Resistance wins the day

I have heard it called the “Facebook effect.” All of my “friends” post photos of their vacations to exotic places; I stay at home and work. They speak glowingly of their children, all of them beautiful and strong and intelligent; I am childless. Each of them has hundreds of “friends,” perhaps thousands; I have what seems like but a handful, and I know that most of them are acquaintances, not friends in any true sense. [Disclaimer: I deleted my Facebook account after the November election. That action has improved my quality of life.]

What is happening is, of course, that these other people are posting about the good things and not the bad, nor the humdrum routine of work and responsibility.

This Music Box is no exception. From these pages, one could get the idea that I am diligent, always striving to play the organ and piano a little better, regular with the Daily Office and prayer, organized and efficient, always faithful to my Lord. Would that it were so!

I begin things and never complete them. I waste time, lots of it. Good habits that I seek to establish wilt when the times are challenging, leaving only the bad habits (which seem invulnerable). When confronted with milk chocolate, I am as helpless as a junkie. Or doughnuts. Or pastries. I dare not keep such things at home, or in my office.

And there are days like yesterday.

I began well; by the grace of God, on this day (and most days) my habits carried me through the morning routines at home, and right on through Matins at church. But then it is my custom to brew some tea, sit down at the computer, and eat a second breakfast.

It is the most dangerous part of my day, and most of all on Fridays, when I generally have no fixed commitments.

My Rule of Life says to check e-mail, both church and personal, and deal with it while I eat. Then I check the Internet; the Rule says to do so quickly and efficiently, without getting bogged down or extending this beyond the time it takes me to eat. There are several blogs that I follow, plus some weekly newsletters. The two that are the most important to me are these:

Faith, Folk, and Charity

I have mentioned Fr. Tim Chesterton several times in the Music Box; he is an Anglican priest and pastor of a parish in Edmonton, Alberta. He is more of an Evangelical than I am, and he is a guitar-playing folk singer. Both of these qualities are good for me, for I am a Rite One Anglo-Catholic and an organist/choirmaster who can easily become narrow in his musical tastes. His blog includes his weekly sermons, which I love; they are down-to-earth, practical, Biblical. And they frequently include music. It was Fr. Tim who introduced me to Stan Rogers, for example. And Kate Rusby, featured in his current post.

Jesse’s Café Américain

It is a marvelous blend of financial, spiritual, and political commentary, and even (sometimes) music—like Fr. Tim, Jesse posts YouTube clips, tending toward jazz. One Christmas, he even posted one of mine; “O holy Night” from our Christmas Day service, with Ting Davidson on the violin. Jesse bills his site as “an oasis of civility in an increasingly uncivil world,” and begins with a header that is most often of spiritual nature – the current one is a quote from John Henry Newman.

As it happens, the current post (April 28) includes a passage that pertains to my topic for today:

Remember that salvation has been bought for us by the greatest love that one can receive, and that we should therefore take no pride in it. Rather, we are a child not of our own works or words but of mercy, and we are therefore expected, no we are commanded, to extend that mercy to others. As you judge, so shall you be judged.

To take pride in our position and status and knowledge in the manner of the Pharisees, and especially to abuse our faith as a platform for hatred, violence, and other offenses against others, is to sin against the Spirit. And this is the one sin that will not be easily forgiven.

This then is a purpose of suffering, that we may be kept safe from such a temptation to think so falsely of ourselves, and imagine ourselves to be what we are not. For it is in this disordered pride that the first sin found its mark.

This, in the middle of a commentary on the first quarter GDP numbers and the day’s price action in the financial markets.

At the bottom of his page are more quotes, and what I think is his motto: “Need little. Want less. Love more.”

But I digress.

Yesterday, it was Jesse’s Café that led me astray (I hasten to add, through no fault of its proprietor). In a sidebar, he offers “Matières à Réflexion,” a list of blogposts, news articles, essays, videos that he considers worth a look. On this day, one of them was a link to a New Yorker article: Rod Dreher’s monastic vision

And that consumed the rest of the day.

