So, about this Jesus bloke...

Over at Telling Secrets there's a great post with some good questions. Do go read the whole thing.

I'm having a little attempt to answer some of the questions for myself, here. Because really, a lot of this is what I'm trying to figure out.

So, here’s my question: Do you know Jesus? Yes, I know you do, but how would you describe Jesus? In your own words? Who is Jesus for you and why does he make a difference in your life of faith?

I don't know that I do know Jesus, really.

I know what some people say of Jesus.

My familiarity with the Gospel is somewhat rudimentary; I'm working on mending that, through daily reading and prayer. But I'm not a literalist, and I'm sufficiently cynical that I will always wonder how much of what is in the Bible is entirely context-dependent, I will always wonder how much of what people wrote is true in any sense. Sometimes, that doesn't seem to matter much: the Summary of Law speaks to me on a level that doesn't take into account literal truth in any sort of rational way, it just feels right. But even then, there's this bit of me that says, "Okay, nice idea, admirable idea, I'll buy that, I'll try to live that way, but how do I know that it's this Jesus guy who said it? Hillel came pretty close for all that. It's an idea that was floating around at the time, it needed a story." It's all a bit too convenient, and I can't accept on any rational level the authority of a text that isn't even consistent within itself on that level.

If I were to say that the Bible is a finished work rather than a snapshot of an ever-growing library, then I might have to conclude that Jesus was a person who was hugely inspiring to a number of people. I know how I feel when I have am falling in love with someone, how my entire world revolves around them and I think they are the Best! Thing! Evar! (better than kittens!) and I want to tell everyone I meet how shiny they are. I can see an extrapolation of that leading to the conclusion that a person is somehow more divine than the rest of us, somehow sent by God for the benefit of the rest of us. The psychological wrenching shock of the crucifixion would make that an easy leap to make, I think.

But... somehow, that doesn't really feel like the right answer. I can't put my finger on all of why. Partly it's that I don't accept the Bible as a standalone, finished work. I think there's a very strong possibility that it is still in progress.

I said that I know some of what others say of Jesus. Contemporary accounts are part of that, too. And most of that isn't so much in the form of words as in the form of actions.

There is Deacon Friend, who reaches out to those in need no matter how great her own suffering, who has turned her life upside down and inside out in some very unfavorable circumstances to pursue a vocation to priesthood. There is Catholic Friend, who has provided so much practical and moral support through some very difficult times of my life and who takes so much care to speak truth and reduce harm. There is C of E Friend, who balances his public and private life in a way that makes me think even someone as strange as I am (for I am, in some ways, less strange than he) can perhaps find a community and fit in without dishonesty or confrontation. There are many other examples, people who seem to be doing what I perceive as God's work in this world, moving heaven and earth to help others. Many of them seem superhuman in their stamina and I can see, in some of them, that their ability to do this work is tied up in their relationship with God. For many that relationship with God is very much in a Christian context, inseparable from their relationship with Jesus. And that's one of the things that does make Christianity itch for me, does keep me curious about Jesus: if so many of the people who make this world worth living in are Christian, if so many of the people who I would actually trust with my life are Christian, then maybe there is something to it. Maybe I was wrong to walk away.

There are plenty of examples of people I think do God's work, or at least have been Godsends in my life, who are not Christian. Some belong to other faiths, some to none. Some of them are not even theist. And yet all seem to have the same modus operandi: that nobody, alive or dead, is worthless, that we are responsible for compassionate action in the world, that the world is interconnected in ways too deep and complex for us to understand, that unconditional positive regard (that's, er, love) can change the world. The theists among them would expand that to say that we are all loved, unconditionally, that we are all God's children.

And I think that maybe that's what Jesus was getting at, too. And whether the Gospel is an accurate historical account, a mythology, or something somewhere in between, it says Jesus was so committed to this message that He was willing to die for it. That this message is so important, so sacred, that even death couldn't kill it, because love is stronger.

