Forty Is Gone

"Forty years on, afar and asunder..." begins that rather sober school song of a rather famous school. As each person I know crosses that boundary and heads towards 41 — yet another prime of their lives — I am reminded of that song.

When one's younger brother — ally, pest, co-conspirator, friend — crosses that mark into 41-hood, one is stricken (and surprised to find oneself stricken) by an odd sensation. So much of life has passed by! The halfway mark, if strength for the other half exists.

And so one dreams of misty England. Heh.

900

This is my 900th post on this blog.

Fortified by the excrescence of the bean, I have decided to press on with work and ignore the ineffectual pressures which some people have attempted to apply. I mean, if I could not be manipulated and controlled all those years, why should I be any less independent now? Actually, sitting down and thinking of the reasons for which I blog helped to clarify things a lot.

I blog because I am inherently open and information-friendly as far as sharing my thoughts and experiences goes. I do it in class; I do it with friends, colleagues, at Ministry of Education briefings, and wherever there is the chance that communication will occur. I learn from what people tell me; I hope people learn from what I say — it is always an exchange, a trade, an extension to education for all parties.

I believe that if you were to read every single one of my 900 posts, you would learn at least a few things. And if you were to tell me what you thought, in exchange, I would learn even more. That's what education is about.

What I can't stand is when some people think irrational things and act on them in a way that seriously affects other people's lives. Such action-linked irrationality is all right if it is vented in private; it is another matter when it is vented in a destructive way. It is terrible when paranoia triumphs over rigorous thinking; when human fiat triumphs over fair discussion.

As always, I continue to challenge myself with my mission statement. I trust that my readers will bear with me as I continue my blogospheric journey across the face of man's limited knowledge and through the universe of God. Thank you!

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Oh yes, those of you from the First, could you please have a look at this and answer it? Much obliged! Could you also tell your classmates about it? Help a suffering PhD candidate out...

Justified Ends

I first began this blog in 2004, which was the first year of the Programme. The many of you who have visited here know which programme that is. It began as a logical extension of my long life in the infosphere, perhaps what I would call a blogobubble, an evanescent excursion via weblog. It is not ending. In fact, despite heavy pressure, the bubble has not deflated; rather it has taken on the qualities of a resilient and refractive sphere of its own.

It is not large, nor popular. It is a heavy day when more than 100 people drop by. Few leave comments, and some say that blogs should not be written in such formal (and occasionally, opaque) style.

But it has been through this blog (and various satellite blogs) that I have come to know some of you a lot better. I now know that I have unknown friends and known friends in California, Finland, Australia, Virginia, Poland, Denmark, and many such in the UK. I have viewed at least 35,000 blogs; and I have come across examples of writing that I can only think of with mordant admiration, so beautiful they are. Some of you have written prose that is so understandable, so clear and personal and brave and powerful, that I weep with frustration at my own lack of ability.

And that frustration is genuine. Some of you have kindly pointed out that I have no complete lack of talent, and that in some ways I am indeed rather good. It seems to me that the better I am, the more acutely I am able to appreciate how much more talent others have. What these older eyes see is that the talent in your words is someday going to be refined further by blood and fire, grief and joy, and raised to even higher levels.

But will the blogosphere be the only space in which our paths will cross again? I admit that this question nags at me. It is a variant of the infamous 'empty nest' syndrome, wherein one feels morbidly dissatisfied with life when the focus of one's attention and time has left the vicinity. I know it will not last, but I would hate to lose the friendships and fellow-sufferings that the First and I have experienced together.

Do keep in touch. May our blogobubbles occasionally share an interface, a rare reminiscence, a distant reflection. And as Eliot said:

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

And now off to finish touching up the testimonials.

Recessional

I remember mentioning Kipling's Recessional once before. My father, a scholar of Anglo-Indian history, first introduced me to Kipling as a child-care agent: he would leave me with a volume of Kipling in his office while he went off to teach on days when nobody was around to look after me.

One day, I encountered the lyrical words of this grand hymn to decolonisation. It is a little dated now, but some of its lines have got that chill of fallen grandeur and fading sunsets. I remembered it today because I was in a fin de siecle sort of mood. And so was Gnomus.

Well, here it is, this relic of a bygone age. Perhaps we look back to a better age, not realising that the best is yet to be.