I read the (long) article, which sparked my interest in Dreher’s book, “The Benedictine Option.” That led me to his blog, which is (I gather) famous and widely read; the New Yorker article says he gets around a million page views per month.

I disagree with many of his stances, but I agree with many others. He writes well, and prolifically; he posts daily, often at considerable length. As often happens when I discover a blog, I read and read some more, and then more. Much about the “Benedictine Option.” And politics. And the Orthodox church, and Catholicism. The New Yorker describes it well – “orthodox Christianity, religious freedom, the ‘L.G.B.T. agenda,’ the hypocrisy of privileged liberals, the nihilism of secular capitalism, the appeal of monasticism, the spiritual impoverishment of modernity, brisket—while sharing candid, emotional stories about his life.”

When I started, it was about 10:00. Before I knew it, it was nearly noon.

That was bad enough. Round One goes to Resistance.

[Resistance] takes many forms: procrastination, fear, self-medication, drugs/alcohol/junk food, cruelty to others and to self, wasting time with television/internet, criticism of others, the fear of criticism from others…

It is universal; everyone faces it, every day. Resistance especially abhors “the pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art… any diet or health regimen… any program of spiritual advancement… education of every kind… any act of political, moral, or ethical courage…” (p. 5 and 6, where Pressfield lists eleven such activities). Resistance hates these things, and will do anything to “shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

I said the Midday Office and went upstairs to my proper duties. Or I tried: I set the hymn boards and prepared my hymnals for the weekend’s services. But it was cold in the church, the fruit of a cold, rainy day. I knew that I must practice; Sunday loomed ahead, and Choral Evensong next weekend.

I was cold and tired, still not fully recovered from Holy Week and the hard week that followed. I knew that if I could just change my shoes and get on the bench, I might be all right.

But I could not bring myself to do it.

“It is dinnertime. I can practice after I eat.” I retired to my nice cozy office, brewed some more tea, set out my food. And returned to Mr. Dreher’s blog, which I found compelling.

One o’clock passed. Then two o’clock. “I must practice,” I thought. But it was so cold upstairs, and dark. The thought of going up there was more than I could handle. “Just a little more; I might as well finish this up.” Three o’clock.

Now, it was time to go home; no practicing for me today. The very thing for which I was made, and placed here to do for the glory of God and (hopefully) the benefit of His people, and I spend five hours on the Internet instead of attending to it.

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death. (Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art” p. 15, quoted here.)

Not only did I fail in this, but I equally failed to do work that was available to me – and pressing – in my nice cozy office. Five hours.

There is nothing for it but repentance and amendment of life. Conversion of life, as the Benedictines would say:

Redeem thy misspent time that’s past
And live this day as if thy last.
Improve thy talent with due care;
For the great day thyself prepare.
(Thomas Ken)

It will be all right. Pressfield says elsewhere “One bad day is nothing. Ten bad days are nothing. You are in this for the long haul.” I am well-prepared for this Sunday—that is part of what opened the door for Resistance, for Necessity was not wielding its whip to press me forward at it had during the fortnight leading up to Easter. It is next Sunday’s Evensong that may suffer.

Today has been much better. For one thing, I dressed more warmly, and that made it easier to get on the bench in what was (again) a cold, dark church when I started. What I face is nothing; the old-time churches were not heated at all, and that did not deter the likes of Bach and Buxtehude and Franck and Bruckner from their work.

I am not going to purchase Mr. Dreher’s book; I read enough of his blog to see that I would probably enjoy it, but despite its title and premise, it offers little that would be new to me. I am pleased that a book about the Rule of Benedict and Christian life together is a best-seller (number seven on the NY Times list). But I already own at least two books that I think cover some of the same ground, about how to live as a Christian in a world that is coming unglued: Marva Dawn’s “Unfettered Hope,” which will never be a best-seller but may be a better book than Dreher’s. And from a world that was genuinely and totally unglued in a way I hope to never see: “Life together” (D. Bonhoeffer). Or I can go to the source: the Rule of Benedict itself.

