How many great symphonies have not been written

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer. 29:11)

“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” (Anais Nin)

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.” (Thomas Merton)

“This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.” (Chinua Achebe)

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” (David Viscott)

They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives

The endearing Didi and Gogo meet near a “leafless tree” [already such a marvellous irony] to engage in a series of discussions. They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives. It all appears meaningless. They consider suicide. Perhaps they had read Camus! Whether they are to be taken seriously or not is beside the point. But the problem is neither of these characters actually articulates what they want; or what they are looking for; or who Godot actually is. Or even if he ultimately exists. Ennui is at them. Entropy. Apathy. In existential terms, it is not even knowing what you want. It is, as some critics have said, the most successful literature ever written about “nothing”. Nothingness leads to ‘nothing.’ And to the deepest of despair.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

How many great symphonies have not been written

There are times when we are scared to approach that which we believe to be beyond us, like a great challenge which will push us to our limits, or when we are terrified of speaking our truth for fear of ‘cancellation’, or of declaring our love lest we be rejected. It has been asked how many great symphonies have not been written because composers were reluctant to compose their own Ninth, the ‘curse of the Ninth’ they call it, for the fear of comparison with Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ masterpiece. And yet, is this not the most agreeable of things? To keep climbing the stairs, to follow Jacob onto the “stairway” until we have reached our limits and to have exhausted the depths of our capacity [that which can ‘contain, take or hold’]:

“Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Gen. 28:10-12)

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by  greater and greater things.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Poem)

It was only when I allowed for my heart (extract from a letter) [1]

It was only when I allowed for my heart to become vulnerable again, that is, to love without any fear of reprisal, to not set limits on the geometry of my embrace, that I was permitted some few insights such as these which I am now sharing with you. Similarly to the human eye which is amazingly adaptable and works to correct light deficiencies, the heart also as our ‘spiritual organ’ functions in an analogous way as it filters ‘darkness’ and ‘light’. A contemplative has somewhere said: “In fact, one question is enough. In everything that happens to me, do I remain free enough to love?” In recent times I have been pondering, that sadly, we do not rightly reflect on the actual love of the malefactor crucified next to the Christ, the one who asked to be remembered by Jesus when he came into his “kingdom” (Lk. 23:42f.). This love which he quite literally expressed through his ‘confession’ and ‘compassion’ as he himself was dying, opened up to him the gates of paradise. Father Seraphim Rose has articulated well the question behind this fearsome mystery:

“Why is the truth, it would seem, revealed to some and not to others? Is there a special organ for receiving revelation from God? Yes, though usually we close it and do not let it open up: God’s revelation is given to something called a loving heart.”

“The heart governs the entire bodily organism and reigns over it, and when grace possesses the heart, it governs all the members and all thoughts, for it is in the heart that the intellect is found and all the thoughts of the soul as well as its desires; through its intermediary, grace equally penetrates into all the bodily members.” (Saint Macarius of Egypt)

I would take away its trustworthy lessons (extract from a letter)

During the darkest hours of an interminable sense of hopelessness which plagued my spirit and bruised my bones, I thought that all being, all striving, all life was for nothing. It was the temptation to an extreme pessimism; the seduction of nihilism. That it was all animalistic chance, a throw of the dice. Still, even here, in this deathlike existence, when by the grace of God some little shards of light dropped down on me, I would take away its trustworthy lessons. From this place of mournfulness which separates darkness from the light itself, anarchy from order, death from life, and hell from heaven, good things can still pour through. Salvation, however we might understand it, is not to be trifled with. Sometimes outside a good discernment, these polarities may not always be clearly identifiable one from the other. So, we might continue to confuse what is evil for good, and what is unrighteous for righteous, like a hesitant tincture caught between two colours. Yet, like a constantly recurring musical phrase, a leitmotif, which you can’t quite place, the stirring of the Holy Spirit is asking for us to give Him a name. I was on a train in London on my way to the monastery in Tolleshunt Knights,[2] when I first read these overwhelming words from the English writer and lay theologian G. K. Chesterton which I will share with you below. I straightaway copied them into my little notebook which I would carry most anywhere I went. They struck an inherent chord within me. I was comforted in a way I could not explain, other than that an unassailable truth had been disclosed to me:

“Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.”