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Recessional

God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine
Lord God of Hosts be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

A Room In The Heart

In every heart there is a room, and it sometimes has more than one nature. To Chesterton, in his epic poem Lepanto, it is

The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

Chesterton, of course, speaks of the Pope in his chapel, at the centre of the storm that rages as the forces of the Caliphate collide head on with Don John of Austria's Christian navy at the Battle of Lepanto. But on a different level, he speaks of the place in our inmost being from which we look out and see that the world is beautiful and fragile. From this place, we see that the people we love, the things we delight in, the activities which are life to us, are all easily reft from us – and we learn to pray that we are protected from the fearful pain of their loss.

To Billy Joel, this place is also a sanctuary – but of a different kind. It is a refuge from that pain, not a window upon it; it is a place of healing in between the hurts. Perhaps he and Mr Chesterton were more alike than we can ever know. Here is Mr Joel's take on that room:

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretence
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self-defence

And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon, I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.

For me, that place conceals both the painfully beautiful and the beautifully painful. I remember old roses of all kinds, their smiles, the planes of their faces, their curves of mind and body; I remember sexuality and spirituality and somatic intensity. For these some of all the kinds of beauty that have been given to mortal men doomed to die; and God has made all things beautiful in His time.

Why did He give us all this beauty, these things that we have died for, or felt like dying for, or felt that we have died from? It is clear that there are two gifts of doom (in the Anglo-Saxon sense, I suppose) – the two Trees in the Garden were of moral knowledge and eternal life. But in Ecclesiastes it is written that firstly, God has made everything beautiful in its time; and secondly, God has set eternity in the hearts of men. The two things to be contrasted are not beauty and eternity, but time and eternity. All beauty has been given to us to enjoy in its time, regardless of variety – but the enduring foundation of our secret room is eternity.

And so, now older and a little wiser, when I see the brightness – the beautiful intellect and power and grace and strength (and so many other wonderful things!) in each of my students – I think of eternity. I think of how each aspect, each attribute might decorate the vault of infinity, and I thank God that He has made us all beautiful.

Vignettes

These are little glimpses into the secret life of us all.

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Morning meditations. The tale is a familiar one. The leader of the people vanishes up the mountain to commune with his God. His people fret in his absence. They indulge in abhorrent practices. The leader returns. He mobilises a few hundred of the sanctified to kill three thousand people in the name of his God.

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The end of the day at the College of Wyverns. Gathered in the scriptorium beneath the aedificium, the warrior monks and nuns of the Grand Order are engaged in serious philosophical debate. Today's topic: ethics and discipline. This is how the conversation ends.

"I, sir, am a paragon of moral rectitude!"

"Moral turpitude, more likely!"

"My rectum is perpendicular to the ground!"

"So is your turpentine!"

"Gentlemen, you're all being a bit..."

"Sorry, madam."

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In quite another section of the College, fifty young men and women – some of senior and exalted station, some of junior and less exalted estate – stand in wait for the mysterious Knights of the Old Republic, servants of the Black Order. They will wait for a long time, but they do not mind, for they also serve who only stand and wait.

The lines stretch out forever, orderly, active, disciplined. They wait, they wait. Is there any use to the waiting? They assume so; their faith is like armour.

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The Grey Man walks the white corridors and appears in the Plaza. Students call out to him, "Sir, entertain us!" It is an unusual request, but the Grey Man is feeling uncharacteristically beneficient and he complies.

"Entertaining yourself is very simple. You need to start with boredom. Perfect boredom creates heightened self-awareness."

The students quieten, realising that one of his rare public performances is in the offing.

"You stand upright, life and death in your hands, left and right. It is at the moment of equilibrium that you will realise your hands are different."

They stare at him. Is he serious? The Grey Man is not known for straight talk.

"Left and right. You will begin to see that they are different, feel that they are not the same."

He sees that some of them are looking at his hands, or at their own. He lifts his hands: plain, ordinary-looking hands.

"Select a hand and look at it. You will suddenly know that it is not your hand, that it is an alien object, separated from you, not you at all."

He takes a breath, and so do they.

"And at that moment, you will have entertained yourself."

He smiles, steps away, and vanishes.

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He has a daughter. She has a father. When did they grow to be this far apart? Not that far apart though; merely at arm's length. But far enough. He is feeling old; the white hairs depress him, with their little antimelanic messages. She is feeling old because things irritate her which shouldn't. She shouldn't feel old. She is less than half his age.

But it's there, and what can you do about it?