Blogging A-Z Day 6: Elgar

So, after a day's break, we're back to the A-Z Challenge, letter "E," and who better to highlight than good old Sir Edward Elgar and one of my favourite sections from his Dream of Gerontius; the Proficiscere Anima, sung here by Robert Lloyd. I don't suppose I'll ever get a chance to take part in Gerontius, now that I'm no longer in a regular choir. Never mind, that doesn't stop me listening and enjoying other peoples' performances. I've been a devotee of Elgar's works ever since encountering them at school, and in fact, Mstr GP  would have been born to the strains of one of his Pomp and Circumstance marches, if Mr GP hadn't wrestled the headphones away from me first.

It's easy perhaps -  nowadays, for some to be slightly dismissive or scornful of some of his works as being  jingoistic or even rather simplistic, 'easy,' listening for the less 'sophisticated. Take Victoria Wood's famous 'Continuity announcer,' for example: "Enigma Variations - nothing we can't hum there!"  If you've only encountered him in bite-sized chunks in 'Favourite Hits,' type contexts, I guess  you might be left with that impression.  [Yes, yes, I do realise I've posted a 'bite-sized' here, but you get the picture?!] Like all good things, it's worth persevering for the long haul, I promise you.

Blogging A-Z Day 4: Domesticity

D is for Domesticity.   I'm enjoying one of Mr GP's birthday pressies,  Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes.  If we're talking about feeling old, I feel even older when what was almost the background to my own childhood, (I was born at the tail-end of the 1950s) is related as social history. I guess to children nowadays and even my own offpring, now in their mid and late twenties, the lot of women post-war must seem as much in another age as the events of the late 19th century would have seemed to us. My mother, who would have now been in her nineties had she lived, was similar to that cohort of women, marrying and setting up home in the mid to late fifties. Reading their memoirs, I realise more and more that she, in attempting to juggle career and children, was quite ahead of her time and I can maybe now better appreciate her struggles. At the time,  at least when I was younger I rather resented her absences whilst also realising that she needed that space; domesticity wasn't her greatest strength and life would have been even more frustrating than it already was had she not had that outlet for her true skills.  As it was, I suspected that she played down her abilities in front of my father and some other family members. But then, from what I'm reading, women were often forced by social pressure to do  just that. Here's the publisher's 'blurb:'

In Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes, Virginia Nicholson tells the story of women in the 1950s: a time before the Pill, when divorce spelled scandal and two-piece swimsuits caused mass alarm.

Turn the page back to the mid-twentieth century, and discover a world peopled by women with radiant smiles, clean pinafores and gleaming coiffures; a promised land of batch-baking, maraschino cherries and brightly hued plastic. A world where the darker side of the decade encompasses rampant prostitution, a notorious murder, and the threat of nuclear disaster.

Perfect Wives in Ideal Homes reconstructs the real 1950s, through the eyes of the women who lived it. Step back in time to where our grandmothers scrubbed their doorsteps, cared for their families, lived, laughed, loved and struggled.

This is their story.

I'm wondering about what piece of music would best represent that era and I've plumped on the theme tune for the popular request programme Housewives' Choice.

Blogging A-Z Day 3: Commemoration

I've been home for an hour or so after attending the traditional Maundy Thursday liturgy, with its solemn commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper. For me, the most telling point is  with the  closing singing of Psalm 22 "My God, my God, look upon me,"  as the altar and church are  stripped of their furnishings.  As we sit silently in the darkening building, it never fails to give me thought, however at odds with myself and my fellow human beings I might feel.

The setting I've chosen here (singers unknown) is by Samuel Wesley.

Blogging A-Z Day 2: Birthdays, Bach

Let's hope that this one doesn't crash the server... Do enjoy  another all-time favourite of mine for Holy Week, J.S. Bach's St John Passion, sung here by the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir, conducted by John Eliot Gardner. This is another work that I've been fortunate enough to sing in in the past, although not, I would add, with the outfit above, (way, way beyond my capabilities). I find the opening particularly moving. When we sung  it, we had some liturgical dancers performing along to the overture. They   took it to a  truly different dimension.

B  is also for birthdays - mine! After 50 *ahem* years I'm growing accustomed to having my birthday in and around Lent and Eastertide. This year it falls on Good Friday. What a  dilemma! Do I celebrate or go along with the mood of the liturgy  for the day.  Any thoughts?

Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology,  you should receive this post at  7 a.m. BST,  tomorrow, just in time to browse over with your morning coffee. If you live in the UK, that is. Or more likely, as this morning, you won't. I'm not sure if it was April Fool's gremlins in the works or my own ineptitude that did it. Luckily I just had time to press the magic button and send my bons mots soaring into cyberspace before I rushed for the train.

