Zeal

For one of the two papers I've got due, I'm discussing acedia, a kind of occupational hazard of monastics, also called "listlessness," or "sloth," if it's something you did to cause it. I came across a quote out of Cassian's Conferences:

From carelessness on our part, when through our own faults, coldness has come upon us, and we have behaved carelessly and hastily, and owing to slothful idleness have fed on bad thoughts, and so make the ground of our heart bring forth thorns and thistles; which spring up in it, and consequently make us sterile, and powerless as regards all spiritual fruit and meditation.

Sloth, being the opposite of zeal, is that which makes "the ground of our heart[s] bring forth thorns and thistles." I'm sure most people have experienced this at least once, a dry time so complete, everything feels like a waste. Burnout, depression, the "noonday demon." But what about its opposite, zeal? The OED definition is "ardent love or affection" or "fervent devotion." Also: "ardent desire or longing."

If sloth is that which makes our hearts into a wasteland, zeal is what makes them fertile. It's having a longing, or some sort of love for our work. I think most of us know a person, or people, who had an infectious desire and love for their discipline. It's one in which you can't help but be inspired by their love. They never bash you over the head with expectations, but lead you to the same kind of devotion and affection that they first had for their work.

In students, it's the person you thought never cared, who winds up at your empty office hour (or so was my experience in my Master's) to discuss some point. They're the people who make all the dry times and bureaucratic hassle worth it.

"And finally, never lose hope in God's mercy." (Rule of St. Benedict 4:74)

Two threads over on Livejournal caught my eye, this one, and this one. Sadly, what was being discussed in them is nothing new. In both threads, the posters were being criticized for their decision to become a music major. Both were advised--in a polite sense of the term--to get "real" majors and "real" jobs.

In some parts of the world, the Roman Catholic clergy is facing a vocational crisis. There are too few priests to go around, and even fewer people entering the seminary. It's fashionable to blame everything from female altar servers, homosexuality, and whatever bugaboo is bothering people at the time. But I think the real crisis is in the perception of a vocation.

The OED and a year's worth of Latin last summer remind me that the word "vocation" is derived from the verb "vocare," or "to call." A vocation is something one is called to, and the choice is ours whether to respond or not. It's not something one can decide on a whim, but a result of careful listening and discernment. It's something that can lead people into wild and uncomfortable places, but it, like anything else in life, is far from certain.

Minor Update and Unity

I'm still planning on doing a "seven cardinal virtues" post for academics, but it's crunch mode here, and I've got two papers I need to get in before the end of the semester.

So another blog post here and this seminar about mind/body/spirit in music got me thinking about unity. Don't get me wrong, it's been a great class, last few weeks aside. On the one hand, I want there to be some sort of unity. On the other, I know that there are some things we all are going to disagree upon.

For instance, there are some things I'm comfortable doing (learning about other religions, observing their practices), and there are others I'm not comfortable with (actually participating in something I don't believe in). I feel I owe it to the other denomination or religion that I refrain from participating, when I can't share their beliefs. For instance, I'd never take communion in a congregation where the presence of Christ was held to be only symbolic.

So one of the student presentations next week involves a participatory event based upon a philosophy and set of beliefs I don't hold. I do respect those beliefs highly, but I, personally, can't share it. (My other objections involve a tight work schedule and the fact that for me meditation--or contemplation as my tradition calls it--is a personal and solitary activity I can't just do around other people. I really wasn't kidding when I mentioned I'd rather have sex in public than meditate around people I don't know.) There's no problem with my being excused from it.

The past couple weeks in the class have made me realize how very different we all are, and wonder if unity is an ideal we can't have here and now. If anything my study of other religions has taught me, it's taught me that I have a home as a Roman Catholic. No matter how irate some of its members may make me, my culture, beliefs, and identity are as a Roman Catholic. This isn't something I can put aside for the sake of half-baked "scholarship," as in the case of the satanism presentation. While I do enjoy learning about other religions, I can't put aside my Catholicity (is that a word?) and become something I'm not.

I'm feeling uneasy about the next class, even though I'm excused from it. I don't think I'd have a problem, were things kept theoretical. But I think I'd be feeling the same, had the class gone to Mass on the day we were discussing some readings on the Eucharist. As an EM, I can't refuse anyone communion (that's the job of the ordinary minister in my diocese), but I would feel weird receiving communion among the majority of the class who couldn't. Extrapolating my hypothetical class situation further to me acting as an EM during that hypothetical Mass, and knowing my diocese's policy of extraordinary ministers of communion (me) not being able to refuse people, I'd hope that people who present themselves for communion are at least able to understand and accept by what we believe in the Eucharist. And I don't know that the Spirit isn't leading them there.

So going back to Lorna's post, I think there's a way out of all this:

Unity does not mean cloning. God forbid! The creator of the universe did not even create two snowflakes the same, so why we Christians would fall into the trap of thinking that being united means being the same I’ll never understand...That which is on our heart (not our mind) is what unites us - if we are willing.

Can we in this class come together from this? Or, rather, can I? Lord knows at the begining of the class I was willing for that kind of meeting of hearts Lorna discusses. I feel rather far from that now.

Fair warning, I'm not feeling overly charitable tonight. It's one of those days, when you wonder if the world is off it's meds. At one time I was considering a vocation with the Trappists, and today is one of those days, when I start wondering if I made the wrong choice to pursue a more apostolic vocation. (Although truth be told, people are people, and annoyances are found everywhere, cloister or no.)

