I mentioned a few posts back my now blogging daughter's question, when she was a teenager, inquiring as to why I didn't simply publish my journals. From where she sat across the room she could easily see the growing shelf to the left of my chair. That would have been about the time the entry I am going to quote was was actually being made, give or take some months either way, April, 1984. She knew that I had been puttering away for four years at my magnum opus, and she also knew that I had so far had no luck interesting a publisher. I replied by giving her every hope for the eventual printing of at least part of the shelf to her left - it was then a mere foot long, and included a couple of her mother's notebooks - but added that such an event would probably not precede my death, or at least my being published as a novelist.
Never a man on the cutting edge of technology, I in no way foresaw the Net or Blogger.com, and could only assume that all the signs of infused hope the Holy Spirit merrily, constantly, along the lines of "In this house you will be published.", a few days after we moved in, September, 1975, referred to the ordinary means of the publishing trade, without, in my case, the tra la la of reading and signing tours.
But, thanks to a variety of people, I have been for some time now published, globally, in the most convenient manner I could ever have thought of asking for, and therefor a little journal exposure is perfectly in order, especially following the coincidence this week of a letter by our bishop in the Nelson Daily News, dealing with Gwynne Dyer's latest flunking out of catechism class, and my own musings in the letters pages of the New Denver Valley Voice. My letter spells out the harmony of thinking, on the molestation issue, of our Bishop John and the Pope, currently being badgered by the leading half-wits of western civilization, not one of whom has the you-know-what to come to my study to discuss the issue, or even pick up the story of a life time, if he or she really wanted to give the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic a black eye in the name of the whole truth.
And to think that in the past I have been, actually, an admirer of the New York Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Independent, the Globe and Mail, and even my own one-time employer, the Vancouver Sun!
The Cockneys, the ancestors of my maternal grandparents, have a word for these lightweights: gormless.
But I digress. The journal note, with some prefatory explanation for those who are not intimate with the geography of the Queen City of the Kootenays.
Gordon Road runs more or less north and south, and is, or at least was, the eastern boundary of the city. It is one of the routes for getting to the campus that used to be occupied by our little, Catholic, university, and when your are walking on the very steep grade of the upper part, you have a magnificent view of the West Arm of the lake and the mountains to the east, especially of the peaks of the Kokanee Range. I mentioned these mountains, incidentally, in my very first letter to the present Pope, some nine months before the date of this journal note. Bealby Point was then where lived the then Bishop of Nelson, Emmett Doyle.
"As we came down Gordon Road there was an interesting phenomenon of nature one would like to be able to take as a sign of hope. The sun, from behind the general cover of clouds, shone only on Bealby Point, and then as I looked about, on the bridge. The bridge, of course, is the thing for which Pontifex was the natural name."
It was in the time of the first Christians that the Pope was called Pontifex, due to the key position he occupied on the passage from earth to heaven. The Nelson bridge in question is that which joins the city to the North Shore of the arm, built in the late 50s to replace a ferry. Some years ago it was painted orange, and is featured in endless photographs and painting by local artists.
It is now, most contentedly, being featured by a writer.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Quadrivium
The year before my lovely singing voice of a wife returned to Nelson, the village that had raised her, dragging me in her wake, there was functioning on Baker Street a coffee house known as The Trivium. The Trivium was the name given in the Middle Ages to the group of studies we are now inclined to call the Humanities, more or less, as it comprised grammar, logic, and rhetoric. This last we today call literature, thanks to Gutenberg and the invention of cheap printing. In medieval times, books were scarce, and manuscripts took time to copy, so oral learning was big. One of the founders of the Trivium, so I was told, was a philosophy teacher at our little university - the reason I came to Nelson - thus the supposedly arcane title of the facility. I use the word 'arcane' because I am very much aware that I have joined battle both with and against the journalists, of every medium, and I am very much aware that journalists generally are professionally hooped on their view of themselves as "modern". Thus their first reaction to any intelligence escaping from anything earlier than, the latest, the nineteenth century, is suspect as being inferior to the latest bafflegab from those functioning in the public eye after World War One, thus 'arcane'.
They - the journalists - therefore incline to suspect all sorts of things that might make them wiser than they are, and are incredibly hide bound to their own childish rationalism, as ridiculously rooted, say, as any idiot of a British lord of the Age of Enlightenment, that is, the eighteenth century.
But the simple fact is that in the middle ages the subject of music was much more scientifically taught than it is now, as I have been at pains to point out in earlier posts of the Ranger. All the teachers were smarter: they knew music was a branch of mathematics, and music itself was, along with arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry, a member of the Quadrivium, the other part of basic education. Or perhaps they weren't actually smarter, it was just that their students would have lynched them had they ever been so thick as to insist on some of the methods that are standard now, in both pedagogy and testing and certifying. Medieval students were like that: they were easily upset, and walked when suitably provoked. Or lynched. This inclination was only one of the advantages of lacking high school counsellors trained under Sigmund Freud.
