Bay Head and Rokeby

Bay Head -- those in our family know what Bay Head is.

Rokeby is the 43-room house on the Hudson River owned by Livingstons and Astors, now inhabitaed by impecunious descendants. Very different. But in a New York Times article today, there are a couple of points worth taking note of:

"Like most family histories, Rokeby's story is wildly subjective, and its 'truth" depends on your vantage point."

"It's the place that makes my heart sing and my head ache. But it's kind of amazing that 50 years later, Rokeby is intact, family owned, and debt free."

Here's the line we might need to heed:

"The tension...is between people needing space and the stuff needing space, because nothing can be thrown away."

Think: Attic.

Creating Sabbath Peace

Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise is an article I want to ponder.

Rituals -- family and monastic

Procession is a form of ritual walking. A family may process into the dining room on a special occasion. A procession invites the spirits of the occasion to be present, and it renders the place of gathering the hopeful goal of labyrinthine mystery. Thomas Moore, Meditations. p. 60

Tradition is a pool of imagination, and not a basis for authority. ...Traditional rituals and images rise out of an historical fog in which founders and authorities are more mythological than persona, and in which so many different layers of meaning lie packed together that the sacred literature becomes genuine poetry. ...We could be guided by countless generations of ancestors without becoming oppressed by the words and structures they have left behind." p. 84

Why I like Gregorian chant

Modal chants mirror and model the monastic life. "It doesn't have the drive toward ending or the insistent relationships between notes and chords that modern music has. Endings and climaxes appear melodically, for the most part, with a felt lift in song and a sure entropy in musical energy. Thomas Moore, "Meditations," p. 38

Sometimes...monks wil land upon a note and sing it in florid fashion, one syllable of text for fifty notes of chant. Melisma, they call it. Living a melismatic life -- we may stop on an experience, a place, a person, or a memory and rhapsodize in imagination (draw, contemplate, build, paint, or dance). (Versus living one point after another,) ...stopping for melisma gives the soul its reason for being. p. 44

"Silence is not the absence of sound, but a "toning down of inner and outer static...allows many sounds to reach awareness...(nature) was well as conscience, daydreams, intuitions, inhibitions, and wishes. One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and the soul. p. 68

Monastery bells: "Overtones are those elements in every experience that last long after the literal act -- memories, shock, emotional residues, reactional behavior. They are also the meanings and implications of deeds, their nuances and reverberation...Monks are more interested in these (overtones) than in the literal facts. They are professionals in spiritual resonance. When the bell rings, they stop and listen." p. 98

Listening, obeying

"Obedience means to listen closely to others for words of direction. . . I can see the deep will that guides me in the thoughts and reflections of my neighbor." Thomas Moore, Meditations, p. 12

"To have a conversation with Christ...just keep listening until you hear something, said my novice master...Now, having read Jung, Ficino, Yeats, Rilke, and Dickinson, I've discovered how to listen meditatively." p. 13

"Wasted time is usually good soul time... But there is something especially fruitful in a regulated life...The ritual quality of appointed times releases us from the burdens of free will." p. 83

"The truly artful life, not the merely aesthetic one, is religious, and vice versa." p. 105

To Keep or Not to Keep?

Advice for those trying to pare down their possessions: (Me).

"What does it take to really own and possess? It means loving a thing so much that one can't be parted from it, can't stand to see it neglected and misused, can't trust that someone else will care for it sufficiently.

"..in shopping, buying, and possessing we are never satisfied -- (which) indicates that we never fully possess or fully own. "

from Meditations, Thomas Moore, p. 22

One Chimpanzee Cannot Be a Chimpanzee

In Harold Kushner's "Living a Life that Matters: Resolving the Conflict Between Conscience and Success" I found a heartening description of friendship, and I offer it to those who are my friends and to whom I might learn to be a friend. Starting on p. 119.

"Friendships are a key to survival in an unfriendly world,...a way for us to be recognized as unique people, to be reassured that we are appreciated for who we are. One step less intense than marriage or parenthood, genuine friendships are a mirror reflecting back to us a flattering image of ourselves. The fact that they are voluntary, easier to enter or leave than family, marriage, or professional relationships, reassures us that people remain our friends because they genuinelly like us, even when we have hurt or disapointed us. It has been said, 'When a friend makes a mistake, the mistake remains a mistake, but the friend is still a friend.' And friendships are a way of being important in another person's life, knowing that someone we like and care about is happier, more secure, and more likely to make right choices because of us.. As Patricia O'Brien said of her friend, 'she needed me, which is no small thing.' "

Why the chimpanzee title? An anthropologist who studied this species said that a chimp needs other chimps in order to become what it was meant to be. Kushner: "We need other people, and we need to be neede by other people, in order to be who we might be, who we yearn to be."