So today in a seminar, I was treated to a presentation by a student. The readings she gave were from the Satanic bible. Now, it could've been handled in a more interesting manner. But clearly from the get-go her intent was to shock. Needless to say, after reading the description of the black Mass, I was mightily pissed off. (Still am, to some extent.) I'm even more pissed off because I had to sit through two hours of vapidity. Granted, she's still learning, and I could've been a bit more charitable; but when that which you hold most sacred in your denomination is trashed for no real reason at all (She could've cut the readings out of her presentation, and it wouldn't have mattered), it tends to get a bit personal.

I'm still too angry to sleep; the rosary (which normally helps insomnia) only served to reinforce my pissed-offed-ness; so I wander over to the veritable Chronicle of Higher Ed, only to read two columns about the seven deadly sins for students and professors. Including one nice little tidbit, also insulting the crap out of one of my research interests:

The students, mostly, have learned not to take responsibility for their actions. If they fail to do assignments and miss a substantial number of classes, it's because they are so busy, even though said busyness-- if the truth be told--consists mostly of playing video games, watching television, attending sporting events, and going to drunken parties.

Yup, you guessed it. Students are lazy because they drink too much and play video games. I wonder what Prof. Benton would think about doctoral students who play video games, write papers on them and hardly drink. Oh, and further on in his column, we all dress like hussies (so much for my geek wear of jeans and a T-shirt or long-sleeved T-shirt). I'd like to see him chase cat-5 cable under someone's desk in a skirt and heels. Or gut a computer wearing chiffon. And I've got two words to say to pantyhose: yeast infection.

So since I'm in the mood to be contrary, I'll be starting on my seven cardinal virtues for academics. Now I think it's finally time for sleep.

Although I'm no longer in the weekly class for composers, I'm still on the class list. An email was distributed Friday in which a "game" will be played next week. Normally, the "game" consists of a bunch of "drop the needle" examples of contemporary pieces, which the students have to guess. It's an interesting diversion, although I have issues with "drop the needle" tests, but that's another blog entry for another time. Next week's version requires students to write a short piece in the style of some contemporary composer, and the rest have to guess who the composer is emulating. I have Issues with this as a pedagogical tool.

There is a tradition of such things in how composition is taught. It used to be that if you wanted to study with a particular person, you were expected to write music like him or her. One of my teachers studied with Berio, and he expected his students to write a certain way. Anything else wasn't even considered. During my Master's, I was to study with another composer of that generation, and it was expected that I would only write the kind of music he produced. Now, the individual in question was not a horrible person--far from it--but old pedagogical habits die hard.

Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own.

They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems or possess somebody else's spirituality. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 98)

A former teacher, quoting Morton Feldman, said that in teaching composition, there are only two things to keep in mind: that the student knows what he/she wants, and that he/she gets it. One of the hardest things about being a composer is learning to trust your own intuition and voice. It's an instinct, of sorts. It's terrifying and liberating to be confronted with a blank sheet of paper (or blank text editor, as the case may be). Instead of confronting and overcoming this nothingness, writing someone else's music is an easier way to avoid it. People may write good music this way, but they'll never mature into the composer they were called to be.

Perfection is not something you can acquire like a hat--by walking into a place and trying on several and walking out again with one on your head that fits. Yet people sometimes enter monasteries with that idea...

If they do this job thoroughly, their spiritual disguises are apt to be much admired. Like successful artists, they become commercial...

Such "sanctity" may perhaps be the only fruit of mutual flattery. The "perfection" of the holy one is something that reassures his neighbors by comforting them in their own prejudices and by enabling them to forget what is lacking in their own communal mentality. It makes them feel that they are "right," that they are on the right way, and that God is "satisfied" with their collective way of life. Therefore nothing needs to be changed. But anyone who opposes this situation is wrong. The sanctity of the "saint" is there to justify the complete elimination of those who are "unholy"--that is, those who do not conform.

So too in art, or literature. The "best" poets are those who happen to succeed in a way that flatters our current prejudice about what constitutes good poetry. We are very exacting about the standards that they have set up, and we cannot even consider a poet who writes in some other slightly different way, whose idiom is not quite the same. We do not read him. We do not dare to, for if we were discovered to have done so, we would fall from grace. We would be excommunicated." (New Seeds, 101-102)

Although it's nice to have a piece which speaks to another person, it's easy to fall into the trap of writing what other people want to hear. It's also easy to like those who don't challenge us or challenge our notions of what "music" is. There are those who spend their lives forging ahead, without becoming enslaved to newness, yet never get the recognition they deserve. And there are those who write according to the status quo.

Ethically, I don't see how I could require another person to write music like I do, or in some other style. I see those who teach composition as tasked with the nurturing and development of another person's voice. (Thankfully, I had great teachers.) It's a heavy responsibility, and forcing a student to write a particular way won't develop it. (Although short exercises in different styles might be good for getting over "writer's block" or helping the student learn what he/she wants, never as the sole method.)

I'm thanking my Maker I don't have to do that assignment for next week. There is something deeply sacramental about sitting in the presence of a piece from a composer who's in touch with his/her voice. It may or may not be a good piece from him/her; but while listening to it, you can't help but feel as if you're being drawn into the composer's presence. The exposition of a composer's voice is a sacred thing, and would-be critics would do well to respect this.