I will not give up the Internet, though Dreher’s counsel of periodic “fasting” from the Net and related media is well-taken. On the whole, the things I have read on the Net have educated me and made me a better person—even a better musician—and it was through discussion forums (and this Music Box and its predecessor on LiveJournal) that I learned to write.

But it is dangerous. It is my greatest weakness, and requires more vigilance than I gave it yesterday.

Martin How and the RSCM

Here is a setting of the Evening Canticles by Martin How, the only setting I know that uses the American BCP’s “Rite Two” text.

I cannot pretend to write properly about Martin How; a beginning might be made at Wikipedia and a bit more may be found in the online archives of the RSCM. But not enough. My point of contact with him was the Chorister Training Scheme. When I began RSCM work in the 1980’s, it was with Mr. How’s “little blue cards” (and red, for the Chorister level), with the slender handbook explaining how to use them. I still have the handbook, and still refer to it for the wisdom condensed into its 38 pages. In a manner that I gather was typical of him, How’s name does not appear anywhere in this volume, or on the CTS materials. Instead he explains: “What is presented here is not an entirely new approach, but the bringing together of ideas and experience which have proved successful.”

Indeed they have. Times have changed since the 1950’s and 60’s when he developed the Scheme, and the RSCM’s training materials have changed – and not always, in my opinion, for the better. But Mr. How’s “bringing together of ideas and experience” have been in some respects the foundation of my life’s work. I believe that if Mr. How were to walk into this afternoon’s Youth Choir rehearsal in our parish – and most certainly were he to slip into a rehearsal at the St. Louis RSCM Course this summer – he would immediately recognize what we are doing.

I am grateful for musicians such as Mr. How who, despite the commitments of an active musical life, find the time to teach others how to do the work, by written and spoken words and most of all by example.

Antiphonies, and living up to one's models

For tonight's evensong, I played "Antiphonies" by William Mathias. Like the Vaughan Williams Prelude and Fugue that I played recently, Mathias is another composer whom I respect; it was an honor to learn a significant organ work of his composition.

I normally do not listen to YouTube performances of music that I am practicing; I want to develop my own sense of the piece. But once I have played it, then it is very useful to listen to the versions of others, especially the great masters. It shows what I have done well, and where I must continue to work.

Here is how the work should sound. It is from a recording by John Scott, for whom Mathias wrote the piece in the 1980's, played at St. Paul's, London. The performance is full of energy, sparkling and colorful. Compared to this, my rendition comes off as a shabby street-urchin, full of wrong notes. What is a musician to do? We cannot play at the level of the great ones; we can only do the best we can.

There are reasons why I stand by my performance and do not hang my head in shame:
- I cannot imagine who else would play this piece in this town; it is somewhat obscure. Even Mr. Scott's YouTube version has fewer than twenty views, and there is only one other YouTube version that I can find, a fine recording by Timothy Byram-Wigfield at Winchester Cathedral. If I don't play it, it would not be heard in live performance, not here and not by these people.
- It fit the occasion of Evensong for the Fifth Sunday in Lent better than anything else I could contemplate, with its use of the Passion Sunday plainsong "Vexilla regis."
- My version of the Mathias shows how the piece works on a small instrument in a small room, very different from St. Paul's.
- One of the major differences between my version and Mr. Scott's is the tempo of the faster sections. I think that my tempi are appropriate for our mechanical action instrument; I would play the piece faster on an electric action, but I think that my version hangs together effectively.
- It may be that I bring a different perspective to the piece. Not better, mind you, but different, perhaps throwing a different light on the work.
- I am sure that Mr. Mathias would be happy for someone in the middle of Iowa to be playing this piece in 2017, thirty-five years after its 1982 premiere.
- Working on it has made me a better organist. Working on any good music does that.

I could say the same about the Anthem: a setting of "Ah, holy Jesus" by John Ferguson, for choir with solo viola. We sang it well, but we cannot approach the silken perfection of the St. Olaf Choir recording directed by the composer. I do, however, think that we matched them for Connection and intensity, and the same arguments apply as listed above.

In due time, I may post our versions of the Mathias and the Ferguson on YouTube. I cannot do so at present because of some computer issues.
[Edited April 29: Here is the Mathias.]