For several days I have had a rather nagging worry that I would not make it onto my return flight to Atlanta from London, to the degree that I was even sleepless a couple of nights. Quantum physicists have been confirming for a good while now that time is anything but linear. Plenty of theologians in many religions long ago figured this out. Some of us are slower at this than others. Today I got yet another lesson in the reality that the human spirit is not bounded inside of linear time. It was a little over a year ago that the pain of Harold’s suicide blasted into my consciousness two hours BEFORE he decided to exit this world. My lesson today on the nature of time was one I don’t wish to repeat any time soon.
After four rather grand weeks with Hans and Yne in the beautiful Brabant region of the Netherlands, it was time for me to pack it in and give them their house and lives back. It was thus with mixed feelings that Hans dropped me off at an airport roadhouse to spend the night before a flight the following morning to London. Hans has been like a hybrid brother/father of unbounded generosity to me, and this has been a delight beyond words and of great consolation to one who has never known a real father. His dear wife Yne cooked me all those fabulous meals of happy times I never knew as a kid. I really didn’t want to be in this hotel eating by myself. It was too much like my ‘normal’ life.
After a somewhat fitful and expensive night of sleep, I did manage to get to the Schipol airport in time for my flight to London. I arrived early enough to buy breakfast in the airport, a meal that almost proved to be my last supper. The plasma screens indicated the London flight was delayed and a mist of apprehension passed over me. Eventually we loaded the plane, which had finally arrived from wherever, and I took heart in the fact the clouds in the sky looked fluffy and friendly, and not mean.
I always ask for a seat far forward on the leading edge of the wing, thus having a combination of a clear view forward of the wing and the best possible ride without paying the king’s ransom for the front cabin. I figure all the seats arrive at exactly the same time so never could justify the cost of paying 2-300% more for the hot towel and extra leg room. The wine and food is free even in the cheap seats. And so it was that I was in row eight directly next to the right engine intake of a 737 twin jet. After an ordinary acceleration run and seeing the Dutch landscape drop away for several minutes, I wistfully thought of what I was leaving behind, those things all the king’s treasuries would never gain me. We headed out over the North Sea.
I was instantly snapped out of my introspection by an explosive noise. After some six hundred rides in every conceivable kind of commercial aircraft, I know what the normal sounds are. This was certainly not one of them. Neither was the acrid smell that came into the cabin. After 9/11 and the myriad terrorist bombings of the past three days, I suddenly entered into another dimension of time. The cabin attendants rushed down both aisles pulling down all of the overhead bins looking for evidence of an explosive device. The fellow next to me muttered something about soiling himself.
Surprisingly, the plane maintained attitude and the pilot came on the PA to calmly comment on the fact that we were going to attempt to return to the airport. He calmly said the engines still seemed to be working from what he could tell ‘up here’. ‘Back here’, I knew that something bad had happened in that turbine six feet from me. We slowly circled the North Sea, presumably to dump fuel so there would be less Jet-A kerosene to add to the excitement if the landing proved less than normal. The whole world learned on 9/11 what Jet-A kerosene used incorrectly does. I, and I suspect everyone else, held our collective breath to see what would happen when 200,000 pounds of aluminum and humans are reunited with earth at high speed in less than optimal circumstances.
That Boeing 737 did manage to make it back onto the ground. That turbine did not blow out of its casing and we were able to avoid seeing the fields beyond the end of runway. We were kept on the plane while it was determined that a very large bird had been sucked into the turbine outside my window. I will spare you the physics and possibilities that can occur when one throws a three-kilogram object at three hundred miles an hour into a very fast-turning jet turbine made of very brittle hard alloys. If one blade is bent or broken it can set up a cascade and the whole of the turbine assembly can in a second completely disintegrate, with catastrophic results for the airplane attached to it.
Life is astounding in how tenuous it is. One of the most precision-made and delicate inventions of mankind did not blow apart when six pounds were thrown into it. I did make it back onto terra firma. I was not in Chechnya or Saudi Arabia, yet hundreds of others this week did not experience a safe passage through time in those places. I sit here in Paris at 4:30 PM Thursday afternoon, astounded that I am here. It is the last place on earth I ever dreamed I would have been today. People come to Paris to climb the Eiffel Tower, gawk at the smile on the Mona Lisa, fall in love. They sure don’t come here to ruminate about physics and why they are still alive while others are not. But so it is. I did not become fish food in the North Sea today.
I have not felt so far from home since the time when I was in the occupied Jordan desert in 1971 and had the experience of having two fighter jets making a bombing run near some ancient archeological excavations I happened to be. Fighter jocks in wars don’t worry about things like tourists looking at old bones in ancient monasteries. Those of you that know me well know that flying is a bit like a crap shoot for me. I do it because it is the only way to get to paradise sometimes. I sit here on the opposite side of the planet knowing that I am going to have to take a very deep breath, turn around and climb back onto two more of those aluminum and titanium catapults, and face my inner fears.
Here goes.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Neo-Gothic Transcendence in a Baroque Context, Antwerp, Belgium
The weather forecast was like those often given at home – quite wrong. We had expected heavy rain and near gale force rains. We instead received a cerulean day with bright cottony clouds and no rain threat whatever. Capitalizing on this, we headed south to Antwerp in Belgium, the home of the great painter, Peter Paul Rubens, stopping to pick up Margaret, whom we found standing in the street waiting for us outside her apartment block.
The reality of the European Union has become obvious for me in the past weeks in that political boundaries between the European nations are less apparent than the boundaries between the American states. At American state boundaries one can count on seeing a weigh station for truckers and a large colorful sign next to the roadway, and a couple miles further along a well-maintained visitor information center, well stocked with material on every conceivable attraction within the state. Generally the people working in these places seem happy to expound on the virtues of their realms to newly arrived pilgrims. The only thing one sees between European nations is a small blue sign with the country name and the symbol for the European Union and one has to know precisely where to look for these signs.
It is a long ways from the days when border checkpoints could consume hours of one’s day. I have in the post-NAFTA era spent three days attempting to cross from the United States into Mexico, only to be turned back out of the country after driving thirty miles into the desert. I can’t ascertain if this seamless amalgamation of European countries is good or not. I can’t but wonder if these countries will lose their cultural distinctives over time, with an unpredictable result, not unlike the sometimes unhappy results from mixing several artists’ paints.
In the meantime we ended up in Antwerp, which gave me a lifetime’s worth of visual imagery compressed into a single day. Like all the other cities and villages I have been in during the past weeks I have been stunned at how much of life is lived outside in public spaces. Antwerp provided the grandest experience of this yet, thousands of people in the bright sunlit plaza framed by the baroque facades of bygone centuries. This city somehow managed to avoid total devastation sixty years ago.
In gawking tourist mode, I marveled at the grand facades, the immense train station with enough glass to build a thousand greenhouses. The reception spaces and cafes of the station felt more like something out of a museum or palace – gilded ceilings, baroque plastering on the walls, grand clocks, crystal chandeliers. I think back to the grand stations in America, most long lost to ‘progress’. The grand station in Birmingham was reduced to a weedy field for decades and now its long-faded memory is covered with an interstate. The present train station in Birmingham is nothing but a very small room and hallway covered with gray tile, exactly like the public toilets of the older parts of the London subway. Fortunately, Britain did not ‘progress’ and yet retains all of its grand train stations and theaters. I wonder if ‘progress’ is a synonym for ‘regress’.
In proper Dutch fashion we took cake and coffee in the gilded café of the central station before setting off for a walking tour of the old city. Belgium was once part of the Netherlands, and like Holland, it continually surprised me. We turned a corner and ended up in a small plaza dominated by something that looked like it came from Renaissance Italy – the magnificent west front of the St. Borromeo’s Church – a finely preserved Romanesque church filled with enough paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and his associates to make the museums of the world green with envy. As it turns out Rubens lived and worked here in Antwerp and filled many a church, public building, and palace with some of the 2,500 paintings attributed to his studio. The scale of his house and studio made it clear that his work was highly prized in his day and he profited rather nicely from it. It didn’t hurt that he hung out with guys like Anthony Van Dyck who was an instant celebrated success in his day.
The centerpiece of this city has to be the grand Cathedral of our Lady, a white stone spire that emerges nearly four hundred feet out of the center of the old city. The largest gothic cathedral in the Low Countries, it took 166 years to construct. This imposing structure is built on the plan of a seven-aisle basilica and is the beneficiary of a massive restoration project just completed in 1993. The neo-gothic movement of the late 19th century resulted in this cathedral having much color and ornamentation added to a magnificent edifice that had once been near to complete ruin and which had been completely stripped after the French Revolution. The present result is one of the lightest and airiest cathedrals in Europe. The cathedral is filled with the numinous sounds of a Schyven organ containing 90 registers and 5,770 pipes. It too is a repository of some of the grandest art in the world
Unlike most major cathedrals, the town is built right up to all the cathedral walls excepting for the transept entrances and the west front. The church is nearly invisible from any close aspect, except the west front, which is on a large plaza – a curious phenomenon. The North Tower and the onion dome crossing tower are readily visible from the city once one is a distance away from the cathedral. Happily, this church does not feel like a museum and perhaps will continue to provide a point of gathering for seekers for another thousand years, as has already been the case on this site.
The reality of the European Union has become obvious for me in the past weeks in that political boundaries between the European nations are less apparent than the boundaries between the American states. At American state boundaries one can count on seeing a weigh station for truckers and a large colorful sign next to the roadway, and a couple miles further along a well-maintained visitor information center, well stocked with material on every conceivable attraction within the state. Generally the people working in these places seem happy to expound on the virtues of their realms to newly arrived pilgrims. The only thing one sees between European nations is a small blue sign with the country name and the symbol for the European Union and one has to know precisely where to look for these signs.
It is a long ways from the days when border checkpoints could consume hours of one’s day. I have in the post-NAFTA era spent three days attempting to cross from the United States into Mexico, only to be turned back out of the country after driving thirty miles into the desert. I can’t ascertain if this seamless amalgamation of European countries is good or not. I can’t but wonder if these countries will lose their cultural distinctives over time, with an unpredictable result, not unlike the sometimes unhappy results from mixing several artists’ paints.
