I have neither written nor painted for a fortnight. I’ve not been in the mood.  And it’s not as if there’s lots to do in these days of continuing lockdown. And writing and painting is what I do, amongst other things like tidying and cooking and walking and going to church. As a friend told me, ‘Even if you’re not in the mood just decide to write for five minutes.’ Which I didn’t need to be told because I knew it already. But I did need the reminder. I am too often surprised by what I know perfectly well is a good thing to do but have forgotten when I most need to remember.

Being led by one’s mood seems to me a bit like waiting for inspiration. It doesn’t really get me anywhere. Austen Deans, the New Zealand painter and our neighbour for all of my growing up years, said to me once, ‘Simon, if Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a car bumper bar he would have painted it! He didn’t wait around for inspiration. He got on with the job!’ Austen was committed to the idea of artist as craftsman and he had that discipline of going out every morning, weather permitting, and sometimes when it didn’t, and painting.

There’s a watercolour somewhere that my father bought simply because when he was out on the farm very early one morning, mustering, and it was freezing cold, he came across Austen, painting. The watercolour had frozen on the paper and had left the wonderful pattern of frost in the blue of the sky.

So I’m writing. The five minutes have extended naturally. It’s an Update and, maybe, I will paint later. It isn’t as if I’ve been doing nothing this past fortnight. I have. I’ve been planning for my old age. And there are at least two things that are odd about that. 

The first is that I’ve never planned for the future before. Of course I’ve planned my travel to and from New Zealand and I have an appointments diary and I plan my meals, mostly. But not my ‘future’. It has just happened as it’s come along and much of it has been a surprise. And, as when travelling, the best bits have often been the unplanned and unexpected bits. 

The second thing is that planning requires a degree of certainty and I think that I’ve never lived before in less certain times. Planning needs fixed hooks to hang things on and there seem to be very few fixed hooks around at the moment.

But there are some, so there are things like Powers Of Attorney for business and for health to be put in place. A Will and Wishes to be updated. But as to planning for every eventuality or even every possible or probable eventuality, it is very difficult to do.

However this planning does encourage me to focus on trying to see the purpose of my old age. I suspect that as the first third of my life was focussed on physical and mental development, the middle years on consolidation, this latter time may be for spiritual growth. That’s just a thought. It’s not obvious and it’s a work in progress. 

It is wonderful for me and for others who gym and swim or either, that gyms and swimming pools are open again. I contacted my local swimming pool to discover whether or not I could just turn up at my usual time either for ‘Silver Swim’, free for those over sixty year olds who live in the Borough of Southwark, or ‘lane swimming’, 70 pence from midday to 2.00pm. I manage lane swimming perfectly well – in the slow lane.

‘No. You cannot just turn up you must make an appointment.’

‘Fine. Could I please make an appointment.’

‘No. You need to download the app.’

‘Ah!’

I have an iPad and an iPhone and a laptop. I even have a website. But when it comes to managing these useful pieces of equipment beyond telephoning, messaging, emailing and googling, then I get a bit lost. A young friend has come to do some heavy work in the garden. He’s shown me how to download the app. I’ve done it. Can I negotiate the app? Not a hope. And nor could he!

In 1955 the major production of the Christ’s College Dramatic Society was George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. I was in that production. I was in Act Three and Act Five. I played the Parlour-maid. I had four lines in Act Three, announcing each arrival to the ‘At Home’ being given by Mrs Higgins, and I was required to bring in a tea tray. In the second of three  performances I forgot to bring in the tea tray. Yvette Bromley, ‘Madam’, our Drama teacher was, rightly, furious. But none of that is particularly relevant except for the fact that I remember much of the dialogue from Act Three of Pygmalion.

Act Three is set in the drawing room of Professor Higgin’s mother’s Chelsea flat. In the musical adaptation , My Fair Lady, it is moved to Royal Ascot, and that’s not relevant either. Mrs Higgins is ‘At Home’. Her son calls in, to Mrs Higgins irritation. The Professor is unguarded in his comments and puts off His mother’s friends. Mrs Eynsford Hill calls with her daughter and son and, later, Colonel Pickering and, of course, Miss Eliza Dolittle. But what follows is before Eliza arrives.

MISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially] I sympathize. I haven’t any small talk. If people would only be frank and say what they really think!

HIGGINS [relapsing into gloom] Lord forbid!

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [taking up her daughter’s cue] But why?

HIGGINS. What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?

MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] Is it so very cynical?

HIGGINS. Cynical! Who the dickens said it was cynical? I mean it wouldn’t be decent.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [seriously] Oh! I’m sure you don’t mean that, Mr. Higgins.

HIGGINS. You see, we’re all savages, more or less. We’re supposed to be civilized and cultured—to know all about poetry and philosophy and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? [To Miss Hill] What do you know of poetry? [To Mrs. Hill] What do you know of science? [Indicating Freddy] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy?

MRS. HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry?

As Vicar of St Luke’s in Christchurch in the late 1970s I would organise seminars and invite interesting speakers. I asked a colleague, Fr Reynolds, to be the guest speaker at a seminar. 

‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘You don’t want me.’

‘Yes, I do, I’ve asked you!’

To which Fr Reynolds replied, kindly, and accurately.

‘No, Simon, you will tell them to let it all hang out. And I will tell them to tuck it all back in again.’

He did speak at that seminar and I did as he said and he did as he said. I’ve become less convinced about the value of ‘letting it all hang out’, over the years. There can be something self-indulgent about telling people what one really thinks, about always telling the truth.

A friend  told me a Yorkshire saying, ‘Mind you always tell the truth. But mind you don’t always tell it.’

Chapter 7 of Book 4 in C S Lewis’s Mere Christianity is entitled ‘Let’s Pretend’. I’ve found my old copy and, rather to my surprise because I’m not in the habit of writing in books, even paperbacks which this is, I have written under the Chapter Heading ‘Lies!??’  

In this chapter Lewis is writing about becoming ‘good’, ‘like God’, and he suggests there is bad pretending ‘where the pretence is there rather than the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you.’ And that there’s a good kind of pretence, ‘where the pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you are a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier that you were.’

 I suppose, to get back to Henry Higgins, it’s at the very least about good manners – good manners not simply for their own sake but good manners to allow positive communication to happen and relationships to grow.

Thailand is known as, ‘The Land of Smiles’. The tourist industry uses it as a catch phrase to indicate what a friendly country Thailand is – and it is. But there’s more to the Thai smile than friendliness. In Thailand people smile not just because they’re happy, it’s part of a deep inbuilt philosophy. If, in the west, we are confronted by a stranger who stares at us or who seems threatening, our inbuilt reaction is to clench our fists, tighten our muscles, breath more quickly and prepare to fight, or, in my case, run. The psychologists tell us our reaction is likely to be, freeze, fight, or flee. If we say anything it is likely to be, ‘What’s your problem then,’ or ‘Who do you think you’re staring at?’ Under similar circumstances a Thai will smile. The first defensive act is to allow for a positive outcome. We could say the smile is not genuine, not honest, not true. And we could be right. But it may also be a very wise way forward to positive action and even to friendship.

I can hear Ray Hunt, my English teacher in the fifth form, saying, ‘Check your spelling, boy! Check your spelling!’ If I was very clever I’m sure I could find a reason for giving the title Dissolution to something about Disillusion but I can’t. It was a mistake. Though, come to think of it, in this day of always being able to find something or someone to blame, it could have been the fault of ‘spellcheck’ or one of those things my computer does all on its own with no reference to me at all,

DISILLUSION

Disillusioned is such an odd word. Are we ever illusioned? It rather suggests that we could have seen that it was an illusion in the first place. Disillusion with the government, the church, friends – were my expectations unrealistic in the first place or is the illusion what drives us forward?

There’s a good deal of disillusionment around at the moment, both with leaders of the Church and in politics let alone business, the media and the police. Some of it I share. And, of course, what I’ve had to face up to is that part of this is because of my unrealistic ‘illusion’ in the first place. The amount of ‘good’ and ‘strong’ and ‘true’ – add as many positive adjectives as you like – leadership, that I can expect, must always be tempered by reasonable expectation based on facts and a realistic recognition of human fallibility. Nobody is perfect and we human beings are not in control of everything. The pandemic surely teaches us that.