Blogging A-Z Day 1: Agnus Dei

Let's begin as we mean to go on -  given that for some of us it's Holy Week - with the divine Agnus Dei from Faure's Requiem. (Yes, Mr Spellchecker, I said "Agnus!")

I was trying to explain to my spiritual director recently why I love this piece so much, and failed utterly. I simply   can't   put  it into words.  From time to time I'm brought up short at the sheer amazingness of a world  where beauty can be expressed in so many and diverse ways.   What could be a seemingly random jumble of sounds and words can be crafted into a unique creation that points to something beyond all words, sounds and emotions. Or - to adapt  a certain classic advertisement: "Reaches the parts that other [words] cannot reach."

 The effect certain pieces of   poetry, prose and  music have on me are again so difficult to describe. The best I can say is that what I experience is if not quite like synthesia (as when somebody appears to sense  sounds as colours), yet  on a similar spectrum; a hybrid of the senses: not quite sight, sound, touch, smell. To sense such a fleeting instance of beauty is to see the world shot through with a jewel-like patina. (Excuse the purple prose but I'm trying to write this against a backdrop of raucous laughter from Mr GP watching a re-run of "Whoops, Apocalypse!")

I've been sitting with another 'A' these past weeks also: one of Sieger Koder's thought-provoking pieces of artwork from his series of reflections on The Folly of God - Alive! and brooding on Christ's challenging words: "Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?"

I suspect that the two 'pictures'  are not unconnected.

I'd love to know if there's a piece of music, art, poetry or something else that has spoken to you.

Spring has Sprung! April 2015 A-Z Blog Challenge

Mr and Mrs GP Jnr's Wedding Cake

Spring has sprung, the grass is 'riz and I'm emerging from a hibernation which has included  Christmas, a  wonderful retreat,  angst, a broken-down washing machine and, much much more. 'More,' being another trip across The Pond for Ms GP and BF's wedding earlier in the month - an event uniquely theirs. As I wrote to an aunt this morning, Ms GP has always 'done different!' We had an unforgettable  few days celebration, met some great new members of the family, (The 'Outlaws!) even managed to squeeze in some sightseeing. Mstr GP spent happy hours exploring a certain Mr Bob Dylan's favourite haunts, and I've mentally bookmarked a rather lovely veggie cafe for my next visit. Never separate a GP from her Nice Cup of Something, is my motto.

So - to business! The April 2015 A-Z Blog Challenge? Why oh why? Why not? The dreamer in me likes to think that I'll be regaling you, the reader with a carefully themed, thoughtfully planned and prayed -over piece of theological reflection each day.  Especially considering the challenge begins during Holy Week. The realist knows that the actuality will be nearer what I wrote in my original welcome message to GGP: "a right old pot-pourri of bits 'n bobs." Isn't that what life is made up of, after all?

Community, unity, discernment and friendship

I've pressed the 'pause' button on Greenbelt ABC (well...as long as it's completed by the time the next festival comes around...) : partly because RL as they say, looms large just now, Mr GP's mother died several weeks ago and we have the funeral tomorrow. It's been quite hard to concentrate on much else. Also, might as well blame my INFPishness....aka tendency to flit around from metaphorical flower to metaphorical flower,  all too easily distracted by the new and shiny.  That's my excuse, anyway.

So it was last week as I struggled to respond to a questionnaire generated by our church. To give some background here: our  community has reached, if not the end , certainly a pause in what's been a long  rebuilding project, inspired by a major discernment on the part of the congregation some seven or eight years ago. Now it's time to rest, take stock, reflect and pray about where, we as a community are being called to be and to do in the coming years. Hence some points for us all to ponder before an opportunity to meet together to pray, discuss and begin to discern in a few weeks time. 

So it was not altogether serependitious (speeling!) that in the same week I stumbled across not one, but two words I'd not known  before, both relating to the outworking of community: Gemeinshaft, via The Love that Moves the Sun's reflections on Unity and Community, and Gelassenheit from an old blog post of Radref's intriguing thoughts on whether some aspects of contemporary Christian spirituality plays down close friendships in favour of community life.  

Oh - the joys of the blogosphere, when you discover  unexpected treasures like these that set your thoughts off on a whole new track! Even if none of this got translated into the rather woffly response I sent in. Though this brought about another revelation: After a lifetime of thinking I express myself better in writing than verbally, I think the opposite might be true now. Maybe I'm developing wisdom along with the grey hairs. Plus an ability to look out beyond the level of my own navel.