I bring this up now, somewhat repeating myself as my few faithful readers will realize, because while I have been manfully getting up my chops in order to put my instrumental hands where my mouth is, a couple of energetic and enterprising lads hitherto unknown to me have been at work creating exactly the kind of entertainment space here in Nelson, on legendary Ward Street, where all of this theory just might be about to be mightily proved. They don't have a name for it yet, and if they thought of calling it the Quadrivium they'd have to go into the publishing business to explain why, given the massive level of illiteracy about these days, but at my experience of the decades of local history, I tend to see it all as part of a grand plan, and, optimist that I have to be, expect great things.
What they do have, I hear along the grapevine, is a certain amount of unwonted hassle from the city fathers, and perhaps not quite the attention from astute investors that they deserve. If I were Bill Gates, or the Mac guys, I'd be there with my checkbook. But I'm neither of these fellows at the moment, so I just play the quiet observe and watch to see what happens, basically juggling the import and application of the divine locutions of the last fifty years.
It struck me as a most unfortunate glitch in the overall plan, back in 64 when Shawn and I arrived in Nelson only to hear that the Trivium had closed. Trouble with a liquor license, and the philosophy teacher had gone elsewhere. Had it all gone forward, we might have set up a regular gig, cut some albums, given the town a little universal dignity. But of course the Almighty has always thought of good music, and especially great music, as a sign of something to celebrate. If there's nothing to celebrate, thanks to the filthy behaviour of an overwhelming fraction of Catholic clergy and religious, and further thanks to the rationalistic idiocy of a self-triumphalist community of journalists, or slovenly police and government agencies, who can sing?
There are psalms which explain this situation. They should be read, and interiorized, because I have a feeling that their Author is up to something.
They - the journalists - therefore incline to suspect all sorts of things that might make them wiser than they are, and are incredibly hide bound to their own childish rationalism, as ridiculously rooted, say, as any idiot of a British lord of the Age of Enlightenment, that is, the eighteenth century.
But the simple fact is that in the middle ages the subject of music was much more scientifically taught than it is now, as I have been at pains to point out in earlier posts of the Ranger. All the teachers were smarter: they knew music was a branch of mathematics, and music itself was, along with arithmetic, astronomy, and geometry, a member of the Quadrivium, the other part of basic education. Or perhaps they weren't actually smarter, it was just that their students would have lynched them had they ever been so thick as to insist on some of the methods that are standard now, in both pedagogy and testing and certifying. Medieval students were like that: they were easily upset, and walked when suitably provoked. Or lynched. This inclination was only one of the advantages of lacking high school counsellors trained under Sigmund Freud.
I bring this up now, somewhat repeating myself as my few faithful readers will realize, because while I have been manfully getting up my chops in order to put my instrumental hands where my mouth is, a couple of energetic and enterprising lads hitherto unknown to me have been at work creating exactly the kind of entertainment space here in Nelson, on legendary Ward Street, where all of this theory just might be about to be mightily proved. They don't have a name for it yet, and if they thought of calling it the Quadrivium they'd have to go into the publishing business to explain why, given the massive level of illiteracy about these days, but at my experience of the decades of local history, I tend to see it all as part of a grand plan, and, optimist that I have to be, expect great things.
What they do have, I hear along the grapevine, is a certain amount of unwonted hassle from the city fathers, and perhaps not quite the attention from astute investors that they deserve. If I were Bill Gates, or the Mac guys, I'd be there with my checkbook. But I'm neither of these fellows at the moment, so I just play the quiet observe and watch to see what happens, basically juggling the import and application of the divine locutions of the last fifty years.
It struck me as a most unfortunate glitch in the overall plan, back in 64 when Shawn and I arrived in Nelson only to hear that the Trivium had closed. Trouble with a liquor license, and the philosophy teacher had gone elsewhere. Had it all gone forward, we might have set up a regular gig, cut some albums, given the town a little universal dignity. But of course the Almighty has always thought of good music, and especially great music, as a sign of something to celebrate. If there's nothing to celebrate, thanks to the filthy behaviour of an overwhelming fraction of Catholic clergy and religious, and further thanks to the rationalistic idiocy of a self-triumphalist community of journalists, or slovenly police and government agencies, who can sing?
There are psalms which explain this situation. They should be read, and interiorized, because I have a feeling that their Author is up to something.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Mixed Blessings
The first thing I want to say about syndicated columnist Gwynne Dyer is that he is the one journalist I consistently read more or less to the bottom of the page. He appears regularly in the Daily News and is a trusted source on world politics. The other sources are the rest of the household via radio news, especially the international feeds my wife listens to in the middle of the night when she is not sleeping. I first heard of Gwynne some years ago, when he brought out a documentary on the CBC about military weaponry. I was long ago trained on army stuff, both small and large, and I occasionally like to let my thoughts drift back to those times, with a view to looking at the changes since.
