing heavily on me a few months ago are complete non-issues now, or issues I'm happy to just sit with and see what happens.

I should have known that the financial stuff would come into it. Really, I should have known. And in the meeting itself I didn't feel like we were getting anywhere. We discussed various social and professional issues around accepting payment for services even from friends, but I've been through those again and again, and they're clear enough, but they are of this world, not of God's kingdom. We talked about opportunity cost, about having finite time to do all the work we might feel called to, about not having the resources to "give to everyone who asks of you" let alone everyone you might like to give to. We spoke of the difficulty for anyone in deciding who is worthy, who is not. We touched of God loving people anyway, spent some time on dependence on God which means that we cannot save ourselves through works or faith or anything else but it is God who saves, but this doesn't mean we can just throw in the towel and stop trying.

It was good to air these things, to go through them yet again, but it didn't feel like there was any sort of breakthrough. I've not been for spiritual direction before, I'm going into this without an idea of what is "meant" to happen or how things work. It wasn't unpleasant, but I was still left wrestling with this idea of how to accept that even if money only seems relevant to me at the most unimportant levels, even if money can never be an accurate indicator of worth anyway, people pay me because they recognise some worth in what I am doing.

About five minutes down the road I thought, "hey, WAIT A MINUTE!... God thinks I am worth dying for, so bugger what anyone else has to say about it. The only one who can accurately judge the worth of any human being is God. The judgement has already been made."

It is late, and I am tired, and I don't know how much of that realisation will stick, how much of it I would have come anyway if I hadn't had yet another conversation about all those surface issues. I suspect this is something I don't get to learn once, but instead will keep tripping over.

But it means I can perhaps put aside my own evaluations of worthiness and my concerns about whether it is right for me to accept payment. The judgement has already been made, and here I am in the world, and let's deal with the pragmatic stuff, like getting to the point where I can pay my own rent. I'm not going to take any money dishonestly and I'm not going to chase after it and abandon my standards of what my housemate has called right livelihood, but I can perhaps accept it a little more lightly, not get so worried about whether I really deserve to be in this world. I can get on with doing the work, even if people insist on paying me. It doesn't have to be an argument, it doesn't have to be turmoil. I have already been judged worthy. So has all creation.

Thanks be to God.

Sacrament and Inclusion and Eucharist, oh my!

I have been trying to think of a name for Nearest Church, now that I've decided they're as good a group of people as any with whom to throw in my lot.

I've been thinking a lot in recent months and weeks about the Eucharist.

My understanding of sacrament is that God's blessing is everywhere, and what humans call sacrament is just something that we do to become more aware of it. There isn't anything amazing about bread and wine...or rather, there is, but it isn't more amazing than a beetle or water or every single unthinking breath taken by every human on this planet. The entire world is sacramental.

But I recognise that though I believe God is in everything, I don't always manage to see God in all things. To this end, I practise. I pray because I want to praise God, thank God for the plenty of the world, and indeed to ask that God's blessing be upon those I care for. But I also pray because structured prayer makes my unstructured prayers come more easily. Regular engagement with God through, for example, sung psalmody makes my other work more prayerful. We get better at things if we repeat them. We get better at things if we practise.

And so it is with sacrament. Again, this is just my understanding, just my view through a scratched and cracked lens: the world is holy, but we don't see it as such. We are all entirely dependent on God, but we somehow forget that.

That's nothing new and people forgot it 2000 years ago, too. I struggle mightily with ideas around Incarnation, I am not always certain of Jesus' divinity. In fact, most of the time I'm not convinced.

Despite all my doubts, the message of the Last Supper seems pretty loud and clear to me. In context, bread and wine were the usual fare, but still of religious significance. Baruch atah HaShem, Elohenu Melech ha-Olam, b'rei p'ri hagafen: Blessed are You, O Lord, Master of the Universe, Creator of the fruit of the vine. Baruch atah HaShem, Elohenu Melech ha-olam, hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz: Blessed are You, O Lord, Master of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

That's about God creating everything that is: ha-Olam is usually translated as the Universe, but it's more literally something like "the all" or "the whole" or "the everything". That's about manna from heaven even as we wander in the wilderness.

At the Last Supper, Christ said "do this in remembrance of me". If I suspend my disbelief and accept, for the sake of argument, that Christ really is God... then why would He say that? Maybe if people had forgotten, despite the words being right there in their mouths, that God made everything and provides all that we have.

That wasn't the really shocking part. The shocking part was the bit about the blood. Drinking blood is a Big Major No-No in Judaism... Leviticus is quite explicit. My understanding is that it was associated with idolatry, and idolatry is Right Out. Drinking and eating humans was perhaps the most shocking thing you could ask a group of faithful Jews to do. "Take, eat: this is my body, broken for you."... bread brought forth from the earth. "This is my blood, shed for you."... the fruit of the vine, created by God.

Can you see where I am going with this? That Last Supper was a very powerful way of saying, "Hey, listen up! God created and God provides!" And the surrounding events, the incarnation and crucifixion and resurrection, show that God loves so much that God provides Godself. If you're a semi-pantheist like me, you might see that already, in apples falling from a tree or in dazzling sunlight or in Bach. And you might cling to that in times of despair, you might try to cultivate that hope in yourself and use it to comfort others.

Far be it from me to second-guess what God is trying to do. I don't have that authority. But I also have to make decisions every moment about what to do next, and I do have to guess what is right, I do have to try to gather information and weigh up the options and then do the next thing in the hope that I either got it right or will be forgiven. And so do you. And in so doing, you interpret... but I digress, as usual.