I don't think that Christianity is the only religion that has these linked messages of God's love for us and our invitation to act for God in the world, to become an active part of God's work. But human beings love stories, and as stories go, the Passion is a pretty good illustration of those messages--whether it's true in a strict historical, rational sense or not. As a metaphorical thought-shorthand it works very well. And I don't know about you, but I do need metaphorical thought-shorthand. I need images and symbols and rituals in my life because without them I get disoriented and lost.

If some visitors who weren’t Christian came in today because they wanted to meet Jesus, who would they find? How would you describe Jesus to them?

I guess I would try to explain what I already explained above. I would say that the story of Jesus' life and death and resurrection is one that assures us we are loved and invites us to participate in the world in a loving manner. I would explain that the more loved I feel the more I also feel called to love the world as much as I can, that service from this position of an overflow of love becomes a joy rather than a chore, that when I am exhausted or discouraged or frightened or lonely or hurting it is love that keeps me going and that I seek to augment my awareness of God's love so that I can augment my love of the world so that I can augment my awareness of God's love, that it's a cyclical process, that love is stronger than fear, love is stronger than death. And that doesn't seem, at first glance, to have much to do with Jesus at all. Maybe I can understand the meaning of the story without accepting that it happened as literal descriptions would claim.

Here’s the important question of faith: How would you tell others about who his is and where to find him? And, would they know that any of that is true by how you live your life? One of my favorite images of the church is that of one hungry beggar telling another hungry beggar how and from whom to get bread.

If I had to point to a text to sum things up I don't know where I'd start. If I were talking about my own personal experiences, then I guess I'd start with how other people have affected my own spiritual path. I'd say to find Jesus look for love in the world, try to see the love in any situation, add to it if you can, and especially add love if you can't see any.

I hope that the way I live my life might say a little of this. I know I routinely fall short.

I am a genuinely caring and affectionate person; I try to communicate this, I try to let people know by my words and actions that I do love them. I know I often fail, or overshoot and come across as horribly forward and inappropriate (especially in British culture).

I am a teacher. One of the things I strive for in my teaching is to be honest with my students and respectful of them, to invite them to learn rather than intimidate them into it. Children really do get an awful lot of flak and I don't want to add to that. I try to make it clear that I am there to teach them music and the reason for that is that it is fun and worthwhile. I try to make it clear that some of what I teach them about music is applicable to learning other things, or to life in general. I try to teach them that learning to love what they are doing is more important than learning not to make mistakes, that learning to love a piece of music so much they want to play it for others is more important than passing exams. I try to teach them that practising is a tool, not a punishment, that it is okay for them to have bad days as long as they are genuinely trying their best, that I do believe they are giving it their best shot. Because I do, you know, maybe I'm just naive, but I believe every last one of them does the best that they can with the resources and information they have. My job is merely to try to frame the information in a useful way. I don't know that I succeed at any of this, but objectively I can say that I do not shout at my students as much as some teachers I have had, and that they do mostly seem to want to continue learning, and that today I had students smiling, rushing to their instruments as soon as I arrived so they could show me what they'd done this week. So maybe I do get it right some of the time, this teaching stuff, enough of the time to know it's worth it for me to keep trying. And maybe none of my students will see Jesus in that, but I hope they get the message that they are loved, they are worthwhile, that it is worth doing the best they can.

Here’s the thing: If you want to meet Jesus, you don’t need a formal introduction. All you have to do is walk with him, and let him walk with you. Put your body and your mind and your soul with him and open yourself to his presence.

And, believe. Amen.

I'm working on it. It sounds so simple, and yet I trip over my rational doubts so often. I don't seem to be able to relate to Jesus much except on a very metaphorical and symbolic level.

A sadness

There has been another tragedy in this community that I don't really know but which has welcomed me so warmly.

Last night Sweetie was late for my concert. I was worried sick. We haven't had half a lifetime together to grow close but the thought of losing him is still terrifying. I can't imagine what Lisa is going through right now. As with my bereaved friend earlier in the week, I have nothing to offer but my thoughts and prayers.

plodding along

It's getting toward the end of a busy week.