In the meantime we ended up in Antwerp, which gave me a lifetime’s worth of visual imagery compressed into a single day. Like all the other cities and villages I have been in during the past weeks I have been stunned at how much of life is lived outside in public spaces. Antwerp provided the grandest experience of this yet, thousands of people in the bright sunlit plaza framed by the baroque facades of bygone centuries. This city somehow managed to avoid total devastation sixty years ago.
In gawking tourist mode, I marveled at the grand facades, the immense train station with enough glass to build a thousand greenhouses. The reception spaces and cafes of the station felt more like something out of a museum or palace – gilded ceilings, baroque plastering on the walls, grand clocks, crystal chandeliers. I think back to the grand stations in America, most long lost to ‘progress’. The grand station in Birmingham was reduced to a weedy field for decades and now its long-faded memory is covered with an interstate. The present train station in Birmingham is nothing but a very small room and hallway covered with gray tile, exactly like the public toilets of the older parts of the London subway. Fortunately, Britain did not ‘progress’ and yet retains all of its grand train stations and theaters. I wonder if ‘progress’ is a synonym for ‘regress’.
In proper Dutch fashion we took cake and coffee in the gilded café of the central station before setting off for a walking tour of the old city. Belgium was once part of the Netherlands, and like Holland, it continually surprised me. We turned a corner and ended up in a small plaza dominated by something that looked like it came from Renaissance Italy – the magnificent west front of the St. Borromeo’s Church – a finely preserved Romanesque church filled with enough paintings by Peter Paul Rubens and his associates to make the museums of the world green with envy. As it turns out Rubens lived and worked here in Antwerp and filled many a church, public building, and palace with some of the 2,500 paintings attributed to his studio. The scale of his house and studio made it clear that his work was highly prized in his day and he profited rather nicely from it. It didn’t hurt that he hung out with guys like Anthony Van Dyck who was an instant celebrated success in his day.
The centerpiece of this city has to be the grand Cathedral of our Lady, a white stone spire that emerges nearly four hundred feet out of the center of the old city. The largest gothic cathedral in the Low Countries, it took 166 years to construct. This imposing structure is built on the plan of a seven-aisle basilica and is the beneficiary of a massive restoration project just completed in 1993. The neo-gothic movement of the late 19th century resulted in this cathedral having much color and ornamentation added to a magnificent edifice that had once been near to complete ruin and which had been completely stripped after the French Revolution. The present result is one of the lightest and airiest cathedrals in Europe. The cathedral is filled with the numinous sounds of a Schyven organ containing 90 registers and 5,770 pipes. It too is a repository of some of the grandest art in the world
Unlike most major cathedrals, the town is built right up to all the cathedral walls excepting for the transept entrances and the west front. The church is nearly invisible from any close aspect, except the west front, which is on a large plaza – a curious phenomenon. The North Tower and the onion dome crossing tower are readily visible from the city once one is a distance away from the cathedral. Happily, this church does not feel like a museum and perhaps will continue to provide a point of gathering for seekers for another thousand years, as has already been the case on this site.
Sonic Voyages – A Russian Night, Eindhoven, Brabandt
To those of us living in North America during the 1950s and 1960s era of the Cold War, Russia was little more than a military threat with a lot of atomic weapons, little impulse control, and a funny little man who pounded his shoe on the table and said, “We will bury you.” My experience of the Cold War and thoughts about the Soviet Empire as a child were rudimentary at best and consisted of unannounced atomic bomb drop drills in school and wondering if there was any place in the house that would be safe from the fall-out and fire blast of a thermonuclear device. My knowledge of physics was obviously delayed in its development in thinking that we could find safety in a wood frame house from an atomic bomb. We moved forward in our knowledge of atomic fission and became paranoid enough to popularize the building of bomb shelters and for a number of years they were the rage.
Twenty years ago Stephen Lawhead wrote an articulate pair of science fiction novels that elegantly describe how paranoia about another society becomes myth, legend, and finally an immutable reality in the minds of those victimized by their own paranoia. In the case of Lawhead’s story, one culture, Fierra, was truly benevolent and allowed all its citizens equal opportunity, yet in the minds of the totalitarian Dome, Fierra was nothing but an atomic monster bent on the destruction of Dome. In a novel it is possible to write enlightenment into the plot and eventually Fierra was able to bring the paranoid Dome to its senses just before Dome had a chance to launch a nuclear holocaust.
In our real world experience, both Americans and Russians, in cabinet offices and on the street, were convinced that the others really were the bad guys. A nuclear arms race ensued that consumed an incredible portion of the public resource of both nations. Today the former Empire is a military and economic shadow of itself, paradoxically reduced to such a state without the firing of a single bullet by the Americans, or anyone else. As in the case of Jericho forty centuries ago, walking around the walls with just candles proved sufficient to bring down the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. Once the mystique behind the curtain was removed; we discovered that most Russians were exactly like most Americans, dreamers who wanted to raise their kids in a better world than the one they had been raised in, to sit in a park and have conversation with good friends, to have a sense of personal security.
In a world in which Russia and America still have enough atomic weapons to immolate a hundred planets and a dozen other nations have scurried to develop these fissionable nightmares for themselves, we remain in continual need of reminders of those things that are good in all cultures – music, art, literature, food, and spiritual wisdom. I have the great fortune of being in a position in life of being able to experience these reminders often and it really does pay to know the right people. Last night was no exception. Hans had sorted out a fast-forward expedition into the heart of Russia.
For six hours in the Frits Philips Musiek Centrum we were given an intense sonic excursion into what is so very good about Russian culture. From 6 PM until after midnight some seven hundred of us (mostly Dutch with a few Russians, Germans, Brits, and Americans mixed in) went on a compressed eight-station multi-media pilgrimage into classical Russian culture under the Tsars and post 1917 totalitarianism. Our arrival at the pink granite Centrum found it to have been decorated in the grand colors of Russia – gold foil shrouding the entrance, crimson carpets guiding our way. Intensely colorful displays of Russian Orthodox icons, votives, elaborate candle stands, and carpets provided a visual sensibility of the role Russian orthodoxy played in adding color and dimension to a culture that was nearly extirpated.
Our first discovery on this compressed pilgrimage was that Stroganoff is not a name that Betty Crocker came up with for quick-fix boxed noodle dinners in the 1950s. The Stroganoff name actually belonged to a prominent family in St. Petersburg, Russia and the stroganoff dinner served in the grand reception spaces of the Centrum was clearly not of Betty Crocker origin. My good friend Yne proves to be a walking encyclopedia of history and she was able to fill in a lot of gaps about the Stroganoff name. Being served a meal on linen within the spaces of a concert hall is certainly not done in America or very many other places for that matter. I am finding that the Netherlands is filled with a lot of rather pleasing surprises. None of use expected to receive a full meal in the Centrum.
On six occasions we were invited to enter one of the several magnificent concert or recital halls for a sonic adventure. Certainly the performance of the Polovtsian Dances of Borodin by the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the Netherlands was a powerful reminder of the intense romance to be found in the creative spirit of any culture, especially those cultures under duress. A new friend Margaret, sitting next to me, was wiping away tears during these dances. It was during the nightmare years of the Revolution, Stalin, and Lenin that Sergei Rachmaninov was writing his stellar classics including the infamous ‘Rac 3’ that remains the Mt Everest for pianists. Shostakowich was writing his haunting lieder during the totalitarianism of the 20th century, a mere boy of eleven when the Revolution swept over the land and dying 14 years before the candles in the street brought down the walls. For those with classical inclinations, the heartfelt performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony was a total immersion in the vast creativity of a short life that produced musical dance epics such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and a hundred other musical treasures. It was beyond stunning to watch one of the flutists wiping away her own tears during musical rests in her part. As beautiful as any note played during the evening was the generous gratitude shown to the performers. The Dutch are well known for generosity of applause and ovations in their concert halls and performers relish invitations to play in this country. It was easy to see why.
During one of the six intermissions, Hans and I played chess on a board some fifteen feet on a side with pieces two feet high, moving pieces with our feet while hold wine and programs in our hands. I wondered if Boris Spasski or some other giant of the chess world would show up during the next interval to critique our game.
I could get use to this country very quickly.
Twenty years ago Stephen Lawhead wrote an articulate pair of science fiction novels that elegantly describe how paranoia about another society becomes myth, legend, and finally an immutable reality in the minds of those victimized by their own paranoia. In the case of Lawhead’s story, one culture, Fierra, was truly benevolent and allowed all its citizens equal opportunity, yet in the minds of the totalitarian Dome, Fierra was nothing but an atomic monster bent on the destruction of Dome. In a novel it is possible to write enlightenment into the plot and eventually Fierra was able to bring the paranoid Dome to its senses just before Dome had a chance to launch a nuclear holocaust.
In our real world experience, both Americans and Russians, in cabinet offices and on the street, were convinced that the others really were the bad guys. A nuclear arms race ensued that consumed an incredible portion of the public resource of both nations. Today the former Empire is a military and economic shadow of itself, paradoxically reduced to such a state without the firing of a single bullet by the Americans, or anyone else. As in the case of Jericho forty centuries ago, walking around the walls with just candles proved sufficient to bring down the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall. Once the mystique behind the curtain was removed; we discovered that most Russians were exactly like most Americans, dreamers who wanted to raise their kids in a better world than the one they had been raised in, to sit in a park and have conversation with good friends, to have a sense of personal security.
In a world in which Russia and America still have enough atomic weapons to immolate a hundred planets and a dozen other nations have scurried to develop these fissionable nightmares for themselves, we remain in continual need of reminders of those things that are good in all cultures – music, art, literature, food, and spiritual wisdom. I have the great fortune of being in a position in life of being able to experience these reminders often and it really does pay to know the right people. Last night was no exception. Hans had sorted out a fast-forward expedition into the heart of Russia.
