D is for Disabilities

photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014

The dog days of late August have been a memory for the past two years due to unseasonably cool and wet weather in the northeastern provinces and states.  As we headed into Labor Day weekend, I saw no reason not to spend my last free morning taking down some overgrown foundation shrubs from a four-foot painter’s ladder, especially when routine yard work usually costs more to hire than I get paid.  “Let’s just clip the tops to my height and then saw off the base,” I thought. The first one went down quickly. No reason at all to hesitate on the three others I had in my sights, at least not until I was three feet in the air and heard a “snap” emanating from my right knee. After a few minutes of excruciating pain, I was relieved to walking toward the shed, the clippers in one hand and the ladder in the other.

Before five more minutes had elapsed, I was on the ground twice more. The ladder had long since spiraled off to the left, while the clippers narrowly missed my head. One of the neighbors, hearing my torrent of Anglo-Saxon expletives, came running and grabbed my cell phone for me from the car, while a second neighbor offered to drive me to the hospital. I was down a third time before she could get me there. On the proverbial pain scale of 1 to 10, these four falls were each at least a 9. The only way to get through this was not to fall again.

The x-ray showed nothing broken, which left me with a provisional diagnosis of a soft tissue injury. “Can I drive?” I asked the attending ER physician. “I’d play that one by ear, since you have hurt your right knee. Press down on the foot rest on the wheelchair and see how you feel.” “The foot rest is broken.” “Then try the edge of the foot rest.” “Thanks.” For once, there was no pain. I’d play it by ear, I thought, literally and figuratively. If I could press down on that malfunctioning wheelchair part, then I could probably use the piano pedal. If I could manage the piano, then I could probably drive, and if I could drive, I could work. It also followed that there was no reason to make more than minor changes at the office. Indeed, I had already solved one problem while waiting for the x-ray. I asked the ER physician for a physiotherapy requisition, got fitted with crutches, and phoned our neighbor to come get me. Meanwhile, my husband would pick up our daughter from her own work.

I got home, made my way in through the small step at the back door, and sat down to work-related paperwork. I even managed to get upstairs to bed and downstairs the next morning.

I was going to be just fine. See?! Left to my own devices, I went out the back door on my crutches, checked my safety in the car, then drove to nearby Fergus and paid some bills.

Before I did that, however, I whacked away at more of the paperwork that was sitting on my hard drive.  Little did I know that that would be no more successful at that than attacking the sapling in the back yard the day before. The Apple gurus in Waterloo, 30 minutes away, had told me a month before that I was unlikely to need any more work on my computer, but if I did, they would have to replace the memory board under warranty. Of course, the memory board took that moment to go haywire. And of course, the .05 per cent of my work that was not saved externally or emailed was the .05 per cent I needed for a letter of recommendation and for the start of term after Labor Day.

The folks at Apple were good at scheduling an appointment, once they had located my extended warranty. They even understood why I no longer had my hard drive hooked up to my Time Capsule (too many lightning strikes to the house —that is apparently a common problem). Although the staffers made no promises, they were optimistic that I could get the files onto my external hard drive and memory sticks, which I could then install on an older machine, and they even hopeful that I would have my “good” laptop back before I started teaching the next week.

All I had to do was drive to the Apple Store in Conestoga Mall by 7:30 that evening.

No, let me rewrite that last sentence: all I had to do was to check my privilege. There is no public transportation where I live. My ability to continue working while temporarily disabled was entirely dependent upon being able to drive and having access to a working vehicle. I also have a moderate amount of third-party coverage for physiotherapy, thanks to the fact that the other adult in the family has a job with benefits. Single-payer medical care got me through the hospital. My work is of the sort that can be managed by an employee on crutches with insignificant adjustments (one of my departmental colleagues worked from both crutches and a wheelchair at different times over many years). This matters a lot, since I did not have to worry about losing my job. It also matters because I might not have been eligible for workers’ compensation, given that contract academics are not usually paid over the summer and that the accident occurred at home in August. In sum, I was lucky that I did not have to ask about the law but rather was able to turn up for work on schedule.

Along the way, I discovered many other areas in which I could no longer take ordinary activities for granted —not just the running or the sports that I had planned to take up again but perhaps never can. (The jury is out on whether I will make a full recovery, or even whether I should have an MRI, for which there is a waiting list in Ontario.) Like most jurisdictions in O.E.C.D. countries, Ontario has legislation covering disabilities. Like most public employees in these jurisdictions, I have been required to attend a briefing on this legislation. Over the Labor Day weekend, I refreshed my memory about both the law and its limitations in a hurry, grateful at every step of the way (so to speak) that as these problems go, I was on the lower end of necessary accommodations, and that at least some of them would likely be temporary.