When leaders don’t tell the truth or don’t fulfil promises of course I feel let down and am very disappointed and disillusioned. And that doesn’t only apply to leaders it also applies to roofers as I consider quotes for repairing my roof, and to builders who as part of their brief agree to clear up after they’ve finished the job. 

However I am bothered at the degree of unrealistic expectation, that I think we have, of what is achievable by those who lead us.  Could we really do that much better? I suspect it’s the old business of idolatry. There are few now, I suspect, who make idols of gold and silver and wood and stone in order to worship them. And if they do those idols are quickly pulled down.

The sermons I heard when I was young, the sermons about idolatry that is, directed my attention to idolising material things. Smart cars seemed to feature a lot. I think that was because in the New Zealand of that time many men spent Saturday mornings lovingly mending, washing and caring for their cars. Their cars were their idols. Or perhaps it was just that the preacher was envious because he didn’t have a very smart car.

But the really dangerous idolatry is surely that of making idols of other people. They invariably disappoint in the end because they are just that – other people. It can happen within marriage or with close friends. If we put someone on a pedestal we must take some responsibility for when they fall. People don’t belong on pedestals they belong alongside. 

More and more we seem to expect our political and religious leaders to be without fault. Or rather there are some faults, and they change with the fashion and the times, that they should be without. And we become disillusioned and let down when we discover that they have similar weaknesses to our own. 

Through all this I admire anyone who is prepared to go into public life at any level in order to serve their local community or their country. Sometimes we seem to take more delight in being ‘disillusioned’ than in taking responsibility for our part in the illusion.

It is sad when a friend dies, even more so a very dear one. But this sadness is not without hope.  Now I’m not talking about an ‘I’ll see you again’, sort of hope, which has always seemed to me very earthbound, as in, ‘See you later’, or ‘See you in Sloane Square’, or Kennington Park or wherever. That would have raised a smile from Bill Scott and I certainly find it amusing – that word again – to say the least.  

The sort of hope that Bill and I share is in a life that includes the Divine,  the Other, or as another good friend put it, ‘that is shot through with Eternity’. This hope is founded on our belief in a life that is more than a material or mechanical or earthbound existence. 

Of course my belief is impossible to prove in exactly the same way that a belief in life totally bound by conception and death is also impossible to prove. However I find myself set free in an extraordinary way by the awareness that to every thought, every discovery, every encounter, there is the possibility of more and that nothing is the final answer. Faith is the foundation of my hope and one aspect of this hope is that it involves patience and does not demand or expect either immediate answers or immediate solutions.

This is not an excuse for avoiding responsibility for the sustainability of the planet or the struggle for justice, but rather the opposite. It is a call to responsibility in the context of hope and not of despair and in the context of love and not of fear. It is dynamic and not static and, I guess, evolutionary not revolutionary.

If all this sounds too much like a sermon – tough. Bill Scott was someone who could say all these sorts of things without it sounding like a sermon not least because his priesthood was totally and completely him and it didn’t come on and off with his clerical collar. And that is at least part of why I will miss him.

PS More on Words

Some words change in meaning for no apparent reason. Such changes explain the fact that Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, was pleased and not offended when it was called, “amusing, awful, and artificial.” In those days amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring, and artificial meant artistic. Surely we must therefore do some careful research before we presume to know, and take offence at, the meaning of words expressed in an historical context. The meaning may have changed from something that was fine then to something quite different and unacceptable in our time.

In my last ‘Thought’, not a particularly deep thought, but I did enjoy thinking it, I had written ‘It made Shanghai less exotic’. I sent the first draft to a young friend who helps me clarify my thoughts and he pointed out that the word ‘exotic’, these days, has a negative history with colonial overtones. So I changed ‘exotic’ to ‘exciting’ because I didn’t want to give offence to anyone. Generally I don’t want to give offence and certainly not unintentionally. 

