Shantih

Is it peace that passes all understanding, or the full-throated melancholy of the sea? Is it water, or air; is it fire? If it is the breath of the void, it must take form in one of these ways; if it is the breath of the void, it can be fear in a grain of dust.

And so it is the greatest commodity of all — peace, peace in our time, in our space, in the interstices and the nodes, the centres of power and the paths of the underworld. For the small people and the large, the downtrodden and the high-handed, peace can never be too valuable.

And here I hold in my hands a chunk of it, worth more than diamonds or rubies.

Humility

It is good to stand in sober judgement over one's own self. We are told not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but to think soberly, according to the measure of faith God has given each of us.

That is not to say that we are not to think highly of ourselves at all, but that we are to think more highly of others. In some ways, that is similar to the idea of loving ourselves; we are not told to not love ourselves, but to love ourselves not more than we love others, and to love that which is of greater spiritual value.

This is a simple idea. You cannot love your neighbour as yourself if you do not love yourself at all. And if you hate yourself, that is a bad thing for all the world, since you must then hate your neighbour too. In this age of globalisation, the thought that everyone is your neighbour is becoming more relevant.

So today then, it being Christmas Day, we have a convenient moment to sit and look at ourselves soberly. How much is the value of a life? How much more are other lives worth? Are we willing to serve others so that we might become less and they might become more?

Here is some advice from the Good Book.

Know those who work above us and among us and with us. Be at peace. Warn those that are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient to all. Do not return evil for evil, but follow that which is good. Rejoice evermore and always. Prayer unceasingly. Give thanks in all things: for this is the will of God.

And have a happy new year too!

On The Roof

I am sitting on the roof. Whether I am literally doing so or metaphorically doing so, it is all of the same effect. For as the Good Book says, it is good to dwell in the corner of the housetop, as is said in the Proverbs, and to stay there; and to preach what you have heard from it, as is written in the First Commission.

And perhaps that is one of the things that one thinks of when one listens to that lovely musical, 'Fiddler on the Roof'. Then I do, indeed, regret that I never learnt to play a stringed instrument.

But it is peaceful up on the roof, and it is a good night, a calm night, a silent night, a holy night.

Serenity II: Watching The White Wheat

Today I sit here and sip my coffee, noticing in passing that about 200 mg of caffeine later, I still feel rather calm and settled. They say that caffeination dulls your response to adrenaline, and in consequence helps you to live a longer and stress-free life. It's only people who over-produce adrenaline and already have hypertension who shouldn't touch caffeine — they just get diseased by it.

I look out on the prospects of the year ahead, and I feel contented and altogether too happy, as one of my friends recently remarked (or 'emarked', a new coining I have made to describe online remarks). I have the peace of the man who watched the white wheat grow. That tale is found in the Welsh song Bugeilio Gwenith Gwyn, which means 'Watching the White Wheat'; it is all about watching something that you sowed grow, while someone else reaps the harvest. If you can accept that (and it is a most Christian ideal to do so), then serenity can be yours.

There are so many kinds of serenity, and so little time we make for ourselves to enjoy them.

Psalm 133: Peace In Our Time?

Peace is a useful illusion; it is just like the present, that evanescent moment between past and future. Peace is that balance point between conflict and confusion, between chaos that can be contended against and chaos that has not yet been grappled with. But the 133rd Psalm in all its brevity has an important point: unity is also a weapon against chaos, and it will do in place of peace.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;
As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

It is salutary to note that Jesus said, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword." He knew that religion, which by its nature is a lifestyle choice, has the potential to divide; as with any human potential, that potential is sure to be achieved somewhere by someone. But the lesson of this psalm is simple; a blessed life is the reward for living together in harmony. A sword may be present, but it need not always be used to divide.

Lessons And Songs

In front of me is parchment, thick material with old writing on it. Some of it goes back a long way, for we are looking down the wrong end of the telescope, into the cold days of 1980, in a land of mist and rain. In the English class, the poets come and go, speaking of more of Breughel than of Michelangelo.

Our teacher makes us read Dylan Thomas. It is my first introduction to the Voice of Wales. It will not be my last. The poem we are reading is The Hand That Signed The Paper, and it goes like this:

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

It carries a lesson I will bear for the rest of my life. From that day on, I know that the pen is mightier than the sword. My worst enemies will come at me not with might of arms, but along rivers of ink; with penmanship, not pikemanship. And to resist I will need to learn about words as well.