Both the law and best practices in many countries require “reasonable accommodation” to provide equal access to the complete gamut of venues, services, and activities for anyone who would otherwise be eligible if he or she did not have a disability. In many cases, there is a difference between the minimum required and what is truly equal access. For instance, the leader of our seminar at work gave the example of a blind student taking a survey course that had one chapter on art and architecture. “Reasonable accommodation” would at the minimum entail replacing the unit on art and architecture with a mutually acceptable alternative, such as having the student read a story or a play that made reference to art or architecture in addition to the plays already assigned for everyone else. A better approach would be to work with the student to make as much of the section on art and architecture as possible available in a format which that student could use, if necessary by getting expert assistance. The law, however, recognizes that there are practical limitations to what may be feasible.

Despite generally noble intentions, “reasonable accommodation” and universal access are easier concepts to develop on paper than to put into practice. Most communities have a large number of private houses that have been turned into businesses or semi-formal public places, and not all meet standards of accessibility, whether literally or in practical terms. Modern public facilities vary enormously in accessibility. Some are superb. The new main entrance to the library at Wilfrid Laurier University, my employer for the last decade and a half, was designed with universal access in mind (photograph below). It is also carefully engineered to fit into the rather awkward slope between the library and the surrounding ground and buildings. The planter at the front will have a community garden (unfortunately, not edible at this point), and there will be more seating. Cannon Design, the architectural firm behind the project, did a splendid job actualizing the desires of the library staff. By coincidence, it was opened a day or two before my accident, and was almost immediately put to use by yours truly.

Wilfrid Laurier University Library
Universally accessible main entrance
Architect: Cannon Design, Toronto, Ontario
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014
with thanks to Nancy Willing and Gohar Ashoughian of the WLU Library for information on the project

Conestoga Mall in Waterloo and Stone Road Mall in Guelph each have an ample supply of accessible parking. In fact, they appear to have more than the two major shopping malls in the Toronto area that we visited on consecutive weekends, despite the malls in Toronto being several times larger. On the whole, I have ended up with more problems in Toronto than that good city surely deserves. I had to cancel plans to attend a large public event held at the downtown convention center in Toronto because the nearest subway station was closed and there was no place to sit down at the function.

The most egregious example of lack of access I have seen so far turned up when I phoned the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario about my temporary accessible parking permit. The staffer at the office of the MTO nearest my home, in a building that it had occupied for no more than a decade,  rather apologetically informed me that either I or someone appointed by me would have to retrieve the application from the Ministry in person, as it was not available on line. In order to get the application processed in a timely manner, I would then have to return the form with documentation, again in person. (I am unclear as to whether I could have delegated that part of the procedure, but in any case it was moot because of scheduling issues.) Doing so locally would entail walking up and down twelve cement steps. Otherwise, I could drive 30 minutes to the village of Arthur or use the outlet near my office, 30 minutes away in a different direction but obviously more convenient for me. Unfortunately, the MTO outlet near my office had a thirty-minute wait at an off-peak time and no tag and number system allowing people to use one of the few available chairs. A kindly woman let me cut ahead of her to retrieve the form, which took a matter of seconds, but it would have been inappropriate to do the same when finalizing the document, a much longer procedure. I drove to Arthur, where I was the only client there.

What works for one person may not for another. While the manager of the local supermarket was more than happy to offer put me into a motorized cart, that may be overkill for someone with crutches or a cane. (A friend who uses two canes to get around mostly shops at smaller food stores.)

Disabilities are expensive as well as time-consuming, a point seemingly lost on many of those who set the rates for people who are on longer term disability pensions. There are noticeable increases in living expenses even for someone in a short-term and relatively straightforward situation, as shopping for groceries at the deli or on line usually costs more than going to the supermarket. (Once again, I was lucky to have family members able and willing to shop from my grocery list and to have a good and reasonably-priced deli in the area.) Modifications to vehicles and housing are unaffordable for many people who need them, even in wealthy countries, unless they have access to public or private insurance. People who cannot drive often have other impediments.