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.” (Ps. 61:1-3)

It is temperature shock which hardens steel (extract from a letter)

Transformation, sometimes used for the metamorphosis of the life cycle of an animal, will not happen overnight. It will be a long journey and it will demand much spiritual labour and large amounts of patience. It is good to remember when things get difficult, as they undoubtedly do, that it is temperature shock which hardens steel and that it is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Change can hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it will make all the difference. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. Conversion is only the beginning. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his blinding glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.). Allow for the grace of God to fall on you and to make the necessary changes, similarly to new colours which are created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. I know, too well, sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel or smoothing your heart on a piece of pumice stone. Yet how wonderful it is when with every little step forwards, there is an additional revelation.

“Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here…” (Matt. 17:4)

“What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.” (Rabindranath Tagore)

The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’

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”Movement” by Katina Michael

We leave a place never to return, but we spend the rest of our life reflecting over it and going back, often without even realizing it. For me this location is ‘Redfern’, it is both a physical and spiritual place. It is the priesthood and where I was given my new name. We never can wholly escape. It is like Joyce who was desperate to leave Dublin but never could, and Faulkner who thought he could escape Lafayette County, or Armen Melikian in Journey to Virginland who cannot forget Armenia despite his exile from the homeland of his forefathers. These writers like many others, spend a great deal of their lives going back. The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’, to embrace it, to take what is good and to transform the rest. The nostalgia, this longing unto sickness to return, is not all bad and is the central refrain in one of our earliest ‘blockbusters’, the great Homeric epic, the Odyssey. It is bringing back beautiful scents [lavender, vanilla] and sounds [the clickety-clack of trains], and dreams which can still rouse the adrenalin.

“When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.” (James Joyce to Sheehy Skeffington)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” (William Faulkner, Faulkner’s county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county)

[1] These three letter extracts from a recent correspondence with friends have been here modified for their readability.

[2] It was late in 1990 during the First Gulf War when I returned to Europe. My primary intention was to visit the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, England, to spend time with its monastic community especially celebrated for its practise of the Jesus Prayer and for its beloved abbot Elder Sophrony. hhttps://www.thyateira.org.uk/archdiocese/monasteries/monastery-of-st-john-the-baptist/

Fairness is Pleasing to the Sight

“All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.” (Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics)

“My little Pierre is now nearly five years old. He is quite a big boy. I used to wait with impatience for the time when I could take him with me and talk with him, opening his young mind, instilling into him the love of beauty and truth, and helping fashion for him so lofty a soul that the ugliness of life could not degrade it.” (Alfred Dreyfus, Five Years of My Life)

“Nothing is fair in this world. You might as well get that straight right now.” (Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees)

“Can you speak, can you hear, can you see and read, where is your higher IQ? - Be bold to the world and say clear, YES or NO. Be free and set free; it is fairness.” (Ehsan Sehgal)

“For God shows no partiality.” (Rom. 2:11)

I fondly remember a soft-spoken monk in one of the monastic communities I have visited who has left a lasting impression on me. He was elderly and wise. He had earnt the right to be considered for the abbot’s position two previous times. On each of these occasions his nomination was dismissed in favour of younger and less experienced monastics. From the outside it was a plainly unfair decision. I asked him if this biased treatment against him wounded him in any way. He smiled and looked at me with the eyes of an owl which are noted for their depth perception. “It is their way of asking me questions,” he serenely said, “it would be unfair if I disappointed them and caused one to stumble.” Such conversations cannot be misplaced. [1] They are as precious as desert wildflowers.  Later that evening during the vespers service:

 “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you.” (Ps. 129:5)

