Someone has said or written that when you travel it is the unplanned moments that give the most pleasure. That has certainly been true for me and it’s not only when you travel.

The other day, walking back through Kennington Park after church, I came across a string trio, playing. The performers were aged nine, eight and six. An adult was conducting them. I then discovered that the family of the violinist lives directly across the road from me and we keep in touch.

I haven’t been on the tube, the London Underground since Lockdown began and I’ve been pleased to discover how much I can get around, time permitting, by bus or walking. I’m glad there are still unexpected encounters above ground but I do miss some of the spontaneous happenings on the underground.

Some time ago I remember noticing, standing near the door, a young man wearing his trousers in that fashionable manner where the waist of his trousers was very far below his actual waist. I couldn’t work out what was holding the trousers up and why they didn’t fall down. A man sitting opposite me must have read my mind because as the train slowed to stop at a station and the young man moved to get off so too did the man opposite. As he passed me he said, ‘I just want to be there when it happens’.

I’d forgotten this broadcast from 2006 or, more importantly the evening I describe, until I was going through some recordings. Of course now there are no ‘high fives’ and there’s certainly no kissing.

Out for Dinner

Ever since I wrote ‘The Secret of Life’ on September 1st and came to a conclusion that it was expressed in ‘eat, drink and be merry’, I have felt a bit uncomfortable about it. It just seems so self centred. So I’ve been trying to work out, in these days of Covid restrictions, what I can do for others. I still think I must live in the present moment but while I am in the present moment it surely doesn’t have to be only about me.

Certainly I have been on one zoom meeting as a trustee of OperaGlass Works and that involves trying to help others being creative in their way. I am sure there are many charitable organisations which are managing to continue using the internet rather than face to face meeting. I enjoy having friends from church and neighbours to lunch in the garden, two at a time, and I hope they enjoy it too. Community is incredibly important to human survival, I believe.

Of course I can give donations to causes which matter to me. And I can try and support local small businesses and the farmers’ market at the Oval. I gather supermarkets and on line shopping are doing very well at the moment so I don’t have to worry too much about them.

But the big problems of people unemployed and people homeless here and of refugees and people who are victims of war or are starving elsewhere. What ca I do for them? And as I thought of these things I remembered a broadcast that I made in 2006. As I listened again to that broadcast and I, at least partly, answered my own wonderings and am back to living in the present moment.

I’ve also published this, now that I’ve been taught how to do it, under Broadcasts.

There were scaffolders then roofers here last week then, of course, scaffolders again to take down the scaffolding the roofers had needed to replace some of the roof. All was done efficiently and well. As a result of this I have reorganised the garden – well, the part in pots that is – and some of the things in the garden.

Over the years I have bought small pieces of sculpture from the City and Guilds of London Art School which is just across the road. In past years there’s been London Craft week when, amongst other activities, there’s a competition for woodcarvers and stone carvers to produce a piece of work on a declared theme within a set time frame. Its been wonderful to watch the students at work and to see the sculptures evolve.

One of the sculptures which I bought is of a seated figure. I’ve had it on the step going into the garden. It is quite clearly the figure of a street beggar. The figure looked up at me. I found it slightly disconcerting. In my reorganisation I have moved the figure to the end of the shelf under the pergola. It is quite clearly the figure of a mystic who looks up and out beyond me. I find it very peaceful. It is the same sculpture. Only the position has changed. I wonder what it will say to me when I move it next?

Today I swam in the slow lane. Next Thursday I will swim in the medium lane. Am I swimming so much faster than I was before? Not at all. Every Thursday it’s senior swim and I suspect that my fellow senior swimmers may not only be slower than me but also senior to me. Still, it gives me a bit of a thrill to think that next Thursday I will be swimming in the medium lane. I thrill quite easily these days.

But it reminded me of the time, years ago now, when I went to the doctor, my regular GP and she checked my blood pressure, just as a regular check. ‘You’re borderline,’ she told me.

‘Borderline what?’

‘You’re bordering on having high blood pressure.’

I wondered why my blood pressure had changed since it was last checked. What was I doing, eating, drinking, differently? The doctor told me that my blood pressure was unchanged since the previous reading.

‘But you didn’t tell me I was borderline then,’ I commented plaintively.

‘You weren’t,’

!!!!

‘The definition of what constitutes high blood pressure has changed. Yours hasn’t.’

When I compare myself with some of my family and friends I can see myself as borderline poor. When I compare myself with friends, some here in London but certainly some in India and Thailand, I am very rich indeed. Comparisons can be very tricky and context is very important. Poverty in the United Kingdom or New Zealand can look quite different to that in India or Africa.

C S Lewis said that pride was the greatest sin of all. The opposite virtue is humility. During the Second World War, Lewis was invited by the BBC to broadcast a series of talks. The talks became the book Mere Christianity. He devoted a whole talk to, ‘The Great Sin’, pride. Pride, he said, leads to every other vice and that is because it is basically competitive.

‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man’.

[An aside. Should I change Lewis’s ‘man’ to ‘person’? ‘Man’ was what he said on the BBC in 1942 and ‘man’ was what he wrote. Should I change that when I quote him in 2020?]