For six hours in the Frits Philips Musiek Centrum we were given an intense sonic excursion into what is so very good about Russian culture. From 6 PM until after midnight some seven hundred of us (mostly Dutch with a few Russians, Germans, Brits, and Americans mixed in) went on a compressed eight-station multi-media pilgrimage into classical Russian culture under the Tsars and post 1917 totalitarianism. Our arrival at the pink granite Centrum found it to have been decorated in the grand colors of Russia – gold foil shrouding the entrance, crimson carpets guiding our way. Intensely colorful displays of Russian Orthodox icons, votives, elaborate candle stands, and carpets provided a visual sensibility of the role Russian orthodoxy played in adding color and dimension to a culture that was nearly extirpated.
Our first discovery on this compressed pilgrimage was that Stroganoff is not a name that Betty Crocker came up with for quick-fix boxed noodle dinners in the 1950s. The Stroganoff name actually belonged to a prominent family in St. Petersburg, Russia and the stroganoff dinner served in the grand reception spaces of the Centrum was clearly not of Betty Crocker origin. My good friend Yne proves to be a walking encyclopedia of history and she was able to fill in a lot of gaps about the Stroganoff name. Being served a meal on linen within the spaces of a concert hall is certainly not done in America or very many other places for that matter. I am finding that the Netherlands is filled with a lot of rather pleasing surprises. None of use expected to receive a full meal in the Centrum.
On six occasions we were invited to enter one of the several magnificent concert or recital halls for a sonic adventure. Certainly the performance of the Polovtsian Dances of Borodin by the Radio Symphony Orchestra of the Netherlands was a powerful reminder of the intense romance to be found in the creative spirit of any culture, especially those cultures under duress. A new friend Margaret, sitting next to me, was wiping away tears during these dances. It was during the nightmare years of the Revolution, Stalin, and Lenin that Sergei Rachmaninov was writing his stellar classics including the infamous ‘Rac 3’ that remains the Mt Everest for pianists. Shostakowich was writing his haunting lieder during the totalitarianism of the 20th century, a mere boy of eleven when the Revolution swept over the land and dying 14 years before the candles in the street brought down the walls. For those with classical inclinations, the heartfelt performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony was a total immersion in the vast creativity of a short life that produced musical dance epics such as Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and a hundred other musical treasures. It was beyond stunning to watch one of the flutists wiping away her own tears during musical rests in her part. As beautiful as any note played during the evening was the generous gratitude shown to the performers. The Dutch are well known for generosity of applause and ovations in their concert halls and performers relish invitations to play in this country. It was easy to see why.
During one of the six intermissions, Hans and I played chess on a board some fifteen feet on a side with pieces two feet high, moving pieces with our feet while hold wine and programs in our hands. I wondered if Boris Spasski or some other giant of the chess world would show up during the next interval to critique our game.
I could get use to this country very quickly.
Spectral Visions from the Past - National Park De Hoge Veluwe, Otterlo
Having another day of absolutely perfect spring climate, we drove some one hundred kilometers across many of the towns and rivers I have learned of so intensely in the past two days. What took the Allies many months to accomplish in the Second World War at an unimagined cost, we accomplished in ninety minutes by car. Only four hours ago I was in the town where the German Capitulation was put on paper in 1945. For certain, town names have taken on a haunting new dimension for me. Seeing the name Arnhem on the directional road signs was unsettling. Fortunately, the mission today proved a far happier one – a visit to a 10,000-acre national park in which is set an astounding museum and twenty-five acre sculpture garden.
In some respects the Kroller-Muller Museum is the closest thing to perfection that can be attained in the museum world. The building itself contains many elements of Frank Lloyd Wright and I am certain that research would reveal a connection between the architect of the museum and Frank Lloyd Wright. The building, all on a single level, provides an exquisite uninterrupted visual connection to the emerald oasis of the sculpture gardens while not distracting from the artwork inside. The sizes of the galleries were perfect and the amount of artwork placed in each just right. Somehow, the ceiling panels created a color spectrum similar to northern indirect sunlight, which made the viewing quite pleasing. And what was on view was astounding – ninety-one Van Gogh paintings and an equal or larger number of his drawings.
The drawings revealed an entirely different aspect of the artist I had no prior knowledge of. So often the only thing we think of with respect to Van Gogh is some madman who was good with a paint brush who then mailed his ear to his girlfriend and then blew himself away at age 37. The reality is that Van Gogh clearly had highly developed perceptual skills and was intensely interested in the lives of ordinary people doing very ordinary things. He was anything but mad. It is conjectured that Van Gogh may have well been tormented by a brain tumor and or tinnitus. My own experiences with tinnitus make it easy to relate to his daily challenges. His letters, drawings, and paintings suggest something far more substantial than this unstable madman stereotype. That he produced what he did while suffering so, is only further validation of the depth of his creativity. Amazingly, all of Van Gogh’s prodigious output was completed in a mere ten years. One can only conjecture what would have resulted if he had lived another forty or fifty years.
Mixed in with this vast store of creativity from one tortured soul were Mondrians, Seurats, Gaugains, and Picassos, three generations of Toorop, Leger, and a number of older Dutch masters. This whole museum was the result of the vision of an industrialist’s wife. Helene Kroller-Muller became a true patron and supporter of the arts. It certainly did not hurt her efforts to be married to the richest man in the country at the time. It would not be a stretch at all to suggest she may be personally responsible for Van Gogh’s work becoming the most valued objects on earth. She and her husband bought up anything by Van Gogh that came to auction during the thirty years following his death. Sadly, Van Gogh left this world with no knowledge that an angel would come to care for his genius visual creativity so intensely, conserve it, and imprint it permanently on the public domain of this world.
Helene proved to be an example of good stewardship of the privilege of a high position in society and giving back to the masses. Her husband donated the whole of the estate in 1934 as a national park along with the museum, its contents, and a hunting lodge that alone is worth a several hour drive to see.
Even seventy years after Helene’s death she has continued to fulfill her mission, giving to this visitor, through her visionary efforts, a much-enhanced sense of the creativity that is so abundant in this unpretentious beautiful land and more specifically that of the Dutch painter Vincent.
In some respects the Kroller-Muller Museum is the closest thing to perfection that can be attained in the museum world. The building itself contains many elements of Frank Lloyd Wright and I am certain that research would reveal a connection between the architect of the museum and Frank Lloyd Wright. The building, all on a single level, provides an exquisite uninterrupted visual connection to the emerald oasis of the sculpture gardens while not distracting from the artwork inside. The sizes of the galleries were perfect and the amount of artwork placed in each just right. Somehow, the ceiling panels created a color spectrum similar to northern indirect sunlight, which made the viewing quite pleasing. And what was on view was astounding – ninety-one Van Gogh paintings and an equal or larger number of his drawings.
The drawings revealed an entirely different aspect of the artist I had no prior knowledge of. So often the only thing we think of with respect to Van Gogh is some madman who was good with a paint brush who then mailed his ear to his girlfriend and then blew himself away at age 37. The reality is that Van Gogh clearly had highly developed perceptual skills and was intensely interested in the lives of ordinary people doing very ordinary things. He was anything but mad. It is conjectured that Van Gogh may have well been tormented by a brain tumor and or tinnitus. My own experiences with tinnitus make it easy to relate to his daily challenges. His letters, drawings, and paintings suggest something far more substantial than this unstable madman stereotype. That he produced what he did while suffering so, is only further validation of the depth of his creativity. Amazingly, all of Van Gogh’s prodigious output was completed in a mere ten years. One can only conjecture what would have resulted if he had lived another forty or fifty years.
Mixed in with this vast store of creativity from one tortured soul were Mondrians, Seurats, Gaugains, and Picassos, three generations of Toorop, Leger, and a number of older Dutch masters. This whole museum was the result of the vision of an industrialist’s wife. Helene Kroller-Muller became a true patron and supporter of the arts. It certainly did not hurt her efforts to be married to the richest man in the country at the time. It would not be a stretch at all to suggest she may be personally responsible for Van Gogh’s work becoming the most valued objects on earth. She and her husband bought up anything by Van Gogh that came to auction during the thirty years following his death. Sadly, Van Gogh left this world with no knowledge that an angel would come to care for his genius visual creativity so intensely, conserve it, and imprint it permanently on the public domain of this world.
Helene proved to be an example of good stewardship of the privilege of a high position in society and giving back to the masses. Her husband donated the whole of the estate in 1934 as a national park along with the museum, its contents, and a hunting lodge that alone is worth a several hour drive to see.
Even seventy years after Helene’s death she has continued to fulfill her mission, giving to this visitor, through her visionary efforts, a much-enhanced sense of the creativity that is so abundant in this unpretentious beautiful land and more specifically that of the Dutch painter Vincent.
T.G.I.F.? Musings From Mierlo, Nederlands, Friday, April 18th
It was 10:30 AM when I awoke after a good sleep. The climate continues to be surreal with about 75 degrees and clear skies. It gives a rather magical sensibility to the emerging new spring life. This wonderful house is very connected to the outer world with lots of fine glassed-in spaces. Hans and I spent most of the day playing with computers and building back-ups of his indexing databases. He seemed most pleased with this. We also played a good bit of music on his ultra high-end stereo.
I found it actually safe to get emotional in front of Hans and he described a number of episodes where he had been brought to tears, often tears of joy. While playing for him the CD that Betsy had used during Cursillo, I nearly lost it, just describing the palanca experience. It does seem to me that Dutch people are more open to intensity of life experience and conversations. Hans described an experience where he was alone in the Taj Mahal at night alone with a single guide under a full moon. He described being overwhelmed by the silvery platinum sense of all that marble.
Hans had told me by phone more than a month ago to plan to attend the magnificent J.S. Bach’s St John’s Passion in the evening for Good Friday. I had expected we would end up in some non-descript little community church center somewhere with a few dozen people. We drove to Eindhoven about 7:00 PM, not to some small community center, but in fact, to a vast Restoration Catholic church built of uncounted millions of small red bricks. The 250-foot spires of this church in the aureate sunlight of very late afternoon were stunning beyond belief. The interior of this vast brick edifice illuminated by high clerestory windows, with the late sun making them dazzling, was almost more than my visual cortex could assimilate.
