Practice makes Perfect!

 

Whatever your experience of the Covid pandemic has been, it is certainly true that some industries have been hit harder than others.  The hospitality industry is one of course, and also the creative industry of which I am a part. Prior to March 2020 my working week typically included running 4 choirs and performing at care homes, hospices or Intensive Care Units on behalf of the charity I work for.  Of course all that stopped completely and we are just now tentatively finding ways of getting back into those activities.  This period of time has enabled several discoveries; amongst them I have found that without the prospect of a looming concert or performance, I lack the incentive to practice! 

 

Practice is part and parcel of the life of any musician, but it is also a part of all our lives.  I’m sure you’re familiar with the adage ‘practice makes perfect’.  I’m not sure that’s quite correct.  Perhaps better to say ‘practice makes permanent’.  The things we choose to repeat will become ingrained as habits, whether that is playing scales & arpeggios, learning to drive or to swim or play golf.  Or whether it is practising attitudes, behaviours; translating what we believe into what we do. 

 

The longer we are given to spend on the journey of life, the more opportunity there is to encounter both blessings and woes.  The blessings we can thoroughly enjoy, but how do we become skilled at negotiating the woes?  How do we learn not just to shelter from the storm, but to dance in the rain?  Perhaps practice is the answer.  The teaching of Jesus in his sermons on the mount and on the plain offers us a real counter-cultural look at life.  He tells us ‘blessed are you who weep now’.  I confess that I never feel very blessed when I’m weeping, but it is true that grief, loss and disappointment has softened me as it has done others, making them more compassionate and understanding of people, and more mature and resilient in themselves. 

 

Faith really shows its worth when it is tested, and I have found it helpful to spend time thinking about the attitudes and skills I would like to possess that will see me through the tricky times.  I like to keep in mind the list of  ‘fruits of the spirit’ which you can find in the book of Galatians chapter 5:  ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control’.  On my own, and especially under duress, my natural inclination wanders a long way from these ideals,  but happily….

‘Our effort is not a self-conscious striving to fill ourselves with the important Christian virtues; it is more getting out of the way and allowing [Christ’s] Spirit to transform all our activities. Christ will do the rest. His Spirit has joined ours and will never abandon us.’  (Richard Hauser). 

So that is my role….it sounds simple, but getting myself out of the way and allowing Christ to do the rest is not my inclination and in order to become a permanent fixture, it needs daily practice!

Queue Rules

 

You blessed me today;

I doubt you even realised,

Standing in the queue

 

So fresh-faced and young,

‘Hello’ you said, ‘how are you?’

No queue rules for you!

 

My grey-haired self knows

To stand quietly and behave.

‘Yes, fine thanks, and you?’

 

The standard reply.

Of course it isn’t true, but

It’s enough to start.

 

And for three minutes

We connect and so my day

Changes shape.  Thank you.

Creative Challenge

 I recently accepted a challenge from a creative friend to 'Sculpt or form stones smoothed by water'.  For a day or so, I contemplated the challenge and could not see how I was going to sculpt stones and although the image was appealing, the idea of trying to re-create stones in this way just didn't grab me.  Then I thought about it more loosely, and realised that I could form stones with words.........

I am stone, sitting

proudly on the riverbed

never to be moved

 

Water gurgles round

me; laughing and playing, but

I have work to do

 

My sharp edges and

solid face distance the world

I shall not be moved

 

Still the water plays on,

in constant flux, now fast,

now slow, always moving

 

Time passes, I feel

less certain, less defined, still

on the riverbed

 

Water gurgles round

me, laughing, smoothing, for we

are both in motion

 

 

Oh the games people play now!

 

One of the things that I have enjoyed over the past year of lockdowns, is the game of Scrabble.  During the first lockdown in March 2020, I played regular games over Skype as a way of spending time with a friend without the constant need to talk.  It worked very well.  It has become our habit to play collaborative Scrabble in which we aim to work within the rules but to utilise every tile, and to preference the flow of the game above individual scores.  This is so much more satisfying that a competitive game with a winner and a loser.