Later I went back to my Cambridge English Dictionary and I discovered the definition of exotic; ‘unusual and exciting because of coming (or seeming to come) from far away, especially a tropical country,’ which is exactly what I meant even though I would not have seen Shanghai or China as particularly ‘tropical’. It seems that words change their meanings so quickly that even a dictionary on the internet is out of date.

But it has made me think more about words that have, in my lifetime, changed their meaning and which can now give offence. Or even words that have simply changed their meaning.  A gay party sixty years ago when I began going to parties was a different party to a gay party today. And I remember Cousin Mary, fifty years older than me, describing as ‘amusing’ a situation which was not in the least bit funny but rather interesting and puzzling. Then of course ‘funny’ is an odd word as sometimes it does not mean amusing so that we used to say, ‘Funny ha ha or Funny peculiar?’

And as I now wonder about ‘exotic’ I realise I must be careful about ‘native’. I grew up with trees being either native or exotic and I simply don’t know if these words are all right if applied to trees and plants but not in other contexts. Am I a native New Zealander? I always thought I was. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the changes.

There’s a whole list of words used in a particular context that mean the opposite to their regular use or something completely different, bad – good, wicked – fun, cool – smart, I’m not sure what the new meaning of ‘sad’ is but I know there’s a meaning other than the meaning I am familiar with. When I was choosing between some frames for my spectacles the optician told me that one pair were ‘sharp’ and the others weren’t. From the tone of voice I gathered sharp was in some sense good or smart or fashionable or at least something positive. I chose the sharp pair.

But it’s the words that give offence that are the problem for me.  I’m told if I read more I would know which words I shouldn’t use. But there’s still a chance I will get it wrong simply because of my age. There are words that I may not say or write now, usually words descriptive of race, religion or gender, that were commonly used sixty years ago and by and large I’ve tried to learn not to use them. Then there are other words never used then that  are commonplace now and some of them offend me, but I must learn to live with it and I do. 

I am irritated when attending a service from the Book of Common Prayer and the person leading the service ‘corrects’ Cranmer’s English to make it acceptable. For example changing ‘men’ to ‘people’. I know some may be offended by the use of the word men to describe people but I would have thought the historical context and the beauty of the language could be taken into account. It seems to me that those who correct have a lot in common with our Victorian forebears who covered the genitalia of statues with fig leaves. There are a lot of figurative fig leaves around these days and they seem to cover  everything other than genitalia!

So that is one problem for me. There’s another, related I think, and much more serious. St Augustine described words as ‘those precious cups of meaning’. It is when I am deprived of the words that I have at my disposal to say what I mean. Then I am forced into a self isolation of expression that is every bit as bad if not worse than that imposed by Covid 19. Of course I’m not claiming some right to free speech that allows me to shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded cinema when there is no fire. I am saying that if my use of words is so judged that what I am trying to say, the meaning of what I am trying to say, is never heard, then I am pushed into a dangerous isolation.

I am fortunate to have a fairly wide vocabulary. What happens to those whose vocabulary is limited and much of it deemed ‘unacceptable’. They are condemned to silence and I suspect it’s a silence that leads to frustration and, in the end, to a dangerous explosion. Or, as I do, they find smaller and smaller groups of people with whom they can say the things they want to say and express the ideas they want to explore and so they end up being with people just like them, with ideas just like theirs, which is not what any of us need at all. 

Thank goodness that since the awful George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, a city and people distant in custom and culture from anything many of us know, the arguments and the discussions about racism have not been restricted to small groups of like minded people but have exploded into major discussion and debate around the world. There has been a mind opening for many, including me, as a result. And the learning has been allowed to happen.  

I need my ideas, the meaning my words contain, to be challenged so that I can learn and grow. And I need to be allowed to get past my first sentence without being challenged for using an ‘unacceptable’ word. Isn’t having the discussion more important than using the right words? I do still want my ‘unacceptable’ words to be explained to me so that I don’t repeat them, but after, rather than during. And I need to learn, even at my age, not to interrupt, and to let the other person get to the end of their sentence before I leap in with a comment or a correction!