I have been fortunate to have escaped the worst of what could have happened. Despite the issues of parking and access to certain venues, I have experienced a great deal of generosity from family, friends, colleagues, and medical professionals. In particular, I racked up one of those debts that can never be repaid from a friend with a more serious disability and one of longer duration. She had invited me to join her at a restaurant for lunch before she knew of the accident. On the day we met, I could not find her vehicle in the parking lot. I must have arrived first, I thought, and so I left her the one accessible spot — but in a scene reminiscent of O. Henry’s short story “The Gift of the Magi,” she had placed her own car in such a way that the accessible spot would be left for me. In the end, neither of us took it, and we each ensured that the other made her way safely from the restaurant to her own vehicle. That same friend urged me to do everything reasonable to ensure that I could walk safely without a cane or crutches before the onset of ice and snow, lest some of my leg muscles atrophy over the winter, leaving me with more permanent damage than would otherwise be the case.

We never know when we or another person will become disabled, whether physically or intellectually. Students in one of my classes once wondered about the extra table and chairs located haphazardly at the front of the room. I replied that they were probably there in case a student came in with crutches or a wheelchair, although admittedly they should be better arranged and labeled. 

The spot was occupied for its intended purpose before lunch the same day.

Some queries for Friends and Quaker organizations: 

In what ways do we ensure that we are aware, both as individuals and as a Religious Society, of the range and types of disabilities (of all degrees and likelihood of permanence, whether visible or non-visible, including health and mobility-related, psychological, social, learning, and developmental disabilities), the status of current legislation, and our moral obligations as believers in equality? Do we get competent professional advice when we are unsure what to do?

Do Quaker-related facilities meet the highest standards of accessibility law and practice? If buildings are grandfathered in under previous law, what is being done to bring them up to code? If buildings are not accessible, do Friends’ business sessions and other decision-making meetings take place in them? What about parking and public transit routes?

What procedures do your Meeting have to ensure that all members and attenders have, to the extent possible, equal opportunities to participate in the spoken aspects of Meeting for Worship and Meeting for Business? Large Meetings may have the money and the justification to install a hearing loop, but what can be done in smaller Meetings? At the very least, agendas and supporting documents can be posted and the text of proposed minutes run by people who need a written summary. Likewise, are Meetings able to ensure that those with visual impairments are able to access minutes of Meetings for Worship for Business? Can we make it possible for those with limited mobility to participate in discussions electronically?

If Meetings for Worship are held in private homes, to what extent are those homes universally accessible (at least one entrance, toilet and sink, and suitable seating)? Do the homeowners have adequate liability insurance? Do they tell people in advance about any companion animals that may be part of their household?

Do Friends Meetings take reasonable precautions concerning ice build-up (if relevant) and fall prevention?

Is programming for sessions such as Quarterly, Half-Yearly, Area, and Yearly Meetings designed to be accessible to all?

Do Quaker children and young people with exceptionalities (whether physical, psycho-social, or intellectual) have access to the same range of Quaker-oriented programming and facilities as their peers who are not so affected? If not, what can reasonably be done to rectify the imbalance?

Do nominating committees ensure that adult Friends and attenders, regardless of disabilities, have suitable opportunities to serve the Meeting and/or larger Quaker bodies? Can Friends “think outside the box” about what might constitute ideal qualifications for a position?

Do Friends label foods brought to potlucks and other gatherings, and do they try to provide a variety of options so that everyone will have something to eat, regardless of food restrictions? (Ann Arbor Meeting, in Ann Arbor, Michigan has an excellent form that can be filled in by people contributing to potlucks.)

Are Friends aware that others, both inside and outside of the Meeting, may have chemical allergies and sensitivities that preclude being near people wearing perfume and cologne?

For many with physical disabilities, back-country hiking is beyond their wildest dreams.
A trip to the local supermarket is equivalent to running a marathon.
Johnson Canyon, Banff National Park, Alberta
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2013

C is for Construction

Construction sign south of Fergus, Ontario, Canada
August 2014
©Kristin Lord 2014

Cynical or merely realistic, I allow extra time for road travel in July and August because it is construction season in the northern hemisphere. This year there is more of it than usual because the northeastern quadrant of US states and Canadian provinces had such a brutal winter. Then add issues of population growth and aging infrastructure. Finally, as is apparent from a recent article in the Toronto Star, going into what the locals call Hogtown (although there are no longer any hog processing plants within the city limits) is asking for trouble due to refurbishment of one downtown artery and preparations for next year’s Pan Am games. We could be forgiven for mistaking the lines of SUV’s and articulated delivery vehicles extending from Pearson (the main Toronto airport) to Guelph Line for the snorting sows and boars of a century ago. The advice for enduring southern Ontario traffic is to be centered and keep one’s temper for the inevitable.