The next encounter with Mr. Dyer's intelligence, basically a formidable one, was during the first Gulf War, when he struck me as one of the few observers who seemed consistently to know what he was talking about. He was instance, much in contrast to a tall, handsome, self-assured Fisk correspondent busy telling us at one point how the Americans didn't stand a chance. I won't go into his list of reasons, but I will mention that his spirit was interesting, similar to, at one point, that of Saddam Hussein and his cabinet, and at another point to that of some nonsense coming off the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, albeit on a subject in no way connected with the Gulf War. The Father of Lies really does get around.
The next time Gwynne was of interest was when he phoned my wife, in her capacity as director of the Nelson Museum, to ask about venues for speaking in our area. She took the chance to pass on the family compliments about his accuracy on the Iraq situation.
And then some months ago, possibly as long as two years or so, he began mounting the strangest attacks on religion. The first was on its relative uselessness, especially in Great Britain. He was raised in Newfoundland, but now resides in London. This puzzling outburst emerged just around the same time as I had been reading, in L'Osservatore Romano, of how many areas of Africa were in such turmoil that only the churches had both the organization and integrity to be useful to the suffering public. How was it that a man ordinarily so well researched on the military and political situation in any part of the globe he chose to analyze, could be so stupid or perverse about the obvious? I thought of writing him, I thought of a letter to our own daily, but decided to let it be, as John Lennon said. Every dog gets his first bite free.
The second time was even stranger. He told us that Jesus was illiterate.
I have no idea how he came to this conclusion. Certainly not from reading the Bible or paying attention when he was a lad in catechism class in Saint John. Early in his public career, the words plainly say that Christ read the lesson in his own home town synagogue, and later, we are told that he knelt and began writing the personal sins of the Pharisees accusing the woman of adultery. Then, for an educated man at least, there are the simple principles of metaphysics, or natural theology. It is impossible for the Creator to lack any ability, simply because he is the author of all abilities. But the modern universities will insist on granting degrees to people who refuse to study philosophy in organized and humble fashion, and Gwynne must have been one of these.
I think I have read that some Moslems believe that Mohammed was illiterate, but Mohammed never claimed to be Allah. Possibly Gwynne got the two founders confused.
This time I wrote. There was no reply, no journalistic curiosity, and that's a shame, because had we got into a dialogue about the real history of abusive clergy, including possible Vatican negligence, he might have got himself a real story instead of that masterpiece of error he concocted last week about the current Pope. Dyer will have to apologize somewhere down the road, because the truth of Benedict is that it is precisely he that has made the modern Church accountable, if only because the information he's been fed from this part of the world since 1983 has rendered such accountability the only option.
I'm back to teaching school. Even being the principle again. As the final term of the year kicks off, little Joe Ratzinger gets the gold star for attentiveness; little Gwynnie Dyer sits in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
The next encounter with Mr. Dyer's intelligence, basically a formidable one, was during the first Gulf War, when he struck me as one of the few observers who seemed consistently to know what he was talking about. He was instance, much in contrast to a tall, handsome, self-assured Fisk correspondent busy telling us at one point how the Americans didn't stand a chance. I won't go into his list of reasons, but I will mention that his spirit was interesting, similar to, at one point, that of Saddam Hussein and his cabinet, and at another point to that of some nonsense coming off the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, albeit on a subject in no way connected with the Gulf War. The Father of Lies really does get around.
The next time Gwynne was of interest was when he phoned my wife, in her capacity as director of the Nelson Museum, to ask about venues for speaking in our area. She took the chance to pass on the family compliments about his accuracy on the Iraq situation.
And then some months ago, possibly as long as two years or so, he began mounting the strangest attacks on religion. The first was on its relative uselessness, especially in Great Britain. He was raised in Newfoundland, but now resides in London. This puzzling outburst emerged just around the same time as I had been reading, in L'Osservatore Romano, of how many areas of Africa were in such turmoil that only the churches had both the organization and integrity to be useful to the suffering public. How was it that a man ordinarily so well researched on the military and political situation in any part of the globe he chose to analyze, could be so stupid or perverse about the obvious? I thought of writing him, I thought of a letter to our own daily, but decided to let it be, as John Lennon said. Every dog gets his first bite free.
The second time was even stranger. He told us that Jesus was illiterate.