Yet, a sheet of paper has two sides. The defence of vulnerability is the greatest shield of all, for the fully vulnerable is like a cloud; you may pierce it in many places, but you will not hurt it at all. The barrage of words hurled against the invading force is a counter-attack, not a defence. You cannot make a bow a defensive weapon, no matter how hard you try, no matter what philosophy shapes your action and response.

If you will build a city on a hill, and hedge it around with the engines of defence, those who seek entry may hurt themselves. A city on a hill cannot be hid. Should you then eschew defence? No, but you may post a sign here and there: this is a friendly city, but do not seek to invade or invest, for we are a power under orders from Authority. And yet, there will still be accidents. You may make reparation, but there will always be bitterness. This I have learnt as well.

I too have been hurt before. But there is one precious thing I have learnt, a third lesson. The attempt to bear no ill-will is nothing unless you bear good-will. It is hard to attempt it; it is also hard to believe in it. But after 1981, when she told me what was right but hurt me anyway, I learnt that it is always for the best. You must not hate and you must ensure you do not seem to hate; you cannot completely love, when it is not returned; you just get on with it, for you are you.

And yet, who are you? How do you know? It is the reason we are told to consider ourselves with sober judgement – for Romans 12:3 is as important as the previous two verses, if not more so. It introduces the rest of the chapter, verses 4-21, the evaluative canon with which each of us can judge ourselves and not impose the wrong kind of judgement on others.

For in the end, while there is an objective truth, we are commanded to discretion and sober judgement from a subjective viewpoint. How else can it be, when we do not know except through a glass darkly? Wisdom requires that we discern, describe, distill – and on occasion, dispel, destroy, despair. We seek to approach the objectively true, but there is only one singularity, one point from which all things are objective, and that is God's perspective from infinity and eternity.

From this, I have learnt a fourth lesson: I will always bear faith with my friends, but it may not be the faith my friends desire. I will not abandon them even if they think I have. And I may not act even when they feel I should, because it is a matter of my own judgement, flawed or not. Inevitably, I will lose most of my friends. We all will. Yet, this is the way God treats us too; He will abandon us if we deny him, but He does not abandon us for lack of belief. In times like this, I read II Timothy 2 again and again; it comforts and warns me, as all scripture does.

So here we are. We see subjectively, but judge as best we can. And where our judgement fails, we will suffer for it. But only for a while; for in the end, all things are made new, all things are made clean. At the end, we will rise, we shall be changed, we shall be made incorruptible. There are no tears beyond the end of things.

=====

I was at a wedding this weekend. Rather oddly, I felt, the wedding ended with an arrangement of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Pie Jesu, which is a conflation of the traditional Requiem's Pie Jesu and its Agnus Dei. One doesn't normally think of a requiem as wedding music. And yet, thinking of the god-daughter and listening...

Pie Jesu,
Qui tollis peccata mundi,
Dona eis requiem;
Agnus Dei,
Dona eis requiem
Sempiternam.

I felt my weariness lifted as I heard the venerable words and translated them: "Merciful Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them rest; Lamb of God, grant them rest eternal." She who sang had a voice sufficiently beautiful for the task, sweet and deep enough to bring out the sweetness of the truth in those words. What I like about the Lloyd Webber arrangement is the deliberate way in which the seven syllables of the third and fifth lines pace out the idea of a deliberate grace. And I remembered 'sempiternam' in particular from ancient Latin lessons; it is a hybrid of 'semper', which is 'always', and 'aeternam', which is 'forever'. Always and forever, O Lord, grant us rest.

It is my wish for a troubled world, and the people of that world. It has always been my wish, above all human strivings, ambitions and desires. Kyrie eleison!

Passing All Understanding

I'm sitting in a dark dusty-blue chair, inclined somewhat, at peace with myself. I am amused by this excellent compilation of humorous office-happenings. It is almost a professional pastime, this being amused by humorous office-happenings bit.