The sadministrative (that was a typo but I'll leave it!) problem that reared its ugly head a week and a half ago has not gone away but it is firmly in hand and not bothering me so much now. One of the staff, at least, at Academic Institution sees my point of view, agrees that students ought not be penalised for administrative failure on the part of Academic Institution, and will write letters in my support.

Performance last night went well. It was exhausting and conditions were not ideal but we played well. The German Requiem, in particular, was meaningful for me as a friend's brother died earlier this week. The commute home after the concert was unpleasant, I did not get in until well after midnight. As I was up at 6am again today this was less than ideal. Today is another ibuprofen day. We get to repeat the performance tonight in a less forgiving acoustic. Despite the tiredness, I'm looking forward to it. It helps that the commute afterward will be shorter and include the company of Sweetie, who I've not seen for a week.

Tomorrow I will rest. I had hoped to travel northward to meet Grandmere Mimi but I think I am too tired for the journey at this stage. I need to practise a little but can take it easy. I might make nettle soup again, if there is fine weather for foraging. Sunday I teach all day. Monday I rehearse, then teach.

Tuesday I have a solo performance. It's a competitive situation; my task is to find the courage to play with love, warmth, honesty and joy despite this. In some ways it helps that I don't have a hope of getting through to the next round of competition!

After that things finally quiet down a little. I'm planning to work half days for the last three days of next week. Depending how tired I am and whether the lurgy I've got now makes itself scarce, I may extend that until Easter. I want to catch up on rest and get some physical vigour and stamina back. After Easter I have the last three big written assignments to do, and my final recital to prepare for, and then this course of study will be finished. And there will be much rejoicing.

Fear, love, courage and performance

Today has been rather long. Nearly six hours of it was spent in an orchestra rehearsal.

As a musician I feel like I've been put through a wringer. The conductor is very good. He has a lot of good things to say, he is trying to encourage us, trying to get us to take risks and play from the heart as (I feel) true musicians ought to.

The difficulty is that he also expects, nay, demands, a very high standard of performance. In the long term, this is entirely compatible with his desire for a heartfelt, musical performance from all of us. The way to get to a point of taking risks and giving a committed and heartfelt performance is to take the risks in a safe environment, to discover that yes, we can do this well and no, the odd technical problem really doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

The problem is that it isn't a safe environment when we're being encouraged to take risks and then chastened when the results of those risks are perhaps less technically brilliant than they might be. We're all nervous already--because we care about the music, we care about getting things right. There are two responses to that. One is to love the music all the more, pour heart and soul into performance and accept that, oh, we might miss some notes. The other is to switch off. The conductor doesn't want us to switch off, but he also doesn't accept the missed notes.

All day it was like this. We played, perhaps a bit too nervously, certainly too woodenly. He begged us to play properly, play the music not just the notes, get off the page and into the soul of things. We responded, and then someone messed something up--usually something small, something we could fix given another time or so to go over it. And then he stopped, to tell us we shouldn't really be making those mistakes, we should have better technical skills, focus, control than that. And the defensive walls in our hearts went right back up and we repeated the whole thing again.

There are a lot of reasons we're not playing at our technical best. Some of it is to do with the way the orchestral projects are run at Academic Institution; in order to give a fair chance at orchestral playing to rather unbalanced instrumentation, there isn't a set Symphony Orchestra with set players in it; rather, players are chosen on a project-by-project basis. This means we aren't used to playing together as a group and haven't had time to really start to listen to one another the way a good ensemble should, or to iron out the worst of the (inevitable) problems with intonation and with starting and ending notes together. The conductor can do only so much for ensemble issues.

For my part, I've had a very very busy six weeks. A lot of my own playing is not at the technical standard I would like because I have had to skimp on practice time in order to get everything done; my 90-minute technical maintenance routine has had to be shoehorned into 45 minutes far more often than I would like. The result is a lack of consistency in my playing, and of course that inconsistency is in itself disconcerting enough to cause problems. But there's very little since January that I've been in a position to turn down, and I know several of my colleagues are in a similar position of wanting to do better at the music but straining at the limits of their physical and mental capacity to do more work.