I have no idea how he came to this conclusion. Certainly not from reading the Bible or paying attention when he was a lad in catechism class in Saint John. Early in his public career, the words plainly say that Christ read the lesson in his own home town synagogue, and later, we are told that he knelt and began writing the personal sins of the Pharisees accusing the woman of adultery. Then, for an educated man at least, there are the simple principles of metaphysics, or natural theology. It is impossible for the Creator to lack any ability, simply because he is the author of all abilities. But the modern universities will insist on granting degrees to people who refuse to study philosophy in organized and humble fashion, and Gwynne must have been one of these.
I think I have read that some Moslems believe that Mohammed was illiterate, but Mohammed never claimed to be Allah. Possibly Gwynne got the two founders confused.
This time I wrote. There was no reply, no journalistic curiosity, and that's a shame, because had we got into a dialogue about the real history of abusive clergy, including possible Vatican negligence, he might have got himself a real story instead of that masterpiece of error he concocted last week about the current Pope. Dyer will have to apologize somewhere down the road, because the truth of Benedict is that it is precisely he that has made the modern Church accountable, if only because the information he's been fed from this part of the world since 1983 has rendered such accountability the only option.
I'm back to teaching school. Even being the principle again. As the final term of the year kicks off, little Joe Ratzinger gets the gold star for attentiveness; little Gwynnie Dyer sits in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
As Ignatius Said
As not every household, probably not every rectory, has in its library a copy of Ignatius of Loyola's little classic, the Spiritual Exercises, I will render his note 2 in it fullness.
"The one who explains to another the method and order of meditating or contemplating should narrate accurately the facts of the contemplation or meditation. Let him adhere to the points, and add only a short or summary explanation. The reason for this is that when one in meditating takes the solid foundation of facts, and goes over it and reflects on it for himself, he may find something that makes them a little clearer or better understood. This may arise either from his own reasoning, or from the grace of God enlightening his mind. Now this produces greater spiritual relish and fruit than if one in giving the Exercises had explained and developed the meaning at great length. For it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth."
All good teachers know from experience - first acquired in their own learning processes - that this is the only way a student can acquire a genuine, realistic, knowledge of any subject. The same goes for athletic coaches, or personal fitness trainers, even if they are not theologians, although sound theology as an infallible way of improving the climate of the teaching, coaching, or training situation. He or she who has learned to listen to God in the learning process, intellectual, imaginative, or physiological, is much better able to listen to a student, a patient, a client. Once a learner has gone through all the essential steps, one at a time, and over and over again in a pleased and contented frame of mind, he can put an amazing amount of stuff together - Beethoven with a sonata, Tom Brady reading the dispositions of the twenty-one other football players on the field with him as he starts calling his signals. But it doesn't begin that way, and it's the genius of the real teacher or coach who knows how to break the problems down into individual steps before it's the genius of the performer.
And the truly happy and efficient performer is the soul that has been taught or learned to relish all those little individual steps. Beethoven and all possible thirds, major and minor; Tom Brady learning to throw consistently accurate short passes before he studied the long bomb. And what is even more necessary, the pleasure and confidence-building experience of ruminating accurately over each and every move away from the game, the keyboard, in the middle of the night, out on a walk, or, like Tim McDaniel, up amongst the trees on the Whitewater ski hill. I asked him recently if he reflected on his interval studies, and he said yes, when he was ski-ing.
So now I'm doing my calf stretches properly, after all these inefficient years, loving every second of the sensation the right stretch gives, and rethinking all my recent fears that my thoughts of running might be no longer valid.
And I also wonder if it's time to take the press to the cleaners. This puts a lot of zip into the time with the erg, but also reduces the time I can spend with it. I've dropped to 200 calories per day, to concentrate on the stretches, give more time to a little over head barbell work, and think about the paparazzi. You have to be really, really, stupid to attack this Pope, and it's time the long, long, history or the media mediocrity on the question of sex abuse by clergy is exposed. Beat the rush, guys. Get your sorry asses into the confessional before the crowd swells. Only three more coughing-up days before Lent is over.
The line-up should be led, of course, by a certain ex-media baron. Oh, my, what a story Citizen Con could have got to cover if he'd only answered a certain letter.
"The one who explains to another the method and order of meditating or contemplating should narrate accurately the facts of the contemplation or meditation. Let him adhere to the points, and add only a short or summary explanation. The reason for this is that when one in meditating takes the solid foundation of facts, and goes over it and reflects on it for himself, he may find something that makes them a little clearer or better understood. This may arise either from his own reasoning, or from the grace of God enlightening his mind. Now this produces greater spiritual relish and fruit than if one in giving the Exercises had explained and developed the meaning at great length. For it is not much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul, but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth."