Is there fairness in the world? Or at least in our community? Something “fair” in the olden times was considered “pleasing to the sight”. Today we still say that the weather is fair. There is something attractive to this etymological transmission of the word. Nowadays, by fair we normally understand “free of bias and injustice”. Many people would claim there is more bias and injustice in the world than there is impartiality and justice. Even the shortest survey of recent history would appear to overwhelmingly support this position. “Being good is easy,” wrote Victor Hugo the author of Les Misérables, “what is difficult is being just.” Though surely there is charity and compassion in the world, consider our  selfless frontline workers during the pandemic, we can add to the injustice even in our small neighbourhoods by engaging in practises of bias. Apposite to note the delicate but significant difference between the words ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’: “Justice should be defined as adherence to rules of conduct, whereas fairness should be defined as individuals’ moral evaluations of this conduct.”[2]

To treat someone unfairly, and particularly a young person, can prove terrible in many ways: blunting their dreams; lowering their self-esteem; and diminishing their promise. In what ways might we treat someone unfairly? Of course, there is discrimination bias based on how we look or what we believe in, that is, we can consciously [or sometimes even unconsciously] discriminate by placing people into perceptual stereotypes. This is to ignore the uniqueness and the many different qualities that the ‘other’ possesses in their presence and being. Then there is nepotism as well, the favouring of relatives or friends over others which can  be practised in all strata of our society, but here it can be especially harmful when those discriminated against are our children. Other times, too, we can rob someone of their prospects by overlooking their claims to a promotion or an employment opportunity in favour of another who is less qualified. It is to become a deliberate obstacle in someone else’s ‘capability’. It can be thought of as an act of theft. We rob another of their potential, their ‘power’. Envy, revenge, or another of the passions, can also be a cause for our unfair treatment of another.

This is how I started on this little reflection, but as I was completing the last paragraphs I couldn’t much as I tried, get a recent image out of my mind. The pictures of those seven beautiful children killed in that drone attack gone horribly wrong in Kabul, Afghanistan. Initially described by Pentagon officials as a “righteous strike”.[3] Five of the children were five years or younger. Baby Aya was not yet two. It took me back to another unforgettable image which I also cannot erase from my memory. This was during the first Gulf War (1991). The then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was pictured celebrating his birthday, playing a guitar on the front page of a daily newspaper. Below on the same page was a picture of a young Iraqi boy. He had lost his limbs in another bombing gone ‘wrong’. What to say here on ‘fairness’? There are no adequate responses, but only as most sages have agreed and argued for in their respective works, long processes of reconciliation.

Of course, such emblematic instances as the two mentioned above, are too many, particularly from the 20th century. There would be no end to the examples, both before and after the Holocaust (the Shoah). Then there are the cancer wards where other children go. These are sufferings of another unalterable kind. The study of the writings of Primo Levi, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Geoffrey Robertson, Paul Johnson, and Martha Minow are a good place to start to get a visceral image of these ever-present realities.[4] And so the remembrance of these universal and more vital things stopped me from continuing with the original purpose of this upload. It was to be some thoughts on the unfair treatment of a fine young man by a community of people he had once trusted from the times he was a little boy, and the lessons drawn from that heart-rending experience.

Yet here is the difference between the violent and indiscriminate taking away of a life, and in particular a young life which has not yet blossomed, to the ‘normal’ unfairness in the world which we ourselves might have experienced or have seen played out in the lives of others, including oftentimes our children. We are still alive, our young ones have the use of their limbs and the exercise of their imaginations, and if we live in the affluent places of the world, we have a warm bed, a roof over our heads, and in the evenings an excess of food on our tables. We can move on, looking forwards, knowing that doors will inevitably shut, but if we should only endure [sooner or later], others will open. The revered mystic and Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore has described it this way: “If I can't make it through one door, I'll go through another door- or I’ll make a door. Something terrific will come no matter how dark the present.” Greater things have very often been found on the other side of providence. Persecution of diverse kind has been overcome and restoration has come to the wronged. Ultimately, if we are to measure fairness by any rule, we will all leave the world having experienced unfairness one way or another and lived through its sharp irony and stinging pain. It hurts to feel you have not been valued. It is a basic human need. Yet, it is also a well-known fact, resentment and vengeance only build up anger and bad decision-making. Outside any religious paradigms, numerous studies have found that forgiveness which can be “practised” and “cultivated”, and does not mean to condone the wrongdoing, has a long list of positive effects.[5]