For the most part, though, I think the biggest problem is that we've all spent a few years now trying to improve our playing. Musicians have to be self-critical: if we can't hear our own mistakes we won't be able to improve without help. Every slight indiscretion is noted, to be examined later in the practise room or in a lesson, and when we're playing together with others and for a conductor we don't know that all gets magnified.

I hope that we can find the generosity and love for the music that we will need to create an honest and courageous performance. Playing it safe, being driven by fear, is not my preferred mode of performance.

This isn't unlike some of the issues I've looked at before here. I think there's an element of this love-vs-fear problem for any performing artist.

I think there are broader applications, too: are we judged by our intent, our efforts to do right, or by the results of those efforts? Is it better to take a risk on something that might improve the world, or to play it safe and do no harm?

I'm still pretty tired so it's off to say my prayers and go to bed. Maybe I'll have time and energy to discuss this stuff further at some point.

Reaching out

I'm trying to write a condolence letter to a bereaved friend. I wish I could find the right words to let her know she is in my thoughts and prayers.

I wish the words, thoughts, prayers could ever be enough, but they aren't and won't be.

I hope I can offer some comfort.

I was rehearsing a requiem when I got the news. I've not met the deceased, but the rest of that rehearsal, at least from my perspective, was a prayer for him.

I aten't ded.

So many thoughts swirling around in my head, and I don't seem to have the mental wherewithal to put any of them into a coherent post. Here, have an incoherent one, instead.

Of course I ended up thinking about motherhood and my own Mum and our relationship. I've re-written the rest of this paragraph several times now, trying to find a way to explain things accurately without speaking ill of anyone. Perhaps some things are better left unexplained, at least in such a public forum.

Reading some of the Mothering Sunday messages that have been about has made me cry. I think Good in Parts and Reflectionary are the main culprits.

Some of the tearfulness is probably just tiredness. Big Project had a final performance on Friday night, after weeks of preparation and rehearsal. Soon I will have to do all the evaluative paperwork but for now I am leaving it well alone; this week I have completely different performance goals, and some nasty administrative paperwork to try to sort out.

I'm glad of the online spiritual sustenance; the sermon I heard at Evensong today did not do much for me. Maybe I just don't have the background or I'm too tired, but it seemed to be linking too many unrelated ideas in ways I didn't understand. But the music was good.

Yesterday - spring! It has sprung, at least in London. I was extremely tired but managed to wander around the park and made nettle soup. That will teach those nasty nettles to sting me.

There are actually quite a few good plants to eat at this time of year if you know what you're looking for. Most of them aren't as bothersome as nettles. I rather like being aware of the ways the world feeds me.

Halfway through the week already!

Exam today was okay. Not amazing, but it could have been worse.

I've regained some perspective about some of the administrative stress from earlier in the week. I'm not necessarily happy about it but I've accepted that the Big Project I've been working on is not going to go as I'd hoped it would. This doesn't make it a failure, just something to learn from. Even if what I learned is "no, projects on that scale are not a good idea while in the final year of a degree."

Choralgirl writes of the Charter for Compassion, a project of Karen Armstrong financed by the TED Prize. I'm curious about how this will turn out. Compassion does seem to be increasingly important to my own understanding of faith and life.

That in turn relates back to Loving Your Enemy.

I find it very difficult to love or find compassion for people who are in a position where they can hurt me, in situations where an imbalance of power leaves me feeling vulnerable and afraid.

That doesn't mean I need to wrest power from others and try to take control of situations. Oh, sometimes that is probably the right thing to do. But many times dealing with these situations in a loving manner means figuring out why I am afraid, thinking about what a loving response would actually be and how to do that, and then taking the risk.

That's not an easy task, but it gets a whole lot easier when I feel loved, myself. I can talk about therapy and medication and how much those helped me to recover (to an extent) from depression. I can talk about the physio exercises I do most days for my joint problems, to keep me mobile and relatively free from pain. But I know that none of that would even have been possible without the care, concern, compassion and love that others showed me.

That love transformed my life. It taught me that I want to love others.

Maybe it can also teach me how to do so.