Expecting problems to arise is not always the advice that springs to mind from either the Bible or the writings of early Friends. Admittedly, the Apostle Paul speaks of looking “through a glass, darkly” in I Corinthians 13:12 (perhaps in part because of the imperfections of mirrors in his day), but our eyes may light more often upon the summation of the commands in the Sermon on the Mount at Matthew 5:48. The King James version is elegant and succinct: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” It is also a literal translation of both the Greek New Testament (ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνοις τέλειός ἐστιν) and the Latin Vulgate (Estote ergo vos perfecti, sicut et Pater vester cælestis perfectus est).

Every translation is by its nature an adaptation, and modern scholars, before attempting an up-to-date rendering of this passage, have tried to clarify its context. First and perhaps foremost, the very fact that the line begins with an imperative (“Be”) and is followed by a comparison (“as” or “just as”) reminds us that as human beings we are not perfect. God is the example for us to emulate. Nevertheless, for those worrying about the potential psychological impact of perfectionism, parsing the syntax in this way may not offer much consolation. Drilling into the Greek can be equally uncomfortable: the word τέλειος (teleios) in the King James as “perfect,” means either “perfect” or “complete,” as does the perfecti of the Vulgate. For similar ideas expressed elsewhere in the Bible, commentaries direct us to Leviticus 19.2: “You must be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (REB).

Scholars are left to consider in what way we should drive for the ideal. Since Matthew 5:48 is the summation of Jesus’s commandments about love and moral behavior, the Revised English Bible translates it as “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”

We are left with the question of how to square the emphasis on striving for perfection or completeness with the message of Christianity as a religion of hope and forgiveness —indeed, of the idea that humans are prone to lapses in judgment and morality and need to be able to pick themselves up and go on. Here chapter 13 of Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, which contains the related word τὸ τέλειον (to teleion), best translated as the English abstract noun “perfection,” is illustrative. This is the familiar passage often read at weddings, and the same one read by British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the funeral of Princess Diana.

1 Corinthians 13 is subject to much interpretation. In this case, the King James Version, redolent as it is for the culture of English-speaking countries, does not do modern readers a favor. Nowadays we may speak darkly, in the sense of enigmatically (“After hearing of the murder, she spoke darkly about a strange vehicle having been left in the gully overnight the preceding week”) but we do not use that expression for sight.

The general outline of the passage, however, is clear if we consider the geographical and social context and the Greek. Corinth in Paul’s day was, as it is now, a seafaring town, located on a narrow isthmus between the Aegean Sea and the Gulf of Corinth. People who drive through the Isthmus of Corinth on the modern superhighway between Athens and the Peloponnese, where Sparta is located, can see from one side to the other. In the heyday of the Greek city-states, Corinth was a wealthy community, chock-full of artistic masterpieces; it was also caught in the middle of every war that hit the eastern Mediterranean. Not surprisingly, given its strategic location, Corinth was sacked by the Romans in their conquest of Greece about two centuries before Paul preached in the area. The Romans looted every piece of art they could carry and smashed the city. To Roman writers of a later generation, the destruction of Corinth stood in the place that people of the post-World War II generation speak of the destruction of Dresden in Germany in February of 1945. Cicero, in discussing his theory of the “just” war in his book de Officiis (On Duties), more or less holds his nose when justifying its destruction. He writes, “I wish they had not destroyed Corinth; but I believe they had some special reason for what they did—its convenient situation, probably—and feared that its very location might some day furnish a temptation to renew the war” (de Officiis 1.11.35, translation by Walter Miller).

By Paul’s time Corinth was once again a thriving seaport. Like other communities of its sort, it attracted people from other places wishing to better themselves. Some succeeded; others did not. Many were lonely; there were tax-collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. The church itself was subject to growing pains and quarrels about belief and, so it seems from the letter, about much more mundane matters. The more sophisticated among them would have been well aware of the history of the town and its losses at the beginning of Roman rule. No wonder Paul speaks about the primacy of faith, hope, and love, and emphasizes human growth and maturity from childhood to adulthood. The metaphor of growth from childhood to adulthood (“when I was a child...”) at 1:13.11 shows that this process is normal.