Source: Katina Michael

There is fairness only in death. It cares nothing for our name and accomplishments. Our reputations have nil effect. It has no interest in our religion nor in our creeds. “Death is the fairest thing in the world” writes Svetlana Aleksievich the author of Voices from Chernobyl,[6] “[n]o one's ever gotten out of it. The earth takes everyone.” The Book of Ecclesiastes and the ‘eight worldly dharmas’ considered in Buddhism, have a great deal to say on the weight, and the ultimate futility, of putting too much credence into life’s self-centred preoccupations or allowing ourselves to be defined by others. In the meantime without sugar-coating reality, we allow for the excitement of new opportunities. The anticipation of emboldening challenges when we have been “shut out”. Perspective always remains a tremendous help.

Postscript The young man who inspired this post in the first place is doing well. Away from the football field he is enjoying the piano.

[1] This little but telling exchange is from a much longer conversation which took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, one Saturday afternoon and is here paraphrased.
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/job.1956

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/asia/us-air-strike-drone-kabul-afghanistan-isis.html

[4] Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence, (Beacon Press: Boston, 1998).

[5] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/forgiveness/definition

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

On Chance Encounters

Saturday 6th August, 2011

Sydney, NSW

Kingsford Smith International Airport, Montreux Jazz Café

The ritual before take-off

“Thank you. One sugar, please…”

“So where are you off too then?”

“Europe… Bucharest.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“Neither…”

“What else is there?” The young waitress asks.

“The great abyss,” I reply.

We both laugh for different reasons.

The young waitress dressed in black from head to toe with a striking gold breastpin of a frog with red glass eyes, retreats and moves speedily back into her own world. And I weep in secretum, reflecting on the infallible revelation of how quickly all things must come to pass.

Source: MG Michael Family Archives

Tuesday 16th August, 2011

Bucharest, Romania

Readers Cafe

Another of those wonderful chance encounters

“I have been watching you write.”

“Yes, it helps.”

“Can I ask what about?”

“I am not sure, probably about climbing mountains. That’s close enough.”

“Are you a monk or something? You look like a monk.”

“No, once, a long time ago, but it is a little complicated.”

“I’m Susanna. My friends call me Vagvadini.”

“I’m Michael. My friends used to call me Jeremiah.”

Remember these conversations my heart to prize them deeply for when you get lost in the years ahead. Precious landmarks along the way. They are not pretend colloquies which bring sickness to the soul.

Hop, Skip, and Jump

September 17th 2011

Bucharest, Romania

Christina Hotel

Hold fast onto your dreams

You tell me you want to see your name in one of my stories. I really don’t know why. I am not who you think I am. I do write, yes, but more than likely what I scribble down will be lost or deleted, or dismissed as having possessed little value. So, okay, dearest Alina, consider yourself amongst my lost and found. Hold fast onto your dreams and never betray the fairy tale in your heart which makes you hop, skip, and jump when you serve my breakfast in the morning. And remember, when you fall into quicksand the mistake is to panic and to fight against it. The secret, they say, is to relax as best you can and slowly waddle yourself out. Other times, you will know when, think of the jet pilots who must go full throttle when landing on the flight deck lest they miss the bands and drop into water.

 I have been thinking of Saint Lucia, too, who brings light into the darkness; and of the great white shark which crashes into the Cape fur seal. Tossing it into the air.