 

The restrictions we have endured over the last year have meant that many of us feel like losers.  We have all lost something, and some have lost a great deal.  There is impatience and anger simmering which spill over into behaviour and separate us from each other.  When a careless driver knocks our wing mirror, or we are treated badly at the checkout, when our words are misinterpreted, or we are overlooked and unheard, we feel wronged and resentful.  We feel the other person has won and we are the loser unless we take action ourselves.  How can we heal this divisiveness? How can we bring light for ourselves and others?

 

Jesus’ injunction to ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ is probably his best known and most quoted.  But possibly also the least understood.  The word ‘yourself’ is key here and it implies that if you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to love others.  We are all an extension of each other, so if you cannot love yourself, how could you love someone else and why should you expect someone else to love you?

 

Faced with human misery, Jesus always had compassion.  As we enter the season of Lent, compassion is a good quality to contemplate.  It literally means ‘to suffer together’.  When we see suffering, we are moved to our guts and want to help.  However, very often suffering manifests itself in outwardly repellent behaviour:  anger, impatience, unkindness, jealousy.  When we recognise this behaviour as suffering, perhaps we can be moved to kindness instead of retaliation.  It helps if we can recognise compassion that is directed towards us.  Have you ever experienced deep compassion from someone?  Might this be God’s compassion working through them?  Of course, if we don’t recognise our own needs then we will be unable to receive compassion!

 

One thing the virus has shown us is that we are all totally interdependent.  In the game of life, there should not be winners and losers.  It is possible for us all to be winners if we recognise that whatever labels society gives us, we are all just each others’ neighbours. 

Haiku from Diagnosis to Death

As over three years has now passed since the death of my husband from cancer; I feel ready to share some Haiku poetry that I wrote during the time from his initial diagnosis to his death.  Maybe my experiences will chime with yours, and maybe not.  They are offered in the hopes of allowing a window into a particular grief experience with a recognition that everyone journeys differently.

I hear kindly, grave

Eyes; too many nursing staff.

You just hear their words.

 

I want to go home.

If home is where the heart is

I’m a refugee.

 

It’s at times like these

That I must fully feel the

Weight in the waiting.

 

The long goodbye I

Longed for now seems almost too

Long and not so good.

 

Difficult question

Seems easy to answer for

You; Why am I stung?

 

Still rain falls, and the

Ground under my feet has shifted

Since yesterday.

 

Each day brings its own

Uncertainty held in an

Ultimate certainty.

 

Waiting to become

A widow; unlike our wedding

The date is not fixed.

 

You say you found it

Beautifully sad; but this is life

And death, not Broadway.

 

Sitting in the car

Watching the rain fall, am I

Brave enough today?

 

In endless hugs and

Smiles I strive to repair my

Fractured, fragile world.

 

I sleep and my mind

Works nimbly, sorting data.

Buried files emerge.

 

You’re not here.  ‘Maybe

Somewhere very deep’ they say.

I say ‘You’ve already left’.

 

And so I can’t stay.

Why would I gaze on the

Caterpillar now?

 

Yet where have you gone?

The chessboard still shows the

Stalemate that refused defeat. 

Radiators and Drains

 

As I fumble my way through this period of disintegration I am trying to learn to listen......to myself, to others, to the whole reverberation of creation.  I returned from a week in Cornwall and found a sub-conscious part of me wanting to get ready for the beginning of a new term.  The change in the air from the soft breezes and the suffocating humidity of summer into the bright chill of early autumn aroused a long-practised impetus to organise choir music, compile registers, book venues, create publicity and so on.  There will be no such activity for me this term.  Although some choirs are starting to meet, the restrictions on numbers, spacing, time limitations, ventilation requirements, lack of socialising mean that for me the compromise is too great and would transform the experience into something so substantially lacking.  

So I have listened to that feeling in myself.  And listening a bit deeper, I find that there is a reticence about firing up all the cylinders of my 'choir director engine' again.  What is that about?  It doesn't seem to be about the music......I heard some new choir pieces on Youtube this week and found myself wondering how to get hold of the arrangements; and I don't think it's about being with people.......on the whole I am missing the social interaction.  And unusually for a musician, I also quite enjoy the admin! 