All good teachers know from experience - first acquired in their own learning processes - that this is the only way a student can acquire a genuine, realistic, knowledge of any subject. The same goes for athletic coaches, or personal fitness trainers, even if they are not theologians, although sound theology as an infallible way of improving the climate of the teaching, coaching, or training situation. He or she who has learned to listen to God in the learning process, intellectual, imaginative, or physiological, is much better able to listen to a student, a patient, a client. Once a learner has gone through all the essential steps, one at a time, and over and over again in a pleased and contented frame of mind, he can put an amazing amount of stuff together - Beethoven with a sonata, Tom Brady reading the dispositions of the twenty-one other football players on the field with him as he starts calling his signals. But it doesn't begin that way, and it's the genius of the real teacher or coach who knows how to break the problems down into individual steps before it's the genius of the performer.
And the truly happy and efficient performer is the soul that has been taught or learned to relish all those little individual steps. Beethoven and all possible thirds, major and minor; Tom Brady learning to throw consistently accurate short passes before he studied the long bomb. And what is even more necessary, the pleasure and confidence-building experience of ruminating accurately over each and every move away from the game, the keyboard, in the middle of the night, out on a walk, or, like Tim McDaniel, up amongst the trees on the Whitewater ski hill. I asked him recently if he reflected on his interval studies, and he said yes, when he was ski-ing.
So now I'm doing my calf stretches properly, after all these inefficient years, loving every second of the sensation the right stretch gives, and rethinking all my recent fears that my thoughts of running might be no longer valid.
And I also wonder if it's time to take the press to the cleaners. This puts a lot of zip into the time with the erg, but also reduces the time I can spend with it. I've dropped to 200 calories per day, to concentrate on the stretches, give more time to a little over head barbell work, and think about the paparazzi. You have to be really, really, stupid to attack this Pope, and it's time the long, long, history or the media mediocrity on the question of sex abuse by clergy is exposed. Beat the rush, guys. Get your sorry asses into the confessional before the crowd swells. Only three more coughing-up days before Lent is over.
The line-up should be led, of course, by a certain ex-media baron. Oh, my, what a story Citizen Con could have got to cover if he'd only answered a certain letter.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Mucho Culpa
A very dear friend has just written to announce her return from a Mexican holiday, so my title is somewhat inspired by some of the very little Spanish that I know.
It is a long established human custom to complain to God, the universe, one's friends and family, when we finally realize that in some department or another crucial to our getting through our regular activities in due order we have been making a serious mistake. How in heaven's name could I be so thick? Why didn't somebody tell me?
Why have I spent so long doing something the wrong bloody way?
I speak of the calf stretch. Today's lesson is about fitness. Primarily the fitness of my feet, but also, I suspect, because of the holistic relation of one part of the musculo-skeletal system to another, my upper legs and possibly the lower back as well. Maybe the whole back.
Now I did read the stretching bibles, initially that little gem put out by Anderson's, Bob on text, Jean on anatomical sketches. Great book. Do what they say, and you should never have an injury, as well as the mental satisfaction of knowing you're looking after your body. I appreciated their wisdom very much, and thought I was following along well enough to be able to attribute any muscle problems to old injuries, too much too soon, cold weather and of course the mystic's peculiar contract with a God who admires athletes, even old ones, but can never see any way they are as necessary as contemplatives, who by definition must spend a lot of their time being very, very, immobile in their bodies, in order to give their souls freedom to roam the heavens at will. Scratching an itch is in, another dozen miles is not.
And wouldn't you know it, the calf stretch is their first example. Beautifully explained, too. Very clearly, the knee closest to the wall bends to pretty much of a right angle, so the forward shin is vertical, while the back leg, which owns the calf to be stretched, goes straight back, so the body forms a perfect line from head to the rear foot.
True, there is a another diagram later on showing the back leg as bent somewhat, but that is to stretch the Achilles and the LOWER calf muscle, not the BELLY, where all the real trouble can collect like garbage in the bottom of a pit.
Somehow, I fixed on the second diagram. For years, and years, and years. Oh my, what a red face. What a lesson not only about reading the directions, as in that Old American Proverb, but about reading them in the right order.
What brought this to my attention, finally, was the rowing machine. Our lovely Concept 2, which for the last three weeks of Lent is getting a lot more attention. Except for the occasional day off, I'm operating on a 500 calorie per day schedule, 300 in the morning, 200 in the late afternoon, day after day, and loving it. In order to maintain this schedule, there cannot be much going for broke, maybe a couple of bursts and no more, but it has been enough of an increase to give me a sore inside right heel. There was some other stuff too, closer to the toes, but it never struck me this could have anything to do with tight calf muscles. But the heel, bless it, was a dead give away. It was new, and I had not been running on it. I finally put my mind to reasoning outside the box as I had learned to think of it, erroneously of course, and put the physics of physiology to work.
The first thing you notice is how it simply feels like a nice stretch. Big and totally comfortable. The whole body involved, as I think I prefer putting my arms straight out, not bending them so I can rest my head on my hands. The whole body sensation I have missed from Day One in that area, although I had known similar sensations in the other stretches.