So I see Communion as this sacrament, this thing people do, to remind themselves that God is God and God is With Us. And I'm not sure whether this is a sacrament ordained by God... but the part of me that sings thinks so. The part of me that reasons thinks that if it is, that doesn't exclude my views of the entire world as sacramental, because God doesn't exclude.

Therein lies one of my difficulties. For, you see, the official position of the Church of England seems to be that this sacrament is only open to those who make a commitment. I know some of you reading this go against that, and welcome everyone to the table, baptised or not, confirmed or not, and I applaud you. But in the large majority of churches and in what I can find of official documentation, the stance is this:

Baptized persons who are communicant members of other Churches which subscribe to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and are in good standing in their own Church shall be admitted to Communion in accordance with Canon B 15A. (from General Notes on Communion, Common Worship)

I'm not going to go dig out Canon B 15A because the above is already legalistic enough. I've blogged about this before. The message sent is "You can have God's grace but only if you believe certain things." Technically by those rules I could go and receive Communion, as I did when I was a child. But the fact that I am included if I fudge things a bit does not make it a less exclusionary message.

I don't believe those things, or I don't think I believe them the way the larger church community would have me believe them, and so I go up for a blessing. I can appreciate that it is also important for people to have some way of identifying that they belong, some rite of passage, some way of making their commitment clear: but I don't think that should be a higher priority than hospitality, welcome, and the reflection in liturgical action of free access to grace! When did our identity as "believers" get more important than our mission to love the world on God's behalf? Lord, have mercy...

I go up for a blessing. I don't hold the belief that such a blessing is any less sacramental than taking Communion would be. There isn't some sort of hierarchy of sacrament here, not from God's point of view, and if the Church would like to imply otherwise I say the Church is wrong. I get... nervous, for lack of a better word. I don't feel dread, as such, but certainly an element of awe. My heart pounds. I often shake a little afterward. I don't identify that reaction as an indication of innate holiness or sacredness, but rather a result of my very human senses being susceptible to the focus on that part of the liturgy. The entire service is built around that moment, and that affects me even if I don't eat the bread and drink the wine. The ground is no more sacred than any other, but the fact that everyone is there to notice it makes all of us notice more easily.

I go up for a blessing. But I'd like to take Communion. I think that experience might, if nothing else, help me to understand Christian belief better than I currently do, on a level which no amount of rational thought will make clear.

I think I'd like to take Communion every week. When I was growing up, it wasn't part of our tradition to have it every week, and my experiences of church at that time were very much tangled together with experiences of upheaval. The treatment I had from my stepdad would be considered mild by many social workers but nonetheless, I was terrified of him. Because of that terror, that fear, I couldn't accept the messages of hope and forgiveness he preached on Sunday mornings. I certainly couldn't be anything other than numb to most of the liturgy. Only some of the music got through. I think if Communion is going to help me, if Communion is going to make me more able to proclaim the Gospel (summary: God Loves All) in deed and in word (more on that in another post!), it has a better chance of doing so if it's regular. I don't know -- for God, anything is possible -- but I suspect that I need the continuity, the consistency. There's a lot of damage to undo, still.

But I can't have that, locally and officially, unless I make a commitment.

I have no problem with making a commitment to love and serve God to the best of my ability. There doesn't seem to be any other sensible way to live! I was acting, at least in part, on that commitment when I left church, when I spent my years exploring Judaism, when I visited with the Unitarians, and indeed in my more recent involvement with Christianity.

I do have a problem with taking communion where it isn't offered freely to all who wish to receive. I recognise that the Church is doing what it thinks best, but I am deeply uneasy that if I were to partake, it would be seen as an endorsement of a policy which I find exclusive and misguided. I don't know if doing that is serving God, no matter how great my need might seem. I also don't know that my need is so very great, if I'm already capable of seeing sacrament elsewhere.

Gentle Vicar, the priest in charge at Nearest Church, is.... well, very kindly. We've spoken in passing a few times, and one of those conversations was indeed about welcome and generosity and grace, among other things. He'll be going on sabbatical in a few weeks and returning just before Lent. Today I made an appointment to go and talk to him before he goes away.

I hope I don't cry. I pray I don't chicken out and talk about something else instead.

I wish he weren't going, because I could really do with some guidance over the next few months, and as warm and welcoming as the community at Nearest Church is, I'm not sure any of them would read this and have any idea what I'm talking about. I'm sure they'd be supportive, but it's kindof vicar territory, really. But I hope he'll be able to tell me more about confirmation/reception/whatever in this diocese. I think that is eventually something I will want to explore further. Certainly some sort of prayerful study with other people is something I'd like to get involved in.

A long time ago, long before I started attending church or praying the Office or blogging here, Ambassador for Compassion suggested that perhaps spiritual direction might be appropriate for me. Advice from AfC is always something I take seriously, since so much of her previous advice for me has been so very, very good, even if I've been unable to recognise it at the time.

I've not mentioned it here previously, but I did get in touch with someone from my diocese about it; that wasn't the right route as most of the diocese is not really in London, so I got in touch with the good folks at SPIDIR who have recommended someone to me. I haven't met her yet. I have no idea what to expect. I have no idea what I want. But I have an appointment to meet her in the not-too-distant future... and I know that she sings. That gives me some hope.

In the meantime, I bought some strawberry plants at a table-top sale at Nearest Church today, and I'll be going along for the sacrament of the Fundraising Quiz Night this evening.