 Later that day

 It was not as a tourist that I made the long journey here, to this country riddled with uncertainties which on a map gives you the impression of a gigantic flower. And it was only during the days of my preparation to leave Sydney I discovered that outside Russia, something which I should have remembered from my seminary days, it is in Romania where you will find the most populous Eastern Orthodox community. Excepting for those few days in Brasov [and the train ride through Transylvania], I stayed put in Bucharest. I made the conscious decision to avoid too much sensory input, to keep focused on the reasons for my being here. The important thing providence again proved right. This is where I had to come.  Nil sine numine…

It is the same with where I will go tomorrow. Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov and others like them who have come to English as a second language, have revealed that a foreign place can be like learning to use another tongue. Not only in the rewarding search for nuances in the back streets of small and great cities, but also in the translation of ‘the rivers’ which like the twists and turns in our stories, run through us.

 “…we all have a right to speak, and an obligation/ to pay attention to the slightest whisper.” (John Tranter, Whisper)

 “We must continue to speak: although the language we use/ is like sand, it is desire that whets it, that sometimes/ fuses it into glass.” (David Brooks, True Language)

For the temptingness of the metaphor itself

27th May, 2011

Sydney, Kingsgrove

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.” (Harper Lee)

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple." (Jack Kerouac)

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” (Maya Angelou)

“Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.” (Mario Vargas-Llosa)

“To touch the heart. Yes, that we appeal both to the heart and the mind, in so doing reveal the richness and horror of life, to expose the hidden life.” (Nick Kyriacos)

“With writing, we have second chances.” (Jonathan Safran Foer)

To write is to ‘carve’ or to ‘sketch’. Yes, that sounds right, even if it might be for the temptingness of the metaphor itself.

Courtesy of Eleni Michael (Michael Family Archives)

So why exactly am I doing this? Engaging in this ofttimes painful process of the ‘carving’. Do I know… will I ever really know? There are times when I think I have hit on the answer or to have discovered the good clues. Is it a need that I can’t rightly describe? In some measure it has to do with repair and reconciliation. The Dominican-American writer and MIT professor Junot Díaz has put it much better: “Because I can’t seem to escape it [writing]. It’s a way for me to address and counter my questions about what it means to be human.”[1] It is because we are not one but many which makes this such an unforgiving task: to not only put down the essence of “who” we are but to bring together the many into the one.[2] So if the metaphysics alone weren’t enough, there is also the lasting fear of getting it wrong, to give those who might one day be reading our pages a different picture to what we are trying to piece together, like a tricky puzzle or an ancient mosaic. Of course, some pieces of the picture will remain forever lost or hidden, either by design or accident. Those pieces which are too humiliating to document, (but which if we are to be honest, we should as a minimum leave some plain hints behind). The ledger, however, has to be balanced. That is, maybe we should also not be too quick to include those other admittedly fewer pieces which might reveal a loftier spirit inhabiting this contradiction of a ragbag heart and bruised bone. There are at least a couple of things which we can take hope from, lest as C.S. Lewis says, our efforts at writing do not simply become an occasion for “vainglory”. Most of us move somewhere in between those two extremes: ‘the saint and the sinner’. That is, we are neither too much of the one, and hopefully, not too much of the other. We inhabit the pulsating skins of both. So if we write, it would be good to admit to this, for otherwise our words could fall into the extremes and then we would be entering into the realms of caricature and fiction. We try to pull the saint and the little devil closer into the middle, like when you pull on a rope, and the rope pulls back against you, and see what happens after we let go. The exciting part to all of this, that these two entities (“saint” and “sinner”) are different for each one of us. Informed by different life-legends and experiences. This fact alone makes our story and our art unique expressions of human existence, and worthy of a creative process and broader sharing. We are the “participant-observers” to our story.[3] The other truth? We are ultimately, all of us connected by the one and the same quest: to be Saved… or to at least fill in the gaps.

[1] This telling quote from JD was later added to this entry on 23rd August, 2021.

[2] See Richard David Precht’s fabulous philosophical and readable analysis into the “heart of human existence”: Who Am I?: And If So How Many? (New York: Random House, 2011). https://www.amazon.com/Who-Am-If-How-Many/dp/0385531184

[3] https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/participant-observation-2