Inside were hundreds of people assembled to hear what proved to be an epic production of the St John Passion, given in the original German. Arranged in the crossing of this vast ecclesiastical space were the performers. I was amazed that I was actually able to follow the German lieder and make sense of it. The chorus and orchestra were well balanced and as good as any professional assemblage would have been. Somehow, being lost in the music in another language in another country in this incredible structure with good friends was almost beyond processing. I felt very far from the familiar but it was a very good sense of distance. It was not a sense of being exiled, rather more like the anticipation of an explorer. As Chesterton wondered in his poem, I again was wondering how it was that I was being granted the opportunity to yet experience another day, and in such a grand manner.
As the Passion moved towards the extinction of Jesus on the Roman Cross, the brilliant late sunlight gave way to total darkness, as if on cue. Adding to the imagery of the Passion, a priest came out and removed the fine violet fabric from the brilliant white cross at the exact point called for in the lieder. At the exact point indicated he returned and extinguished the Easter candle. A small tendril of gray smoke drifted up into the ebony darkness of the seemingly infinite vaults of the crossing. I wondered about how it is that humankind so often destroys the most magnificent of things - the Iraq Museum, Joan of Arc, the great library at Alexandria, Jesus of Nazareth - so often leaving nothing behind but tendrils of smoke. A bit later the priest returned to place a crisp white fabric on the cross. In silence the Passion ended. I waited with baited breath for someone to applaud at the end of the performance. No one ever did, to my great relief. This is not an area that attracts tourists that indiscriminately clap at anything. People merely stood quietly to offer appreciation of the performers. They then drifted away.
I found myself wondering about the lives of the choristers, soloists, and musicians; how they ended up in this amazing space, singing this incredible tale of sacrifice. I wondered if they knew just how extraordinary it is for them to have been there, performing in that space, to live in a visual paradise. Does familiarity breed contempt and is this just an ordinary place to those who live here? I will never really know.
The day was not over by any stretch. A physician living in the next house was having a birthday party and we were invited over. This proved a rather pleasing event. I found the group most hospitable and engaging. Most people here function in English so I was able to have good conversation with a number of them, despite my total ignorance of the mother tongue. One of the physician’s sons had done a portrait of his father and stepmother as a birthday present, just today. It was astoundingly good and only the third painting he had ever done. I found it rather pleasing to talk with him about art.
The physician proved inspiring in that he has only one arm and has allowed this to be no limitation whatever. He gives no sense whatever of being disabled. I learned later that he lost his arm to a grenade as an infant during war. He reminded me of how Itzak Perlman had said that we have to learn how to play our best with what we have left, this after having played a whole concert on a violin with three strings; one having broken just barely into the program. It would seem that some people actually turn disability or loss into a major asset. I suspect this physician has done so. I understand that he works with people recovering from major disability and in need of rehabilitation. He apparently did a lot of the physical work on renovating his house. He made choices in life that made him a better person and it certainly shows even in his grown children who were rather pleasing articulate individuals that respect and care for their father.
We finally called it a day.
I found it actually safe to get emotional in front of Hans and he described a number of episodes where he had been brought to tears, often tears of joy. While playing for him the CD that Betsy had used during Cursillo, I nearly lost it, just describing the palanca experience. It does seem to me that Dutch people are more open to intensity of life experience and conversations. Hans described an experience where he was alone in the Taj Mahal at night alone with a single guide under a full moon. He described being overwhelmed by the silvery platinum sense of all that marble.
Hans had told me by phone more than a month ago to plan to attend the magnificent J.S. Bach’s St John’s Passion in the evening for Good Friday. I had expected we would end up in some non-descript little community church center somewhere with a few dozen people. We drove to Eindhoven about 7:00 PM, not to some small community center, but in fact, to a vast Restoration Catholic church built of uncounted millions of small red bricks. The 250-foot spires of this church in the aureate sunlight of very late afternoon were stunning beyond belief. The interior of this vast brick edifice illuminated by high clerestory windows, with the late sun making them dazzling, was almost more than my visual cortex could assimilate.
Inside were hundreds of people assembled to hear what proved to be an epic production of the St John Passion, given in the original German. Arranged in the crossing of this vast ecclesiastical space were the performers. I was amazed that I was actually able to follow the German lieder and make sense of it. The chorus and orchestra were well balanced and as good as any professional assemblage would have been. Somehow, being lost in the music in another language in another country in this incredible structure with good friends was almost beyond processing. I felt very far from the familiar but it was a very good sense of distance. It was not a sense of being exiled, rather more like the anticipation of an explorer. As Chesterton wondered in his poem, I again was wondering how it was that I was being granted the opportunity to yet experience another day, and in such a grand manner.
As the Passion moved towards the extinction of Jesus on the Roman Cross, the brilliant late sunlight gave way to total darkness, as if on cue. Adding to the imagery of the Passion, a priest came out and removed the fine violet fabric from the brilliant white cross at the exact point called for in the lieder. At the exact point indicated he returned and extinguished the Easter candle. A small tendril of gray smoke drifted up into the ebony darkness of the seemingly infinite vaults of the crossing. I wondered about how it is that humankind so often destroys the most magnificent of things - the Iraq Museum, Joan of Arc, the great library at Alexandria, Jesus of Nazareth - so often leaving nothing behind but tendrils of smoke. A bit later the priest returned to place a crisp white fabric on the cross. In silence the Passion ended. I waited with baited breath for someone to applaud at the end of the performance. No one ever did, to my great relief. This is not an area that attracts tourists that indiscriminately clap at anything. People merely stood quietly to offer appreciation of the performers. They then drifted away.
I found myself wondering about the lives of the choristers, soloists, and musicians; how they ended up in this amazing space, singing this incredible tale of sacrifice. I wondered if they knew just how extraordinary it is for them to have been there, performing in that space, to live in a visual paradise. Does familiarity breed contempt and is this just an ordinary place to those who live here? I will never really know.
The day was not over by any stretch. A physician living in the next house was having a birthday party and we were invited over. This proved a rather pleasing event. I found the group most hospitable and engaging. Most people here function in English so I was able to have good conversation with a number of them, despite my total ignorance of the mother tongue. One of the physician’s sons had done a portrait of his father and stepmother as a birthday present, just today. It was astoundingly good and only the third painting he had ever done. I found it rather pleasing to talk with him about art.
The physician proved inspiring in that he has only one arm and has allowed this to be no limitation whatever. He gives no sense whatever of being disabled. I learned later that he lost his arm to a grenade as an infant during war. He reminded me of how Itzak Perlman had said that we have to learn how to play our best with what we have left, this after having played a whole concert on a violin with three strings; one having broken just barely into the program. It would seem that some people actually turn disability or loss into a major asset. I suspect this physician has done so. I understand that he works with people recovering from major disability and in need of rehabilitation. He apparently did a lot of the physical work on renovating his house. He made choices in life that made him a better person and it certainly shows even in his grown children who were rather pleasing articulate individuals that respect and care for their father.
We finally called it a day.
Remembrance Day - Mierlo 5-4 - North Brabant, Netherlands
The last color is fading from the day and I sit here barely able to see my keyboard for the tears that have occluded my vision. In my inner being, in places I did not know I had, I wail. My throat is constricted with the intense heat of grief. I feel like I have just had major surgery without the merciful benefit of anesthesia. I am stunned at how a tsunami of emotion can simply erupt out of the seemingly quiet waters of a sunny cerulean Sunday afternoon in a bucolic paradise. I can’t but wonder where the epicenter of the shockwave is that blasted into the sea of my life. I can’t but wonder how many other fault lines run through my being, only awaiting the unexpected time when two tectonic plates will slip sideways, turning me upside down.
I am thirty-two days into what has been essentially an intense pilgrimage and I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart, and I am definitely that at present. I worry that I might not find all the pieces and get them back together. It is a very difficult thing to do a pilgrimage very far from home - there being those days when one feels like one’s soul has become nothing but potsherds of clay in the dustbin of antiquity. I have just dropped my pot, inadvertently slipping on a patch of time.
In this beautiful land, on the 4th of May each year, several generations take time from their bountiful lives to remember a time when the brilliant sunshine of liberation shattered the hideous ebony darkness of totalitarian occupation. And so it was that after a magnificent dinner on the terrace, Hans, Yne, and I mounted our bicycles and joined a somber procession of other cyclists and pedestrians and made our way in the last golden light of a magnificent day to an emerald oasis studded with magnificent rhododendron, azalea, and a dozen species of spring perennials to remember the sacrifice and extreme cost of liberation. It was fifty-eight years ago that uncounted tens of thousands of British, Canadian, and American boys and young men paid the ultimate price to give back to the Dutch people their beloved land and cities, and especially the possibility of peace and freedom from years of unceasing terror. Over a period of some nine months the miracle of liberation spread north and east across the Netherlands. The epic film “A Bridge Too Far” portrays the fierce price paid for this miracle of liberation and just how close it came to being lost.
In this emerald oasis, with ultimate reverence, I walked down aisles of white marble testaments of the young men who forever left behind dearly loved wives, children, and parents. Slowly and gently as possible, I walked across the green turf, feeling a shearing pain and grief tear across the inside of my soul. I found myself wailing for the lives that never got lived, the children that never knew their daddies, the wives that never again felt the loving arms of their husbands. It is hard to imagine a more sacred or civilized place than this war cemetery that marks the lives of the six hundred sixty-five donors of freedom who a mere six years before my birth liberated this beautiful village from the jackboot of the Third Reich. Hans and Yne both lived in the darkness of that slippery time on which I just fell. Yne describes being sent to the country as a child because the Dutch cities were starved out by the Nazi monsters. They know what it is like to come home from school and cry at the door for fifteen minutes to be let in – only to learn the Nazi machine had taken their parents further into the darkness of a man-made hell. Hans grandfather was shot. Hans father wore a yellow star. His mother lived in stark terror for uncounted years. Hans and his father both faced the possibility of extinction every day.
I joined that procession expecting to be little more than an observer. Once again, I was jerked by a short chain into another role. I was no longer the journalist, the traveler, instead a rather grief-stricken pilgrim, a mourner of lives truncated by the great darkness that swept the world. Suddenly, there were names and faces, dear to me, emerging from the odious shadows of hell. I was no longer a historian, rather a participant stumbling on Ida Fink’s A Scrap in Time.