In this passage perfection equals completeness. When perfection or completeness (τὸ τέλειον) comes to pass, that which is a part of the whole (τὸ ἐκ μέρους, a phrase which is much more compact in the Greek than the English) shall pass away. There is no time given for such completeness, but it is implicit that the perfection is not of this world.

Now we get to the “glass, darkly” section. The Greek reads, βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, “For now we see through a mirror in a riddle.” The word αἴνιγμα (ainigma in our spelling), whose English derivative is “enigma,” is the standard word for a riddle or a problem that is difficult to solve. We see this word, for instance, in Oedipus’s taunt to the seer Teiresias that he, Oedipus, cannot be the man who killed King Laius (who turns out to be Oedipus’s biological father) in line 392 of Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King.  The word ἔσοπρον (esoptron) is the standard word for a mirror, and it is the most common translation (the word speculum, a hyper-literal rendition of the Latin Vulgate, is occasionally used to convey the idea of moving through various levels of “seeing,” but for women, at least, the word has a connotation that is definitely not what Paul had in mind).

But what does a mirror have to do with a riddle? Isn’t a mirror what we use to see many entities, including ourselves, clearly? It turns out that the answer is yes and no. Yes, we hope for clarity. However, a mirror reverses left and right, and mirrors in antiquity never provided close to the likeness that we see today.

Mirror, Roman period
uploaded by Udimu for public usage
Creative Commons License, Wikimedia Commons

Secondly, the concept of seeing indirectly is an idea that would have been familiar to most people in Paul’s day who had a reasonable reading knowledge of Greek. The passage that would have come to mind is the allegory of the cave in Plato’s Republic (514a-520a). (In this regard, see, among others, J. Philip Wogaman, Christian Ethics: A Historical Introduction, 2011², p. 23.) In the cave people who have been imprisoned since childhood see only shadows of puppets reflected from a fire; even when they are turned to see the puppets, an activity that  initially hurts their eyes, they have not seen the physical beings that these puppets represent. The prisoners need to go into sunlight in order to see the “real” people, animals, and what-not that the puppets represent. Once again, they are blinded until their eyes adjust and they are able to see clearly. Since Plato is speaking metaphorically, ultimately abstract concepts (for instance, justice, beauty, courage) take the place of physical ones, and the sun comes to represent the idea of the good.

Plato’s Republic is a work of pagan literature, and Paul’s idea of the good is part of a monotheistic mindset. Nevertheless, the progression in types of vision is the same. When Paul describes people “then” seeing “face to face,” they will have the same wholeness of knowledge that Plato described earlier. (The word “to know” is the same in classical and New Testament Greek.) In the interim, we have faith, hope, and love (ἀγάπη, agape, the non-erotic love sometimes translated as “charity”). Also, it happens that this passage is not the only one in the epistle to refer back to Plato; if we substitute ἀγάπη for ἔρως (eros, or erotic love), Paul’s description of love is reminiscent of that of Agathon in Plato’s Symposium 174a-d (see Thomas L. Cooksey, Plato’s Symposium: A Reader’s Guide, 2010, p. 55).

As we know, the path to perfection can lead to despair, and Jesus himself was no stranger to it. For Quakers, George Fox provides a detailed description of both the ideal and the less-than-perfect reality. When considering what Fox asks his followers to do, people often refer to the letter to ministers which he dictated to Ann Downer in Launceston jail in 1656. The main portion of this letter ends with the famous command, “Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you come, that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that answering that of God in everyone.” This passage is sufficiently important in the development of Quaker thought that it is cited without the surrounding context at the end of  the Advices and Queries of Britain Yearly Meeting’s Quaker Faith and Practice. However, Fox’s command is part of a longer discussion of how to build the church; this discussion showcases a metaphor of the back-breaking work —especially with seventeenth-century technology!— of making the soul into fertile ground. He advises us that “none are ploughed up but he who comes to the principle of God in whim which he has transgressed.” (Journal, Nickalls ed., p. 263; see citations in Britain Yearly Quaker Meeting Faith and Practice 2013 for sources for the complete document)

George Fox himself was known to suffer from periods of disillusionment; today we might be likely to say that he suffered from episodes of depression, which is now considered to be as much of an illness in its own right as heart disease or diabetes. In 1647, after leaving both the priests of the Church of England and the dissenting preachers, he felt that “there was none among them all that could speak to my condition.” He came to find that “all my hopes in them and in all men were gone.” The culmination of this period is hearing the voice which said, “‘There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,’ and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy.”  