That was then. This is today, as I ponder that I might have been kept stupid about the real calf stretch because my guardian angel didn't want me to get too good at running before I discovered the merits of the erg, which is of course a much more balanced workout. I can hardly wait to see what happens when I return to the road and the track, but all that relies on the spark that gives permission and inspiration.
Meanwhile, I've been able to adapt the relearned calf stretch, with the extended arms, to include not only adjustable pressure on the muscle, but also a bit of a work-out to provide the necessary triceps antidote to the rower's constant pulling. Straight arms provide a nice push stress, and if you bend your arms gradually to diminish the angle of the back shin to the floor, you can sense with immense precision just how much pressure to apply, or not apply, to the muscle. This delights someone with my analytical mind especially, as become terrifically bored as soon as I suspect my body suspects I'm interfering with the natural cohesion of body, mind, and spirit.
It is a long established human custom to complain to God, the universe, one's friends and family, when we finally realize that in some department or another crucial to our getting through our regular activities in due order we have been making a serious mistake. How in heaven's name could I be so thick? Why didn't somebody tell me?
Why have I spent so long doing something the wrong bloody way?
I speak of the calf stretch. Today's lesson is about fitness. Primarily the fitness of my feet, but also, I suspect, because of the holistic relation of one part of the musculo-skeletal system to another, my upper legs and possibly the lower back as well. Maybe the whole back.
Now I did read the stretching bibles, initially that little gem put out by Anderson's, Bob on text, Jean on anatomical sketches. Great book. Do what they say, and you should never have an injury, as well as the mental satisfaction of knowing you're looking after your body. I appreciated their wisdom very much, and thought I was following along well enough to be able to attribute any muscle problems to old injuries, too much too soon, cold weather and of course the mystic's peculiar contract with a God who admires athletes, even old ones, but can never see any way they are as necessary as contemplatives, who by definition must spend a lot of their time being very, very, immobile in their bodies, in order to give their souls freedom to roam the heavens at will. Scratching an itch is in, another dozen miles is not.
And wouldn't you know it, the calf stretch is their first example. Beautifully explained, too. Very clearly, the knee closest to the wall bends to pretty much of a right angle, so the forward shin is vertical, while the back leg, which owns the calf to be stretched, goes straight back, so the body forms a perfect line from head to the rear foot.
True, there is a another diagram later on showing the back leg as bent somewhat, but that is to stretch the Achilles and the LOWER calf muscle, not the BELLY, where all the real trouble can collect like garbage in the bottom of a pit.
Somehow, I fixed on the second diagram. For years, and years, and years. Oh my, what a red face. What a lesson not only about reading the directions, as in that Old American Proverb, but about reading them in the right order.
What brought this to my attention, finally, was the rowing machine. Our lovely Concept 2, which for the last three weeks of Lent is getting a lot more attention. Except for the occasional day off, I'm operating on a 500 calorie per day schedule, 300 in the morning, 200 in the late afternoon, day after day, and loving it. In order to maintain this schedule, there cannot be much going for broke, maybe a couple of bursts and no more, but it has been enough of an increase to give me a sore inside right heel. There was some other stuff too, closer to the toes, but it never struck me this could have anything to do with tight calf muscles. But the heel, bless it, was a dead give away. It was new, and I had not been running on it. I finally put my mind to reasoning outside the box as I had learned to think of it, erroneously of course, and put the physics of physiology to work.
The first thing you notice is how it simply feels like a nice stretch. Big and totally comfortable. The whole body involved, as I think I prefer putting my arms straight out, not bending them so I can rest my head on my hands. The whole body sensation I have missed from Day One in that area, although I had known similar sensations in the other stretches.
That was then. This is today, as I ponder that I might have been kept stupid about the real calf stretch because my guardian angel didn't want me to get too good at running before I discovered the merits of the erg, which is of course a much more balanced workout. I can hardly wait to see what happens when I return to the road and the track, but all that relies on the spark that gives permission and inspiration.
Meanwhile, I've been able to adapt the relearned calf stretch, with the extended arms, to include not only adjustable pressure on the muscle, but also a bit of a work-out to provide the necessary triceps antidote to the rower's constant pulling. Straight arms provide a nice push stress, and if you bend your arms gradually to diminish the angle of the back shin to the floor, you can sense with immense precision just how much pressure to apply, or not apply, to the muscle. This delights someone with my analytical mind especially, as become terrifically bored as soon as I suspect my body suspects I'm interfering with the natural cohesion of body, mind, and spirit.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Incredible Retirement Four
It was at least ten years ago, I think, that I asked Marianne if she thought she might be able to get back to her old habit of writing poetry if I took over some of the cooking. This was probably not too long before I actually did succeed to the bread making and then started up again as a brew master, this time with the skills to make beer from real malted barley grains, not the tin stuff of my youth. (Also with considerably additional equipment, which is the most essential element of the skills.) MT had put out quite a nice little volume of lyrics before Shawn went to the museum and left her with the household stuff. A few poems had even gone to Rome, once I took over my responsibilities with the central intellects of the Eternal City.