I am thinking of this batch of students. I cannot believe how dear some of them are to me, unexpectedly. I hardly know some of those that I now realise I will miss. That kind of odd sensation is a bit like having a Fogelberg moment: you know that it's silly, it's overly sentimental, but you succumb anyway, to your chagrin. And really, so many of them have been bitten by unforgettable failure and yet will survive chastened but mature. Some of them not so much. But to my lasting regret, I don't know as many of them the way they deserve to be appreciated.

Some will never live up to potent and illustrious forebears. That's OK. I don't either. It's not an answer that will satisfy some of them, and I guess that's too bad. But it didn't satisfy me at that age either, and it was bitter for some time that I didn't. But I now know who I am, some years later, and it doesn't matter now.

Some will be overcome by the heat of the beat, the pace of the race, the shade of the grade, the dark of the mark. It passes, even if you fail. And if it fails to grip you and steal your soul, you pass. Three hundred Spartans are nothing compared to three hundred IB students intent on filling the sky with stars.

I once got to deliver the farewell speech to a graduating batch. I was chastised later for saying that our graduating class should embody the virtues of medieval knighthood without succumbing to the abusive mindset or the condescending mindset of the nobility. But I still stand by what I said then and continue to say. Even if I must stand alone as the darkling sky descends upon me, I will say that what I say three times is true: the best, the best, the best is yet to be.

An Unusual Journeying (Part 3)

What I tell you three times is true, says the old formula beloved of fairy-tales. And so, here is the third and last 'fit' as Lewis Carroll might have said.

I have no discernible fear of death. I have a list of things I think I fear; here are some of them: pain, torture, prolonged awareness of incapacity, the debilitation of disease and old age, the loss of loved ones in an untimely and/or senseless-seeming way.

Over the years, I have discovered that the material rewards of an attitude which does not cling to this life are great. They are not positive material rewards (free cars, extra loot, a larger house) but rewards in the breach; these are rewards which make material things less inviting.

The first of these rewards is peace of mind. A major source of anxiety seems to be removed when someone is without a fear for the ending of life. Does it really matter what a person does to you? Yes, it might and often does; but it might matter less when you realise that he is for the maggots as much as you, that some things can be easily laughed off because they are not even as frightening as death. You can afford to take the long view and realise that if you were to die that night, a lot of things would shift in significance and value. You can afford to be at peace with yourself and with others.

The second of these rewards is contentment. When you have peace of mind, you can be content – and happy with what you have to live on. I know my work is worth a lot more than I'm paid. But it does not matter at all. It is enough that I have the tools of my work and the ability to relax and enjoy them. You can take act towards goals: contentment is not necessarily immobility, inertia, incapacity or lack of desire to do something new and different. But you can decide firmly that enough is enough, sit down and stick to your own mission statement.

The last of these rewards is a sense of perspective. [It's hard to define that, but the link I've just given might help. Heh.] Investing recently with a friend of mine, I was a little surprised to find that he rated me at the high-end of risk-taking. I asked him why. He said that my answers to his questions had shown that I really did not care if I lost the entire "fortune" that I had invested with him. He's right. If a man can live on less than $300 a month (as some people say), then a man who earns $1.2m a year certainly has more than enough. That man is now able to give away at least $1m a year. It is probably true that few such people do, because they might have forgotten how to survive on $200k a year, let alone $3600 a year with no bonuses. I make less than $100k a year myself, but I am extremely aware that that puts me in the top 10% of all the world's people (I think you need about US$60,000 for that).

Ah, take time to delight in life while you have it! It's the one online game you can really play in character. While the penalties for character death seem awful for an online game, bear in mind that leaving your computer to have dinner can be a good idea. Peace, contentment, a sense of perspective - what great gifts I have received!

Dona Eis Requiem

Tonight, as on most nights, I turned on iTunes and let it deal randomly from its deck of shuffled albums. And so it was that I was dealt Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, Mozart's Requiem and Secret Garden's brilliant Once In A Red Moon. All three in a row. I am now listening to the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Celebration of 1984.

It puts one in a reflective, peaceful mood. Some might consider the sequence grim, sorrowful, depressing. Not I. It grants me a measure, indeed a long and powerful draught, of peace and quiet contentment. And this experience has been so moving in its stillness that I am stirred in my soul to wish peace upon all houses at war, all houses in uproar and unrest, in all the world, in all the minds and hearts of men. Amen.