Understandably, George Fox wonders why God tormented him for so long, not only with isolation but with all sorts of temptation. Fox writes that the Lord answered that “it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions, how else should I speak to all conditions; and in this I saw the infinite Love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.” (passages in the last two paragraphs from George Fox, Journal, Nickalls edition, p. 19 and 33; sections 19.01 and 19.03 in most recent Britain YM Quaker Faith and Practice)

I was mulling over these passages and what they might mean for me personally a couple of weeks ago, as I was attending the Festival of the Sound, which features primarily chamber music in the village of Parry Sound, about two hours north of Toronto on Georgian Bay. James Campbell, the director of the festival, asked all of us in attendance to list ten pieces for instrumental solo or chamber ensemble we would like to hear next year; slips were available in the foyer. I asked a staffer for elaboration as to whether he was going to count up the ten answers seen most often (e.g., five thousand requests for Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata), or whether we should include ten pieces that were perhaps not heard as often. She suggested making more than one list and including both types of suggestions. In the end, I wrote two lists.

My husband submitted no list of his own but was curious as to which selections I put on mine. As he is an aficionado of Frédéric Chopin, he was not disappointed to find Chopin’s first Ballade on my list, but he was curious as to why numero uno on my first list was Beethoven’s Sonata no. 21 in C major, opus 53, dedicated to Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel von Waldstein and known by the name of the dedicatee. (For those who wish to hear it, I attach a link to one of the magisterial performances of Daniel Barenboim; as far as I can ascertain, Barenboim has given the requisite permission for a complete set of his Beethoven sonata performances to be uploaded onto YouTube.) My husband prefers Chopin because of the relatively compact range of emotions (strange as this may sound) in each particular piece. I prefer Beethoven precisely because of the kinds of unexpected and abrupt incursions of fear, anguish, and temptation in a piece written at least nominally in the open and optimistic key of C major. In reality, of course, neither of us disparages the preference of the other; it is more a question of who ranks 9.9 and who achieves 9.95 on a scale of 1 to 10 among the pantheon of the immortals of the piano.

Musicians and musicologists have a wide range of opinions about the Waldstein sonata. For intermediate-level pianists like myself, it is a painful reminder of where we stand on the pianistic totem pole, since the Waldstein is fiendishly difficult even for professionals to play. (Indeed, the scales in one section have been adapted because of the changes in the construction of the instrument since Beethoven’s time.) As a Quaker educator, it is a reminder of the Divine message that Fox received of the importance of experiencing all conditions in order to speak to all conditions; if my initial forays into Beethoven’s self-entitled “Sonata facile” (“Easy Sonata”) no. 19 in G minor, opus 49.1, make me feel foolish, it is an important insight into how students who claim to be “not good at languages” might feel when taking a foreign language class. Professional pianists apparently either thrill to its challenges and its musical achievements (e.g., Vladimir Ashkenazy, Daniel Barenboim, Alfred Brendel) or dislike the piece. Sviatoslav Richter, the great Soviet pianist who left a magnificent recorded legacy of just about everything else, never performed the Waldstein as far as we know. Anton Kuerti, for his part, has a wonderful recording of the Waldstein in his complete Beethoven cycle, but the liner notes exhibit some concerns about the way the piece is constructed.

Jan Swafford, in his newly released biography of Beethoven, takes a middle road. Although he points to the Waldstein as one of the composer’s major breakthroughs, exceeded in his middle period only by the “Appassionata” sonata a bit later, Swafford notes why the beginning of the Waldstein, in particular, sometimes sets people on edge. Briefly put, it breaks the standard compositional rules about the use of themes. Swafford writes of Beethoven’s pieces of motifs and that the beginning of the first movement of the Waldstein is “an accompaniment in search of a theme.” (Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, 2014, p. 372)

Perhaps only Beethoven can break the rules in this way. The abrupt changes of mood and key signature in the Waldstein sonata, however unexpected, are not random or without purpose. In the first movement of the Waldstein, we may feel that we have foiled a home invasion, only to have the armed robbers chase us down a darkened street, which in turn turns into a blind alley or a construction zone. The hints at redemption are brief and all too often dashes. How can the tension thus created be resolved? Finally, after the brief and meditative Introduzione (introduction) that takes the place of the second movement originally written for the sonata, Beethoven does release the tension, bringing in the short but triumphant theme of the rondo (the third and final movement) which wins its own battle over the forces of darkness.