She paused in motion, possibly with a French knife in her hand, from chopping broccoli, and said, "I don't like anyone else mucking about in my kitchen."
I took that as a no, and found my conscience eased. I had every freedom myself from domestic or any other pressures that could prevent me from writing all I wanted to - the mystic's Muse permitting of course, after the necessary concentration on the prayer life - and I had to wonder from time to time if she felt hard done by. She was, it must be said, regularly at work at her journal. But still, prose is not poetry, any more than one very valuable, even essential, friend is not another.
But with the other female contemplative suddenly eased off her public duties to local history and the arts, available for kitchen detail and garden support, MT's poetry stock has risen as sharply as that of any oil mega giant which has discovered how to make gasoline out of offshore breezes. Seven excellent lyrics in seven days, over an admirably broad range, from the meaning of violets to a child, to the odiferous signs of a late bishop in hell.
For the moment, there may be difficulties in finding these illuminative gems. She tells me that her blog title, "From George", does not quite spark up the swift response readers get from the Ranger, and thus she has to issue information about links to the inside circle. But that will change. Mankind is always in need of clarification, one of the specialties of the real poet, and she certainly clarifies. I know from experience.
As Padre Pio said, and I somewhat expand upon, no man really grows up, not even a priest, until he becomes a spiritual director.
As I understood from the very first sight of her poetry, MT is a primitive, perhaps directly descended from those early painters who drew bulls on the walls of the caves of Lascaux. She deals in images. Sharp, clear, colourful. Like the point of an effing spear going through your gut. To hell with ordinary metre and rhyme. Especially rhyme. It would be interesting to watch her rewrite the Iliad, for example, or perhaps Genesis. No drawing room stuff this, and T.S. Eliot would understand bang on. If she keeps going as she's begun, the entire Church Militant, if it's lucky, will have its very sorry butt, post Vatican Two, in the confessional long before next Easter. That is, if it reads. At the moment, I have trouble believing that the Church Militant is actually literate.
Never, never, never, underestimate the power of a woman. Especially when she's a close personal friend of the Virgin Mary.
She paused in motion, possibly with a French knife in her hand, from chopping broccoli, and said, "I don't like anyone else mucking about in my kitchen."
I took that as a no, and found my conscience eased. I had every freedom myself from domestic or any other pressures that could prevent me from writing all I wanted to - the mystic's Muse permitting of course, after the necessary concentration on the prayer life - and I had to wonder from time to time if she felt hard done by. She was, it must be said, regularly at work at her journal. But still, prose is not poetry, any more than one very valuable, even essential, friend is not another.
But with the other female contemplative suddenly eased off her public duties to local history and the arts, available for kitchen detail and garden support, MT's poetry stock has risen as sharply as that of any oil mega giant which has discovered how to make gasoline out of offshore breezes. Seven excellent lyrics in seven days, over an admirably broad range, from the meaning of violets to a child, to the odiferous signs of a late bishop in hell.
For the moment, there may be difficulties in finding these illuminative gems. She tells me that her blog title, "From George", does not quite spark up the swift response readers get from the Ranger, and thus she has to issue information about links to the inside circle. But that will change. Mankind is always in need of clarification, one of the specialties of the real poet, and she certainly clarifies. I know from experience.
As Padre Pio said, and I somewhat expand upon, no man really grows up, not even a priest, until he becomes a spiritual director.
As I understood from the very first sight of her poetry, MT is a primitive, perhaps directly descended from those early painters who drew bulls on the walls of the caves of Lascaux. She deals in images. Sharp, clear, colourful. Like the point of an effing spear going through your gut. To hell with ordinary metre and rhyme. Especially rhyme. It would be interesting to watch her rewrite the Iliad, for example, or perhaps Genesis. No drawing room stuff this, and T.S. Eliot would understand bang on. If she keeps going as she's begun, the entire Church Militant, if it's lucky, will have its very sorry butt, post Vatican Two, in the confessional long before next Easter. That is, if it reads. At the moment, I have trouble believing that the Church Militant is actually literate.
Never, never, never, underestimate the power of a woman. Especially when she's a close personal friend of the Virgin Mary.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Incredible Retirement Three
Finally, the little jobs that hung over from the "official" last day at work are all done, and except for volunteering on Thursdays, Shawn is no longer to be found at the museum. Her successor has been discovered and hired, appears well qualified and confident, and the life of the world goes on, while the life of what started as a fully contemplative community, almost forty years ago, and operated as such for a decade before it was interrupted, returns to normal. For both economic and social reasons that interruption would seem to have been necessary, and we're all enormously proud of what my wife accomplished, but nothing equals the contemplative life, especially when the crew is up to full strength, and with the world insisting on becoming a more and more dangerous place to live in, it needs all the full time prayer persons it can get. It is not simply a coincidence that I found in my morning perusal of my journals for these dates of the month a note from John Paul's trip to India in the 80's. The Pope said "The world needs men of prayer more than it needs men of work."