So why am I reticent?  Apart from the stated reluctance to attempt to operate under the new circumstances, there is undoubtedly an energy issue.  I value community choirs not just because they are formed from a geographical community, but fundamentally because they create a community of themselves.  For me, the music is a vehicle for people to find a means of self-expression and to come together in the creation of something greater than the sum of its parts.  I want to be committed to the individuals who come to my choirs and to know something of them and their lives, so that I can help them to get the most out of their singing experience.  However, I confess that it takes a lot of energy - physical energy during the session itself, plus mental and emotional energy.  And just now, I'm not sure that I've still got sufficient reserves.

And if I listen to myself at an even deeper level, I am hearing a voice that questions my motives, my authenticity.  What do I get out of being a choir director?  Undoubtedly I get a huge ego boost!  A successful concert makes me feel great and I have a sense of pride; but also, because I want to create happy singing communities, I get a boost from being loved and admired.  Of course, that's a lovely thing, but it can then be tempting to think of yourself more highly, and if you become dependent on admiration it is hard to accept criticism whether kindly or unkindly intended. I'm sorry to say that this has definitely been the case from time to time.  Whilst the divine spark in me ( sometimes called the true self) is motivated by a love for the community, my ego ( or false self)  is motivated by the personal rewards which turn out to be ultimately unrewarding.  For more on the true self/false self, see the writings of Thomas Merton, or Richard Rohr

And to be honest, the other thing I have got from being a choir leader is that it has kept me busy.  In the aftermath of my husband's death, the possibility of lonely evenings was hugely reduced by leading choir sessions four times a week.  I found them life-giving and energising.  It always feels good to be busy; it's a great way of appearing successful and everyone likes to be seen as successful.  It's a tricky balance to weigh up how much activity is genuinely life-giving and how much it simply fills the time and distracts from the necessary work of inner life and growth.  

I guess there is a time and season for everything. I believe that the Spirit is always hovering, always creating flow and offering us choices.  Sometimes it is not easy to see that we have choices, but in fact I believe we always do.  Our choices may be very limited and we may not like any of our options very much, but I think there is always choice and to recognise this is itself empowering as it prevents us from seeing ourselves as victims. For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a range of choices, this enforced quietude may offer an opportunity to consider which things for us are 'radiators' and which things may have become 'drains'.  Which things satisfy the yearnings of the true self and which things only feed the false?  Hmm, tricky!  Pass the chocolate digestives!

 

'All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey'

Just back from a walk through the woods on a grey, warm August morning.  The blackberries are fully in fruit but everything else looks tired and bedraggled after a week of high heat and humidity.  I am struck by the wild flowers whose seed heads are held firmly aloft and whose architecture remains strong and firm although the plant is entirely dried and brown.

 

This disintegration makes me feel melancholic, for the fresh vigour of the spring and summer greenery is gone and the season of decay begins.  And today nature seems to reflect the state of the world as governments weaken with buffoon leaders; the old securities are no longer present. 

 

As a parent, I had assumed the best course for my children would be the course that I had taken……a university degree followed by entry into a stable profession; the acquisition of a mortgage and so on.  But neither of my sons are following this path; the one due to a life-limiting disease; the other and his girlfriend from a rejection of the capitalist life-style and a desire to live a simpler life.  I admire them enormously.  The world I grew up in has disintegrated and continues to disintegrate, and to begin with I felt anxious about that.

 

But surely this is a completely natural process?  I know that as I continue to walk through the woods, I will become aware of the plants dying and seeds being shed into the depth of the earth, unseen.  What are the seeds from this world that are being shed and are even now nestled in the dark waiting to emerge in the fulness of time?  What new ways of being, of working, of living may come about if we can let go of the old ways and be ready to embrace the new?

 

My working life is in disintegration too………in this time of Covid, my work as a singing and choir leader cannot happen.  And I don’t know when it might be safe for that work to resume. There are questions about my identity........I have seen myself as a choir leader and a mum, but with no choirs to lead and children making their own ways in the world, who am I now?  And a voice inside me asks whether I want to go back to that full-on life anyway?  What are the seeds from that life that have been shed and now wait, quietly growing?  What shapes will emerge?  It's something I cannot know yet and waiting times are always frustrating.  I guess that I am to trust in the Creator and his creative process.  Everything is in flux and I am part of that flow.  This is a time of waiting, of observing the disintegration, and of being hopeful.  I look at the seed heads and I am reminded that God says ‘Behold, I am doing a new thing’.  Isaiah 43:19