The music of Beethoven's second period —a time in his life when he was surrounded by, shall we say, an ocean of silence— prefigures both the horrors and the beauty of the world one to two hundred years later, as well as musical innovations by much later composers. As my husband and I were talking about Beethoven and Chopin, we came to the inevitable road construction and considered whether to turn on the hourly news. This year, perhaps more than any since the Cuban missile crisis, when we were both small children, the world seems a foreboding place. There have been wars, police brutality, and bloodshed, whether deliberate or accidental. Diplomats, negotiators, and jurists from various places have set up deliberations with the best of intent, but they have not as yet (August 20, 2014) succeeded. Last week Robin Williams, a brilliant and beloved comic actor, who suffered from depression in the past, succumbed to his personal despair.

The weather, too, has gone awry. In some parts of the North American continent, there is too much sunlight and not enough rain, leading to record-breaking droughts and forest fires. Here in the northeastern states and provinces we have had more than one summer polar vortex after the winter ones, leaving us with the household furnace running on July and August mornings when we are accustomed to heat waves.

Ultimately, construction seasons come to an end (see the linked article by Chris Johnstone from the Guardian website as to how to remain confident about this). In the political sphere those who desire peace and understanding are not willing to give up, and Friends are unstinting in their support of them. Likewise, in the personal realm periods of despair often lead to new growth. If, however, someone is not experiencing gloomy periods as a normal “construction season” but rather as endless red lights, or if one sees ditches (literal or metaphorical) ahead, it is time to call for help.

Darkness and light: sunset on Georgian Bay, Lake Huron
August 2014
photograph taken during intermission at the Festival of the Sound
©Kristin Lord 2014

B is for Blessings and Benedictions (and for what happens in between)

Before we sat down to a formal dinner at an educational institution which shall remain nameless, the head of that institution was required to recite a Latin grace. My host, who had studied Latin all the way through high school, elbowed me: “Psst! don’t smirk. [The head] doesn’t know Latin, as you are about to learn.” Soon enough we heard, “Bennie DICK tuss: Bennie DIE, cat!” One could have been forgiven for thinking that the poor man had endured one too many nights of Bennie the tom cat tussling with other felines in the alley behind his home and, taking him to the vet to be neutered, was secretly wishing for a one-way trip. In reality, only one syllable was significantly mispronounced: replacing “dee” for “die” would have made the Latin comprehensible as “Benedictus benedicat,” or, “Let the Blessed One bless.” Minor accent reduction on some of the other vowels would have been icing on the cake that we pictured ourselves about to consume.

“Benedictus benedicat” is a lovely non-sectarian blessing that works on a variety of occasions, but it is incomprehensible if we do not know the language. (History does not relate why no one took this fine person aside at the beginning to explain the pronunciation, but it is probably related to concerns about disrupting the academic pecking order.) Likewise, the way unprogrammed Quaker Meetings begin, end, and progress through their central portions is a mystery to those who have not experienced them. Unprogrammed Meetings for Worship do not begin with an invocation, do not contain a creed, and do not end with a formal benediction. The old playground rhyme runs, “Quakers’ Meeting has begun. No more laughing, no more fun. If you show your teeth or tongue, you will have to pay a forfeit.” When I first attended a Friends Meeting, I figured that worship would not begin with the recitation of that rhyme (if it had, I would have been sunk, as I had paid multiple forfeits on the playgrounds in my youth in northeastern Vermont, lorded over by better-behaved classmates who had even less of an image of what a Quaker Meeting entailed). But I had no idea that the beginning was simply a critical mass of people sitting down together in an appointed place at or near the appointed time, and that it ended with a handshake.

People who have a basic familiarity with the unprogrammed flavor of Quakerism are familiar with our concept of waiting upon the Divine in silence, and of vocal ministry arising out of that silence. An intellectual understanding, however, does not make it easier to grasp in practice. It turns out that people —or, at least, a cross-section of Virginians in a recent psychology study— do not like being asked to sit alone in silence, even for as little as fifteen minutes. The authors of this study (actually an aggregation of eleven related studies), reported in the July 4, 2014 issue of Science, found that some 64 per cent of male and 25 per cent of female subjects would rather administer themselves an electric shock than sit alone in silence for fifteen minutes in an unadorned room without electronic devices, reading materials, or any other form of entertainment. All of the participants had previously indicated that they disliked electric shocks. Having participants prepare briefly before entering the room seems not to have made a difference. A review of this study published in the journal Nature supports these conclusions.