* * *
And going by God's recent behaviour in my head, this must be so.
As I've said before, I ordinarily cycle the upper three of John of the Cross' four major texts, with occasional side trips to the Ascent, or other contemplative writers. (A nice little week, recently, with Teresa's Mansions.) But for the past three or four weeks, the concentration has had to be on certain parts of the Dark Night, with especially one paragraph in Book One, and two chapters in Book Two.
The purpose, it seems, is to acquire a full command of the language that deals with the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between meditation and contemplation, not only in general, but as they have occurred in my own life. As our fundamental personal nature never changes, and as mine is that of the quintessential rugby player habitually getting the wind up over the next game, I sniff the wind about what this might mean, suspecting that God is up to something a little different. Not completely different, but a little different. Part of me would like to put a complete end to outside activity, part of me has begun to wonder if there is not a possibility of returning to a bit of the good old days, when Nelson was in the first stages of building its reputation as an usually cultural minor metropolis.
I use the plural of "stages" advisedly. There was the nine years before the seventh mansion took over, and then there were nine years afterward. And then there were the almost thirty years of relating exclusively to the Vatican.
* * *
On Friday I had a long chat with a sound engineer, visiting with a relative. We talked technology, and the satisfaction of the teamwork involved in making good records, and then we drifted into the spiritual life, with the Almighty deciding to make the discussion more than academic. From how this lad brought back the memories of the Mrs Buckley's Tea Chest days, I wondered to what degree he might be a sign of the new times. But there is, of course, the parable of the sower, and there is also the image of Abram, very much alive in one of this morning's readings, and how he never saw the nation God promised him. But this morning after mass I ran into another veteran of the media, older, and with one hell of a track record. If a third turns up, the musical Olympics might come sooner than I expected. All that gold could be just a sign of even bigger Canadian successes. I am honour bound to remember that so often in the past a very nice period of contemplative solitude was followed by an outburst of profoundly useful art of one kind or another.
Meanwhile, a third of us leaves for Calgary tonight, to be with a girlhood friend dying of cancer. Providence is always interesting. Shawn is finished work just in time. It is the story of our lives, the story of those who get out of bed in order to live God's will one day at a time.
* * *
And going by God's recent behaviour in my head, this must be so.
As I've said before, I ordinarily cycle the upper three of John of the Cross' four major texts, with occasional side trips to the Ascent, or other contemplative writers. (A nice little week, recently, with Teresa's Mansions.) But for the past three or four weeks, the concentration has had to be on certain parts of the Dark Night, with especially one paragraph in Book One, and two chapters in Book Two.
The purpose, it seems, is to acquire a full command of the language that deals with the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between meditation and contemplation, not only in general, but as they have occurred in my own life. As our fundamental personal nature never changes, and as mine is that of the quintessential rugby player habitually getting the wind up over the next game, I sniff the wind about what this might mean, suspecting that God is up to something a little different. Not completely different, but a little different. Part of me would like to put a complete end to outside activity, part of me has begun to wonder if there is not a possibility of returning to a bit of the good old days, when Nelson was in the first stages of building its reputation as an usually cultural minor metropolis.
I use the plural of "stages" advisedly. There was the nine years before the seventh mansion took over, and then there were nine years afterward. And then there were the almost thirty years of relating exclusively to the Vatican.
* * *
On Friday I had a long chat with a sound engineer, visiting with a relative. We talked technology, and the satisfaction of the teamwork involved in making good records, and then we drifted into the spiritual life, with the Almighty deciding to make the discussion more than academic. From how this lad brought back the memories of the Mrs Buckley's Tea Chest days, I wondered to what degree he might be a sign of the new times. But there is, of course, the parable of the sower, and there is also the image of Abram, very much alive in one of this morning's readings, and how he never saw the nation God promised him. But this morning after mass I ran into another veteran of the media, older, and with one hell of a track record. If a third turns up, the musical Olympics might come sooner than I expected. All that gold could be just a sign of even bigger Canadian successes. I am honour bound to remember that so often in the past a very nice period of contemplative solitude was followed by an outburst of profoundly useful art of one kind or another.
Meanwhile, a third of us leaves for Calgary tonight, to be with a girlhood friend dying of cancer. Providence is always interesting. Shawn is finished work just in time. It is the story of our lives, the story of those who get out of bed in order to live God's will one day at a time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)