It’s the superior, I’m not as bad as…’ and, ‘At least I’m more generous than…’ or more polite, or kind or anything at all, wherein lies the problem. 

C S Lewis, ‘It is the comparison that makes you proud.’

When I was chaplain to my old school in Christchurch New Zealand we had School Assembly in the Hall on Thursday mornings. The whole school assembled. The Headmaster (now called ‘The Executive Principal’) led half the staff, gowned, down one aisle, up some steps, to the stage. The chaplain, cassocked, led the other half. On the stage the chaplain and the headmaster faced each other, acknowledged each other with a head bow and turned to face the school. The chaplain said, ‘Sit,’ which everyone did, and then gave a brief ‘Thought for the day.’

One Thursday I spoke about the sin of pride when it is comparative and I quoted C S Lewis. Then I sat and the Headmaster stood to give his address to the school.

He said, ‘The chaplain has spoken about the wrong sort of pride. I will speak to you about the right sort. There’s litter around the quad! And around upper! Anyone would think we were some local high school! Take some pride in the place!’

As we were processing out I heard the voice of a senior colleague behind me, ‘Chaplain,’ he said, ‘Do you think perhaps the headmaster missed your point?’

There’s a dialogue from somewhere, I’m not sure where, between a pupil and master, and it goes something like this:

‘Master, what is the secret of life?’

‘That one day we will die.’

‘But, Master, everyone knows that they will die.’

‘Yes, but not everyone lives with the knowledge that they will die.’

The knowledge of the reality of death is, I find, incredibly liberating not least because it focuses my attention on the importance of the present moment and takes my focus away from the ‘coulds’ and ‘mights’ and ‘what ifs’, and all the rest. There’s an element in living in the present moment of, ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die’, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing, if that is ‘living life to the full’. In my case it isn’t all there is to life, though certainly eating, drinking and, if being ‘merry’ means enjoying the company of others, it is a very significant part of it.  

The dialogue may have been used by the American Professor of Sociology Morrie Schwartz. Certainly he himself said a number of death related quotable quotes including, ‘Learn how to live and you’ll know how to die; learn how to die, and you’ll know how to live’, and, ‘Death is as natural as life’.

The present atmosphere of Covid reporting seems to me to focus only on the negative, on increases in infections and worldwide infection rates rather than the numbers of those who have recovered. It seems to be, ‘the worst case scenario’, which is the most publicised case. Fear seems to be the driving force. It is as if death is a terrifying new discovery rather than part of who we are. There seems to be little recognition of the fact that death is natural.

I am determined not to be sucked into the fear syndrome which I’m sure must exist for many parents sending their children back to school. But surely risk exists everywhere and we take reasonable precautions to make life as risk free as possible. I find that when I accept not only the reality of death but live with the knowledge of it, then fear is replaced by living a life, within what is possible and permitted, to the full, now. 

So, for me, this includes the newly allowed swimming at the Castle Centre. The system works a treat and I’m really enjoying it. Swimming is so much better, I find, than walking and I’ve been trying to work out why. When I walk I think a lot, and pray a bit, and look into people’s windows and at the architecture and at which shops are open and which closed. My mind buzzes.

When I swim I only seem to think about the swimming. I’ve tried deep thoughts because, after all, I’m only going up and down the pool, but what is satisfying is simply the swimming itself. Of course I follow swimming pool etiquette so I’m aware of that. There are new signs at the end of the slow and medium lanes headed ‘Swimming Pool Etiquette’ but under the heading the print is so small I can’t read it without my glasses and I don’t wear my glasses when I swim. I wonder why those in the fast lane don’t need to be told.

And I cook. I’ve made three different types of pate starting off with the same basic mixture for all three. What was different were the spices, the herbs and the alcohol. One lot was influenced by brandy  (it had prunes and spices in it), another by whisky (apricots, herbs and chicken fillets) and the third by gin (crushed juniper berries). I gave some to my neighbours to do a taste test and had another taste test with some of the family on Sunday. The brandy one was described as Christmassy, pudding or cake. The whisky one came out as the favourite and I was the only one who favoured gin and juniper berries. But the thing about cooking is that you really do have to stay focussed and, if you enjoy cooking, which I do, you certainly live every moment to the full. Even the dropping stuff on the floor moments.

Maybe this sounds very trivial in the light of the very serious things that are happening in the world and perhaps it is. But I do think the only things we can deal with are the things we can deal with. Right now that is living a life and living it to the full.

The most important thing in my life is other people and under Lockdown my contact with other people is restricted but I do see some people and it is possible to live those moments to the full as well. Not, I find, by making those times very intense or particularly deep or significant but just, insomuch as it is possible, by making those times positive and perhaps even enjoyable.

Last week I went to dinner at a restaurant with three friends. It was my first dinner at a restaurant for more than six months. I went by bus, wearing a mask of course, and there were such traffic jams that the bus had to ‘terminate’ half way there. I walked in the rain for a bit and then telephoned one of my friends who took me the last stage in her car. The evening was bliss. We enjoyed the food and wine and each other’s company. We ate, drank and were merry.