It being far more important to remember in our hearts and souls than on paper, the true cost of freedom, it seemed decidedly crass to even think of taking a camera to this assembly of memory. Forever I will remember the spectral brilliance of those spring perennials bursting forth with color in the last rays of the aureate sun, embracing the bases of those marble testaments of short lives lived well, that we might live well and long, in freedom.
As long as there are those that remember, there is hope. As long as there are mayors who back slowly away from floral displays on white marble and bow imperceptibly, there is hope. As long as there are grandparents who bring grandchildren to remember, then perhaps we might not forget to put things where they belong, to take care of other people and their things as if they were our own. Perhaps one day we really can beat swords into plowshares.
We are promised in the Revelation that one day we will enter into a place where there are tears no more. I only can hope that those six-hundred sixty-five souls marked in stone will one day know the brilliance of eternal day. For today, my tears will water the flowers of remembrance.
How much this world desperately needs the gentle rains of life-giving love.
I am thirty-two days into what has been essentially an intense pilgrimage and I don’t recommend it for the faint of heart, and I am definitely that at present. I worry that I might not find all the pieces and get them back together. It is a very difficult thing to do a pilgrimage very far from home - there being those days when one feels like one’s soul has become nothing but potsherds of clay in the dustbin of antiquity. I have just dropped my pot, inadvertently slipping on a patch of time.
In this beautiful land, on the 4th of May each year, several generations take time from their bountiful lives to remember a time when the brilliant sunshine of liberation shattered the hideous ebony darkness of totalitarian occupation. And so it was that after a magnificent dinner on the terrace, Hans, Yne, and I mounted our bicycles and joined a somber procession of other cyclists and pedestrians and made our way in the last golden light of a magnificent day to an emerald oasis studded with magnificent rhododendron, azalea, and a dozen species of spring perennials to remember the sacrifice and extreme cost of liberation. It was fifty-eight years ago that uncounted tens of thousands of British, Canadian, and American boys and young men paid the ultimate price to give back to the Dutch people their beloved land and cities, and especially the possibility of peace and freedom from years of unceasing terror. Over a period of some nine months the miracle of liberation spread north and east across the Netherlands. The epic film “A Bridge Too Far” portrays the fierce price paid for this miracle of liberation and just how close it came to being lost.
In this emerald oasis, with ultimate reverence, I walked down aisles of white marble testaments of the young men who forever left behind dearly loved wives, children, and parents. Slowly and gently as possible, I walked across the green turf, feeling a shearing pain and grief tear across the inside of my soul. I found myself wailing for the lives that never got lived, the children that never knew their daddies, the wives that never again felt the loving arms of their husbands. It is hard to imagine a more sacred or civilized place than this war cemetery that marks the lives of the six hundred sixty-five donors of freedom who a mere six years before my birth liberated this beautiful village from the jackboot of the Third Reich. Hans and Yne both lived in the darkness of that slippery time on which I just fell. Yne describes being sent to the country as a child because the Dutch cities were starved out by the Nazi monsters. They know what it is like to come home from school and cry at the door for fifteen minutes to be let in – only to learn the Nazi machine had taken their parents further into the darkness of a man-made hell. Hans grandfather was shot. Hans father wore a yellow star. His mother lived in stark terror for uncounted years. Hans and his father both faced the possibility of extinction every day.
I joined that procession expecting to be little more than an observer. Once again, I was jerked by a short chain into another role. I was no longer the journalist, the traveler, instead a rather grief-stricken pilgrim, a mourner of lives truncated by the great darkness that swept the world. Suddenly, there were names and faces, dear to me, emerging from the odious shadows of hell. I was no longer a historian, rather a participant stumbling on Ida Fink’s A Scrap in Time.
It being far more important to remember in our hearts and souls than on paper, the true cost of freedom, it seemed decidedly crass to even think of taking a camera to this assembly of memory. Forever I will remember the spectral brilliance of those spring perennials bursting forth with color in the last rays of the aureate sun, embracing the bases of those marble testaments of short lives lived well, that we might live well and long, in freedom.
As long as there are those that remember, there is hope. As long as there are mayors who back slowly away from floral displays on white marble and bow imperceptibly, there is hope. As long as there are grandparents who bring grandchildren to remember, then perhaps we might not forget to put things where they belong, to take care of other people and their things as if they were our own. Perhaps one day we really can beat swords into plowshares.
We are promised in the Revelation that one day we will enter into a place where there are tears no more. I only can hope that those six-hundred sixty-five souls marked in stone will one day know the brilliance of eternal day. For today, my tears will water the flowers of remembrance.
How much this world desperately needs the gentle rains of life-giving love.
Pink Blizzards - The Quintessential Experience -Mierlo, Brabant
It was in May of 1993 that a rare set of climatic conditions resulted in the deposition of 68 inches of snow on Mount Pisgah in North Carolina, setting a North American snowfall record. What was astounding about this snowfall, aside from its amount, location, and the season of its fall was the blue color it possessed, exactly the same hue as seen in the icebergs calving from the faces of the glacial flows which empty into the inside passage of Alaska. The beauty and wonder was without comparison.
Life can be an odious nightmare for so many of us here on this smallish sapphire planet we call home. For far too many people life is about survival, not about beauty, yet unexpectedly, as Yancey so aptly said, pleasure can wash up on the shores of our lives as grand remnants from Paradise. Blue snow in May was paradise that had washed up on our shores. Adults forgot their cares and romped as children in its crystalline magic. My response was to take friends and a picnic lunch to the top of that mountain and serve fruit compote in stemmed glasses and deli ham as a main course.
It is only April, yet today I experienced a blizzard of another hue - a soft fragrant pink one on an eighty-degree day at one foot above sea level. It was in the stunning beauty of the Canadian Rockies of Western Canada eight years ago that I met my good friends Hans and Yne. We met in a time of crisis. Today we experienced magic, eight years and eight thousand miles away from that first encounter, yet again in the midst of life's sometimes severe challenges. Today I learned of the suicide of a dear friend's sister. For a time I felt winded, knowing the blow to my friend would be unbearable. Hans has a strong intuitive sensibility and he suggested a walk.
Under a ceramic blue Dutch sky with china white clouds, the three of us set out for a walk in the miraculous unusually warm climate, which has caused an intense spectral eruption of spring color - vibrant orange lily tulips, crisp white hydrangea, cobalt blue grape hyacinth, and lavender rhododendron. Magic again washed upon my shores. While walking under the sky in a landscape that gave Vermeer and Rubens the inspiration to create their breath taking views of the world, a tuft of gentle spring air loosed a blizzard of pink petals from the cherry trees lining the serene herringbone brick streets of this bucolic village and sent them swirling around my head. The sidewalks and curbstones were filled with these pink fragments of Paradise that had just blown into my life. I have swiftly learned that in the Brabant province of the Nederland, gentle surprises are to be found at nearly every turn. Perhaps the message of the Brabant is to not question why life sometimes has exquisite pain, rather instead to with gratitude wonder why it is that remnants of Paradise wash up on our shores, or swirl around our heads. I have certainly had more than my share of these precious remnants wash up in recent days.
Walking down the brick streets with their pleasing herringbone patterns, we were immersed in exuberant life - families out for leisurely strolls, young lovers riding their bicycles, middle-aged couples enjoying a Heineken at the sidewalk café, and enthusiastic young parents challenging their adolescent sons to push themselves to their limits. It so happened that we came upon the start of a bicycle race in which several dozen Dutch boys pushed themselves through twenty-seven kilometers of a bricked-line labyrinth. It was while watching this quintessential Dutch experience in bicycle heaven that a gentle whiff of new spring air encased me in pink magic, reminding me that Paradise is but a breath away. We happily watched those boys give it their all for thirty-five circuits. As far as I was concerned they were all winners, having been given good health, good bikes, and the opportunity to live in virtual paradise. I was a winner in that I am able to continue a pilgrimage that includes walks along the seashore of life that includes cherry blossom petals swirling around my head and the chance to see happy people out loving life in a place out of one of Rubens' paintings. I only wish that my friend and her sister could have had a cloud of cherry blossoms catch them by happy surprise in time to know that life is a miracle always worth embracing.
I sit here listening to the Brandenburg Concertos #4,5,and 6 as the last aureate sunlight of a luminous day begins its slow fade to indigo. The indigo will give way to the platinum of a full moon. I am in a place that defines home. Yne is in presently working culinary magic in the kitchen. Hans and the tulips are on the terrace soaking up the last of the golden day. The clouds are just beginning to turn the color of the cherry blossoms.
It is a wonder that I have been granted another such day.
Life can be an odious nightmare for so many of us here on this smallish sapphire planet we call home. For far too many people life is about survival, not about beauty, yet unexpectedly, as Yancey so aptly said, pleasure can wash up on the shores of our lives as grand remnants from Paradise. Blue snow in May was paradise that had washed up on our shores. Adults forgot their cares and romped as children in its crystalline magic. My response was to take friends and a picnic lunch to the top of that mountain and serve fruit compote in stemmed glasses and deli ham as a main course.
It is only April, yet today I experienced a blizzard of another hue - a soft fragrant pink one on an eighty-degree day at one foot above sea level. It was in the stunning beauty of the Canadian Rockies of Western Canada eight years ago that I met my good friends Hans and Yne. We met in a time of crisis. Today we experienced magic, eight years and eight thousand miles away from that first encounter, yet again in the midst of life's sometimes severe challenges. Today I learned of the suicide of a dear friend's sister. For a time I felt winded, knowing the blow to my friend would be unbearable. Hans has a strong intuitive sensibility and he suggested a walk.