Clearly, Quakers, along with Zen Buddhists, practitioners of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and others versed in contemplative traditions, would have no trouble sitting in silence in an unadorned room for fifteen minutes. (Although the article in Science does not specify how the volunteers for the studies were recruited, presumably people falling into these categories were excluded.) Does the fact that we typically worship in groups make a difference? It does, for a variety of theological and cultural reasons, but most of us could, and many of us do, sit alone in private worship for a reasonable length of time.

Does the fact that many adult Quakers were socialized before the advent (or at least the ubiquity) of electronic devices make it easier to develop the habit of silent worship? While Friends are too small a group for most psychological studies, the answer is almost certainly “yes.” Even as early as the late 1980’s, Ursula Franklin, a Quaker metallurgist and philosopher of science from the University of Toronto, shared her concern about the intrusion of technology into silence (see links to her article “Silence and the Notion of the Commons” in Soundscape 7, 1994 and her 1989 Massey lectures, later revised, inter alia). More recently, commentators such George Prochnik have raised concerns —indeed, alarms— about how the noise and busyness of modern life have crowded out silence, while Sherry Turkle has written about the related problem of the overreliance on technology and the decline of social interaction.

If the Quaker tradition of silent worship is to attract newcomers and retain its young people, it should consider how this recent research might be used to revamp our outreach and religious education. In suggesting this, I realize that a data-driven approach may not be popular. There is no small irony in the fact that unprogrammed Friends, who often have a high level of formal education and a better than average understanding of scientific concepts, sometimes eschew the results of scientific research as it applies to us. “Knowing something experimentally” in the words of George Fox means knowing something through a combination of faith and experience —possessing what one professes— and not learning something through the scientific method. Nevertheless, when we have relevant research at our disposal, what are we waiting for? More research? In this case, further studies, while useful in determining which types of introduction to silence may be successful, are unlikely to disprove the basic premise that the average person has trouble with his or her own thoughts, and that the situation is getting worse, and not better.

The researchers who conducted the study summarized Science, along with the reviewer in Nature, suggested that one way to help beginners deal with silence is to give them specific suggestions about something to think about and ways to direct their meditation. (The researchers looked at mindfulness training specifically, but did not limit their suggestions to any particular approach.) Introductory pamphlets tend to be strong on theory but have less specific guidance, because of concerns about being prescriptive, but here is where being a bit more prescriptive could be helpful. The British  introductory brochure, Your First Time in a Quaker Meeting, suggests using images of light and advises people  to “bring whatever is pressing on your mind to the Meeting.” This is very good, but it might be even more effective to reframe this idea as a Query, by adding a further sentence or two: “Friends often consider what is on our minds and then ask ourselves in Meeting, ‘In what way can our daily thoughts and concerns, however mundane, relate to our spiritual lives, the lives of our fellow human beings, and life on earth? Conversely, in what ways can silent worship nourish and deepen all other activities of our daily lives and the lives of those around us?’” (My inspiration for this sentence is part of Query 2 in the 1985 Faith and Practice of New England Yearly Meeting, “Do all other activities of your meeting find their inspiration in worship, and do they, in turn, help to uphold the worshipping group?”)

The Quaker Advices and Queries are often used for just this purpose of focusing a Meeting and planting seeds for potential vocal ministry. It is likely that they should be used more often. Perhaps, when members of the Committee of Ministry and Counsel (or Elders in Yearly Meetings that have them) notice a reasonable number of visitors —or perhaps even one visitor— the committee might authorize one of its members in advance to make an ad hoc decision to read a brief selection from the Advices and Queries, along with a brief explanation of what they are.

In the interim, introductory brochures should be more specific about how Meeting for Worship begins. (We are clear about how it ends.) Saying that it begins when Friends sit down in the specified location at the appointed time to wait on God in silence is not enough for a newcomer, who may still expect a delegated Friend to stand up after a few minutes and say words to the effect of, “Welcome to Podunk Friends Meeting on this glorious/rainy/snowy Sunday morning. We welcome all of you to wait upon God with us in the silence and, if, so moved, to provide a brief vocal message, which we call ministry, arising from that silence. Our worship will end with a designated person beginning a handshake around the room in about an hour.” We need to say that there is no invocation, or call to worship, of any verbal sort, although in our silence we may well reflect upon the phrase “Benedictus benedicat.”

Not everyone has trouble relaxing in silence for fifteen minutes,
even if some might consider resting on a coat atop a snow scraper
supported by the back and arm of a bench to be rather uncomfortable.
photograph ©Kristin Lord 2014