Under a ceramic blue Dutch sky with china white clouds, the three of us set out for a walk in the miraculous unusually warm climate, which has caused an intense spectral eruption of spring color - vibrant orange lily tulips, crisp white hydrangea, cobalt blue grape hyacinth, and lavender rhododendron. Magic again washed upon my shores. While walking under the sky in a landscape that gave Vermeer and Rubens the inspiration to create their breath taking views of the world, a tuft of gentle spring air loosed a blizzard of pink petals from the cherry trees lining the serene herringbone brick streets of this bucolic village and sent them swirling around my head. The sidewalks and curbstones were filled with these pink fragments of Paradise that had just blown into my life. I have swiftly learned that in the Brabant province of the Nederland, gentle surprises are to be found at nearly every turn. Perhaps the message of the Brabant is to not question why life sometimes has exquisite pain, rather instead to with gratitude wonder why it is that remnants of Paradise wash up on our shores, or swirl around our heads. I have certainly had more than my share of these precious remnants wash up in recent days.
Walking down the brick streets with their pleasing herringbone patterns, we were immersed in exuberant life - families out for leisurely strolls, young lovers riding their bicycles, middle-aged couples enjoying a Heineken at the sidewalk café, and enthusiastic young parents challenging their adolescent sons to push themselves to their limits. It so happened that we came upon the start of a bicycle race in which several dozen Dutch boys pushed themselves through twenty-seven kilometers of a bricked-line labyrinth. It was while watching this quintessential Dutch experience in bicycle heaven that a gentle whiff of new spring air encased me in pink magic, reminding me that Paradise is but a breath away. We happily watched those boys give it their all for thirty-five circuits. As far as I was concerned they were all winners, having been given good health, good bikes, and the opportunity to live in virtual paradise. I was a winner in that I am able to continue a pilgrimage that includes walks along the seashore of life that includes cherry blossom petals swirling around my head and the chance to see happy people out loving life in a place out of one of Rubens' paintings. I only wish that my friend and her sister could have had a cloud of cherry blossoms catch them by happy surprise in time to know that life is a miracle always worth embracing.
I sit here listening to the Brandenburg Concertos #4,5,and 6 as the last aureate sunlight of a luminous day begins its slow fade to indigo. The indigo will give way to the platinum of a full moon. I am in a place that defines home. Yne is in presently working culinary magic in the kitchen. Hans and the tulips are on the terrace soaking up the last of the golden day. The clouds are just beginning to turn the color of the cherry blossoms.
It is a wonder that I have been granted another such day.
St Martins Church - Love in Solid Form, Cologne, Germany
The drive to Cologne on an interstate was disquieting. These serpentine ribbons of sameness now seem to crisscross the whole of the world that is not covered by water. Germany was a surprise to me in some ways. It is often a curse to feel a place so easily. It did not feel good. This may have something to do with the immense convulsions Germany has experienced in the past century. The region we were in was and is the industrial epicenter of the country and was often in the range finders of the Norton Bomb sites used by the allies in the second war to reduce the war machinery of the Third Reich into ferrous rubble.
It must produce a lot of anger to see waves of planes come and destroy your cathedrals, museums, gardens, and cities, even in the process of stomping out a genocidal monster. I found it stunning just how much graffiti was on every single overpass, bridge support, noise abatement wall, ad infinitum. It was like visual cancer that had metastasized from another era when the cancer of anti-Semitism was so rampant. I was taken by the absolute absence of any floral plantings anywhere in Cologne. Fields and strips of unattended dandelion stems were instead the norm. An extravagance of billboards and graffiti added the color that no longer was offered by botanical delights. It didn’t work.
The density of life in the shopping districts surrounding the vast Cologne cathedral was overwhelming. The number of people crammed into a square mile must defy the laws of physics. It certainly defies the laws of mental sanity. It was equally stunning to see how hard the people looked. I long ago learned when moving to the American South that the pain and anger that comes with war does not go away when the dust settles after the last cannon shot has been fired. The pain and anger last for decades, if not centuries. The pain and anger is still here in Cologne. It is so very different than what I have sensed in the Netherlands. Somehow, the Dutch people seem to have found a way to progress further in the resolution of their traumas. The Dutch also had the advantage of 150 years without war, prior to the Second World War. Germany did not.
Given my mission for the day was to photograph the great cathedral known locally as the Kolner Dom, I got on with it. With mixed feelings I found significant parts of the exterior to be quite shrouded in vast scaffolding works making exterior filming of it hit and miss at best. Another twenty years of ebony industrial accretions have been added to the exterior since I last saw it, making the overall sense of the exterior muddy and unfocused. I was heartened to see that a large-scale restoration of the exterior is taking place, even if it meant my not taking fine photos of it.
I was rather surprised to find that no turnstile or cash register had been installed at the door. The thousands of people pouring into the place were freely admitted. The only attempt at revenue enhancement was for a forlorn priest, or a look-alike, to walk about the vast sanctuary with a plywood box around his neck and a money slot cut into the top of it. Sadly, the vast, once luminous interior was dark and morose, much of the window glass covered with scaffolding. Written material said that one could not expect to see the cathedral free of scaffolding in our lifetimes. The once numinous space felt more like a relic from another era, now nothing but a museum attraction. I suspect the loudest statement of the cathedral’s secular status was to be found in the gift shop. Inquiry proved that it was not possible to buy a cross, chalice, icon, or religious book of any kind. I did have a choice of designer watches and tourist guides of the city – not much of a consolation prize. I did, however, have the good fortune to find that the shop still had a box of 35 mm transparencies put away in a cabinet behind the counter and I was able to buy thirty magnificent images at a very fair price which salvaged my photographic mission.
After the disquieting experience of visiting this transmogrified cathedral, Hans, Yne, and I did a decidedly secular thing – we had a fine German beer and a bowl of soup in a pleasant outdoor café on the plaza facing the seven-hundred-year old west front of the cathedral. This proved a good antidote, with pleasant side effects, to the sometimes-oppressive introspection I find myself in.
As is often the case, the great finds of life are remnants of Paradise that wash up on our shores. They can’t be sought out. My friendship with Hans and Yne is only a result of their miraculous survival of the Holocaust and the surreal way in which we met in the Canadian Rockies years ago. Even here in Cologne we were to have such an experience – of a remnant washing up on our shores.
From where the cathedral is situated, one can just see the top of a tower over the shopping district we took to be a medieval city hall that had somehow miraculously survived the war. The tower in the distance reminded me of the magnificent Rathaus in Vienna. We walked a distance along the Rhine River and wandered up towards what we still thought to be the city hall, figuring only to get a couple images of its exterior.
What we found instead was a magnificent rose that had been brought back to life from the ashes of a man-made hell. The ‘city hall’ turned out to be an 850-year-old Romanesque church that was reduced to rubble by the Allied bombings of the industrial heart of Germany. Photographs showed the destruction of the St. Martins Church to be complete. Where the crossing tower had risen for eight centuries, there was nothing but open sky.
We went into this church and did not enter a museum relic; rather we entered a place of serenity that suffused love and peace. In fact, Hans fell soundly asleep as I wandered about this monument to the possibilities that love makes imaginable. For one who’s father had to wear a yellow star, it did my heart good to see him at such peace.
Incredibly, during an era when money, food, industrial capacity, and life itself had been nearly extirpated, there were sentient beings with the vision and will to lovingly gather together the piles of rubble that once constituted the magnificent St Martins Church and over a period of twenty years make it live and rise again. As it was, the solid Romanesque arches withstood the bombings and the immense crossing tower was rebuilt above these, and the chancel and nave reconstructed with the very stones cut eight hundred and fifty years earlier. I simply could not assimilate that the ancient structure I was now standing in had, in fact, been a pile of dead rock under an open sky. With love all things are possible.
Love really does outlast all things. Sometimes you can literally touch it.
It must produce a lot of anger to see waves of planes come and destroy your cathedrals, museums, gardens, and cities, even in the process of stomping out a genocidal monster. I found it stunning just how much graffiti was on every single overpass, bridge support, noise abatement wall, ad infinitum. It was like visual cancer that had metastasized from another era when the cancer of anti-Semitism was so rampant. I was taken by the absolute absence of any floral plantings anywhere in Cologne. Fields and strips of unattended dandelion stems were instead the norm. An extravagance of billboards and graffiti added the color that no longer was offered by botanical delights. It didn’t work.
The density of life in the shopping districts surrounding the vast Cologne cathedral was overwhelming. The number of people crammed into a square mile must defy the laws of physics. It certainly defies the laws of mental sanity. It was equally stunning to see how hard the people looked. I long ago learned when moving to the American South that the pain and anger that comes with war does not go away when the dust settles after the last cannon shot has been fired. The pain and anger last for decades, if not centuries. The pain and anger is still here in Cologne. It is so very different than what I have sensed in the Netherlands. Somehow, the Dutch people seem to have found a way to progress further in the resolution of their traumas. The Dutch also had the advantage of 150 years without war, prior to the Second World War. Germany did not.
Given my mission for the day was to photograph the great cathedral known locally as the Kolner Dom, I got on with it. With mixed feelings I found significant parts of the exterior to be quite shrouded in vast scaffolding works making exterior filming of it hit and miss at best. Another twenty years of ebony industrial accretions have been added to the exterior since I last saw it, making the overall sense of the exterior muddy and unfocused. I was heartened to see that a large-scale restoration of the exterior is taking place, even if it meant my not taking fine photos of it.
I was rather surprised to find that no turnstile or cash register had been installed at the door. The thousands of people pouring into the place were freely admitted. The only attempt at revenue enhancement was for a forlorn priest, or a look-alike, to walk about the vast sanctuary with a plywood box around his neck and a money slot cut into the top of it. Sadly, the vast, once luminous interior was dark and morose, much of the window glass covered with scaffolding. Written material said that one could not expect to see the cathedral free of scaffolding in our lifetimes. The once numinous space felt more like a relic from another era, now nothing but a museum attraction. I suspect the loudest statement of the cathedral’s secular status was to be found in the gift shop. Inquiry proved that it was not possible to buy a cross, chalice, icon, or religious book of any kind. I did have a choice of designer watches and tourist guides of the city – not much of a consolation prize. I did, however, have the good fortune to find that the shop still had a box of 35 mm transparencies put away in a cabinet behind the counter and I was able to buy thirty magnificent images at a very fair price which salvaged my photographic mission.
After the disquieting experience of visiting this transmogrified cathedral, Hans, Yne, and I did a decidedly secular thing – we had a fine German beer and a bowl of soup in a pleasant outdoor café on the plaza facing the seven-hundred-year old west front of the cathedral. This proved a good antidote, with pleasant side effects, to the sometimes-oppressive introspection I find myself in.
As is often the case, the great finds of life are remnants of Paradise that wash up on our shores. They can’t be sought out. My friendship with Hans and Yne is only a result of their miraculous survival of the Holocaust and the surreal way in which we met in the Canadian Rockies years ago. Even here in Cologne we were to have such an experience – of a remnant washing up on our shores.
From where the cathedral is situated, one can just see the top of a tower over the shopping district we took to be a medieval city hall that had somehow miraculously survived the war. The tower in the distance reminded me of the magnificent Rathaus in Vienna. We walked a distance along the Rhine River and wandered up towards what we still thought to be the city hall, figuring only to get a couple images of its exterior.
What we found instead was a magnificent rose that had been brought back to life from the ashes of a man-made hell. The ‘city hall’ turned out to be an 850-year-old Romanesque church that was reduced to rubble by the Allied bombings of the industrial heart of Germany. Photographs showed the destruction of the St. Martins Church to be complete. Where the crossing tower had risen for eight centuries, there was nothing but open sky.
We went into this church and did not enter a museum relic; rather we entered a place of serenity that suffused love and peace. In fact, Hans fell soundly asleep as I wandered about this monument to the possibilities that love makes imaginable. For one who’s father had to wear a yellow star, it did my heart good to see him at such peace.
Incredibly, during an era when money, food, industrial capacity, and life itself had been nearly extirpated, there were sentient beings with the vision and will to lovingly gather together the piles of rubble that once constituted the magnificent St Martins Church and over a period of twenty years make it live and rise again. As it was, the solid Romanesque arches withstood the bombings and the immense crossing tower was rebuilt above these, and the chancel and nave reconstructed with the very stones cut eight hundred and fifty years earlier. I simply could not assimilate that the ancient structure I was now standing in had, in fact, been a pile of dead rock under an open sky. With love all things are possible.
Love really does outlast all things. Sometimes you can literally touch it.
Night Visions - Seaton, Devon
The four train journeys from London proved rather pleasing – too much so. A passenger next to me woke me up at my town; otherwise I would have ended up in Wales. I gathered my things very quickly, got off at Axminster and immediately found Mary waiting with birthday chocolate chip cookies along with a bottle each of Old Peculiar and Hot Speckled Hen, two premium English dark beers. I did some pretty good damage to the cookies by the time we got to Seaton. It was but a short four mile run along serpentine ribbons in an emerald realm to Seaton, a bucolic seaside village. The ocean is absolutely calm and china blue – not the usual angry dark gray of the North Atlantic. It is utterly glorious with everything in full bloom and I hate to admit it – it does feel like I am home. The climate here is exactly like it was in Atlanta when I left there, absolutely clear and seventy.
I have never seen an absolutely clear starry night in England in all the years I have been coming over here. It was absolute magic. Mix in with this the experience of walking along the coastline at night and wandering through a fabulous little town like something from a Thomas Kincaide painting. It was magnificent beyond words. Virtually every house has a miniature botanical garden. Some yards are a mere 6 x 15 feet. The British reputation for green thumbs is certainly merited in this region of Devon. Seaton has a rather fine terra-cotta brick clock tower with illuminated dials, the whole of which is set in a splendid little park with a small waterfall illuminated in several colors. I did take a few dozen grand photos at night of this magnificent seaside resort village but these will have to await compression when I get home otherwise you will block my e-mail forever if I send huge attachments.
Mary brought along her dog and we chased it and an assortment of collies, mutts, and other unknown variants through fields containing Roman ruins pre-dating Hadrian. It has always been a major thing in England for villagers to assemble at sunset and sunrise in the parks with their dogs for evening and morning romps. The dogs are in heaven and their keepers have pleasantries between them. I am getting in five miles of walking and then some each day. The pubs are pleasing places filled with conversation, happy dogs, and very pleasant bar men tending the taps - a very different sensibility.
I walked a meandering two or three miles ‘home’ alone at 11 PM under the same Orion constellation I see in Anderson. A fine crescent moon has shown up in some grand night pictures I have made. There are no issues of personal safety here. I could not imagine walking home three miles from somewhere in Anderson during the night. I came back and promptly slept through until 10:30 AM and had breakfast at 11 AM. My ears are quite silent and I am having no visual migraine things whatever. Thus far I have had no travel stress and I am even more removed mentally from the world geo-political circumstances, for which I am most pleased. I certainly am glad I did not let it keep me from the journey.
Last year I met a fellow, Sean, in his gallery shop and he sold me the Drecki painting I have in my chapel. Drecki is the fellow who survived Auschwitz because he believed that his Creator God had a plan for his life despite it including a detour through the dark night of a man-made hell. The nights here are anything but. I found Sean in the afternoon and he remembered me at once from last year and told me that Drecki’s widow had died since I was here last year and he now had seven more of his paintings at home in Exeter. He is going to bring these to me here in Seaton on Friday for viewing. I think he will be willing to sell them for little of nothing. Sean believes that English people will not buy large paintings. He had another in the shop that I rather like but it is on board, large, framed, and would have to be shipped. I might yet get it. It feels a bit like a tranquil John Constable landscape.
In another gallery shop I met a fellow, John, who does restorations and new Victorian plastered frames for London galleries and museums. He had several oil paintings that were really rather pleasing. I may well end up taking one of these home, as it would be manageable on the plane in bubble wrap. He has an old oil painting that feels much like a JMW Turner study of small boats. I spent perhaps an hour with this fellow as he showed me his studio and the process of making these frames. These fellows are both pleasantly chatty.
I found a Belva Plain novel, Homecoming, in a second hand Red Cross charity shop for sixty pence and read the whole of it at one sitting last night. I will give it back to the shop and it can be sold again. It did prove a rather good diversion and was a poignant story of a family quite shattered by dysfunctional relationships and calamities. In the end these failures were all repaired. Alas, in the real world, this does not usually happen.
Thus far I have bought but the single book, knowing that whatever I buy is going to have to be dragged around for six weeks. I am finally beginning to learn to not add ballast to my load while wondering around. There are lots of nice things here but they would be hard to stuff into an aluminum can doing 600 MPH, eight miles up, without special and expensive arrangements made in advance.
Haven’t seen a drop of rain yet or even the hint of one. This is a really good thing over here. I don’t see Internet news, TVs, or papers, or hear conversation about military doings. I can see the fine crescent moon out my west-facing window on the second floor. There is a vase of nice red dianthus on the windowsill.
I have never seen an absolutely clear starry night in England in all the years I have been coming over here. It was absolute magic. Mix in with this the experience of walking along the coastline at night and wandering through a fabulous little town like something from a Thomas Kincaide painting. It was magnificent beyond words. Virtually every house has a miniature botanical garden. Some yards are a mere 6 x 15 feet. The British reputation for green thumbs is certainly merited in this region of Devon. Seaton has a rather fine terra-cotta brick clock tower with illuminated dials, the whole of which is set in a splendid little park with a small waterfall illuminated in several colors. I did take a few dozen grand photos at night of this magnificent seaside resort village but these will have to await compression when I get home otherwise you will block my e-mail forever if I send huge attachments.
Mary brought along her dog and we chased it and an assortment of collies, mutts, and other unknown variants through fields containing Roman ruins pre-dating Hadrian. It has always been a major thing in England for villagers to assemble at sunset and sunrise in the parks with their dogs for evening and morning romps. The dogs are in heaven and their keepers have pleasantries between them. I am getting in five miles of walking and then some each day. The pubs are pleasing places filled with conversation, happy dogs, and very pleasant bar men tending the taps - a very different sensibility.
I walked a meandering two or three miles ‘home’ alone at 11 PM under the same Orion constellation I see in Anderson. A fine crescent moon has shown up in some grand night pictures I have made. There are no issues of personal safety here. I could not imagine walking home three miles from somewhere in Anderson during the night. I came back and promptly slept through until 10:30 AM and had breakfast at 11 AM. My ears are quite silent and I am having no visual migraine things whatever. Thus far I have had no travel stress and I am even more removed mentally from the world geo-political circumstances, for which I am most pleased. I certainly am glad I did not let it keep me from the journey.
Last year I met a fellow, Sean, in his gallery shop and he sold me the Drecki painting I have in my chapel. Drecki is the fellow who survived Auschwitz because he believed that his Creator God had a plan for his life despite it including a detour through the dark night of a man-made hell. The nights here are anything but. I found Sean in the afternoon and he remembered me at once from last year and told me that Drecki’s widow had died since I was here last year and he now had seven more of his paintings at home in Exeter. He is going to bring these to me here in Seaton on Friday for viewing. I think he will be willing to sell them for little of nothing. Sean believes that English people will not buy large paintings. He had another in the shop that I rather like but it is on board, large, framed, and would have to be shipped. I might yet get it. It feels a bit like a tranquil John Constable landscape.
In another gallery shop I met a fellow, John, who does restorations and new Victorian plastered frames for London galleries and museums. He had several oil paintings that were really rather pleasing. I may well end up taking one of these home, as it would be manageable on the plane in bubble wrap. He has an old oil painting that feels much like a JMW Turner study of small boats. I spent perhaps an hour with this fellow as he showed me his studio and the process of making these frames. These fellows are both pleasantly chatty.
I found a Belva Plain novel, Homecoming, in a second hand Red Cross charity shop for sixty pence and read the whole of it at one sitting last night. I will give it back to the shop and it can be sold again. It did prove a rather good diversion and was a poignant story of a family quite shattered by dysfunctional relationships and calamities. In the end these failures were all repaired. Alas, in the real world, this does not usually happen.
Thus far I have bought but the single book, knowing that whatever I buy is going to have to be dragged around for six weeks. I am finally beginning to learn to not add ballast to my load while wondering around. There are lots of nice things here but they would be hard to stuff into an aluminum can doing 600 MPH, eight miles up, without special and expensive arrangements made in advance.
Haven’t seen a drop of rain yet or even the hint of one. This is a really good thing over here. I don’t see Internet news, TVs, or papers, or hear conversation about military doings. I can see the fine crescent moon out my west-facing window on the second floor. There is a vase of nice red dianthus on the windowsill.
Organic Rainbows - Musings from The Nederland
In the past hundred years the European continent has been through wars and devastation that are beyond comprehension. Some years ago an inferno engulfed Yellowstone National Park. Some years earlier yet, Mt. St. Helen lost her saintly beauty and ejected a cubic mile of volcanic wrath into the sky and wiped out a pristine paradise.
Did it really happen? Was civilization wiped out in Europe? Was Yellowstone’s beauty forever lost? Was alpine heaven lost forever beneath acrid volcanic ash? As tragic as these events have been, they may well prove a profoundly important reality – love and beauty really are the most powerful forces in the universe.
Researchers were given opportunity to see two cataclysmic natural disasters take place and then simply watch what happened afterwards. As it turns out, beauty was seeded in that volcanic ash and in the burnt offerings of the great forests of Yellowstone. It has been astonishing to researchers just how fast these regions have come back to life, sprouting with new possibilities. The miraculous re-generation of life at the sites of these two incendiary nightmares again reminds me of Phillip Yancey who said, “ Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.” There was great pleasure to be derived from finding newly emergent life in the acrid volcanic ash that covered much of the American northwest. There was grand consolation to be found in the new life erupting from the burnt sentinels that once stood in Yellowstone. Carrying it a bit further, GK Chesterton said, “Even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.”
There is a power that brings anything out of nothing. The Christian scriptures say that in the beginning there was nothing. They tell us God is love. They also say that love is the only thing that will last forever. Quantum physicists are now finding that in the beginning there must have been something besides the nothing - a creator who could make anything out of nothing – and did. At one level one could say there was nothing at Yellowstone or Mt. St. Helen’s after they were immolated. A visit there today would suggest Someone was indeed able to make anything out of apparent nothing.
For those that lived in Europe during the 20th century, millions saw their worlds reduced to apparent nothingness. I write this from a country that had not seen involvement in a war in six generations when the Third Reich showed up on the doorstep and did not knock before entering with its odious nightmare. The Dutch people had a radical experience with apparent nothingness – losing so much of what was near and dear to them – their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. Yet today the Dutch people have their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. What happened? Love and beauty were able to outlast the Third Reich, which is now nothing.
I just had an all-powerful reminder of the power of beauty and love outlasting the hideous. Several hours from here is one of the most spectacular botanical gardens in the world – the famed Keukenhof tulip garden. It is only open seven weeks in the whole of the year and we happened to be there on the day when every single plant, all seven and a half million of them, were at their prime of life – a wondrous combination of tulip, hyacinth, rhododendron, azalea, orchid, cherry tree, daffodil – this all on a 70 degree day clear day under a soft china blue sky. My friends Hans and Yne, who lived through that horrid era of nothingness, exclaimed all day that they had never seen these gardens looking nearly as fine as they did today – as if they were seeing them for the first time. Perhaps, in a way they were.
The heavenly rainbows we so delight in, as magnificent as they are, are by their nature short-lived, require the presence of a storm and dark cloud to occur, and are just rare enough as to invoke our enchantment instead of our indifference. Rarity seems to be an important dimension of beauty. It is impossible to describe with words an organic rainbow that one can physically touch, smell, embrace, and enjoy for hours, without the requirement of a storm being present. Such is the Keukenhof Garden.
It is simply beyond astounding to wander around eighty acres with 30,000 other stunned observers, marveling at a beech forest containing more than seven million plants in a range of colors beyond counting, seasoned with lakes and fountains containing all manner of water birds. While roaming about this paradise in a spectral fugue state, I could not but realize that a very large chunk of Paradise had washed up on the shores of our lives this day. This was no tiny fragment from a shipwreck.
This garden is a tangible exhibit of the reality that love and beauty do outlast the darkness that comes at night in the human experience. Even as the Dutch people endured the torment of the Nazi darkness that swept across the land, much as fire swept across Yellowstone or volcanic pumice swept across the northwest, the seeds of indescribable beauty were there all along, just waiting for the right time to once again bloom.
I am now far from those gardens, but they are no less real. They are radiating their organic spectrum to yet another thirty thousand pilgrims seeking beauty and meaning. The Christian scriptures also say that God has made Himself known through the handiwork of His creation – not through anything else. As the world struggles in so many places with geo-political crisis, with economic failure, and with upheaval of the highest order, the seeds of His beauty, of His reality are yet to be found in the midst of even the darkest place. It’s just the nature of seeds that they are sometimes very small. On occasion one gets to stand in the sun and see an organic rainbow in full bloom.
He spoke very loudly to us today.
Did it really happen? Was civilization wiped out in Europe? Was Yellowstone’s beauty forever lost? Was alpine heaven lost forever beneath acrid volcanic ash? As tragic as these events have been, they may well prove a profoundly important reality – love and beauty really are the most powerful forces in the universe.
Researchers were given opportunity to see two cataclysmic natural disasters take place and then simply watch what happened afterwards. As it turns out, beauty was seeded in that volcanic ash and in the burnt offerings of the great forests of Yellowstone. It has been astonishing to researchers just how fast these regions have come back to life, sprouting with new possibilities. The miraculous re-generation of life at the sites of these two incendiary nightmares again reminds me of Phillip Yancey who said, “ Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time.” There was great pleasure to be derived from finding newly emergent life in the acrid volcanic ash that covered much of the American northwest. There was grand consolation to be found in the new life erupting from the burnt sentinels that once stood in Yellowstone. Carrying it a bit further, GK Chesterton said, “Even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.”
There is a power that brings anything out of nothing. The Christian scriptures say that in the beginning there was nothing. They tell us God is love. They also say that love is the only thing that will last forever. Quantum physicists are now finding that in the beginning there must have been something besides the nothing - a creator who could make anything out of nothing – and did. At one level one could say there was nothing at Yellowstone or Mt. St. Helen’s after they were immolated. A visit there today would suggest Someone was indeed able to make anything out of apparent nothing.
For those that lived in Europe during the 20th century, millions saw their worlds reduced to apparent nothingness. I write this from a country that had not seen involvement in a war in six generations when the Third Reich showed up on the doorstep and did not knock before entering with its odious nightmare. The Dutch people had a radical experience with apparent nothingness – losing so much of what was near and dear to them – their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. Yet today the Dutch people have their cities, families, landscapes, arts, peace, culture, and history. What happened? Love and beauty were able to outlast the Third Reich, which is now nothing.
I just had an all-powerful reminder of the power of beauty and love outlasting the hideous. Several hours from here is one of the most spectacular botanical gardens in the world – the famed Keukenhof tulip garden. It is only open seven weeks in the whole of the year and we happened to be there on the day when every single plant, all seven and a half million of them, were at their prime of life – a wondrous combination of tulip, hyacinth, rhododendron, azalea, orchid, cherry tree, daffodil – this all on a 70 degree day clear day under a soft china blue sky. My friends Hans and Yne, who lived through that horrid era of nothingness, exclaimed all day that they had never seen these gardens looking nearly as fine as they did today – as if they were seeing them for the first time. Perhaps, in a way they were.
The heavenly rainbows we so delight in, as magnificent as they are, are by their nature short-lived, require the presence of a storm and dark cloud to occur, and are just rare enough as to invoke our enchantment instead of our indifference. Rarity seems to be an important dimension of beauty. It is impossible to describe with words an organic rainbow that one can physically touch, smell, embrace, and enjoy for hours, without the requirement of a storm being present. Such is the Keukenhof Garden.
It is simply beyond astounding to wander around eighty acres with 30,000 other stunned observers, marveling at a beech forest containing more than seven million plants in a range of colors beyond counting, seasoned with lakes and fountains containing all manner of water birds. While roaming about this paradise in a spectral fugue state, I could not but realize that a very large chunk of Paradise had washed up on the shores of our lives this day. This was no tiny fragment from a shipwreck.
This garden is a tangible exhibit of the reality that love and beauty do outlast the darkness that comes at night in the human experience. Even as the Dutch people endured the torment of the Nazi darkness that swept across the land, much as fire swept across Yellowstone or volcanic pumice swept across the northwest, the seeds of indescribable beauty were there all along, just waiting for the right time to once again bloom.
I am now far from those gardens, but they are no less real. They are radiating their organic spectrum to yet another thirty thousand pilgrims seeking beauty and meaning. The Christian scriptures also say that God has made Himself known through the handiwork of His creation – not through anything else. As the world struggles in so many places with geo-political crisis, with economic failure, and with upheaval of the highest order, the seeds of His beauty, of His reality are yet to be found in the midst of even the darkest place. It’s just the nature of seeds that they are sometimes very small. On occasion one gets to stand in the sun and see an organic rainbow in full bloom.
He spoke very loudly to us today.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Musings From Trafalgar Square
My favorite author in the world, Henri Nouwen, begins his compelling book The Return of the Prodigal with an elaborate description of his experience sitting in the Hermitage of St. Petersburg for hours entranced by Rembrandt’s epic painting of the same name. He even went on about getting permission to have a chair brought before the painting so he could sit at length before it. Nouwen, Rembrandt, and many others have plumbed with word and brush the depths of the story Jesus shared about the younger son of a wealthy landholder who committed the ultimate insult and asked for his inheritance early. This younger son then promptly went and squandered the whole of it on riotous living. What makes the story so compelling is the father’s unconditional love and acceptance of the son who was once lost and now found. It doesn’t seem that the motive of the returning son was a major aspect of the story. It was how the father received one who had been wayward and had cost him so dearly in emotional and material terms that makes the story bigger than life.
Today I found myself in a similar situation to that of Nouwen. In late afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the British National Gallery, transfixed in front of Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece “An Autumn Landscape with a view of Het Steen”. This large canvas depicts the country estate that gave Rubens so much joy. I found myself drawn into the profound sense of home, place and beauty that are represented in it. For one that has lived in fifty-eight places and never really had a secure sense of home, I can relate instantly to both paintings. In the case of Rembrandt, I can only slightly imagine what it would be like to have a father embrace me. In the case of Ruben’s pastoral image, I can barely conceive of what it would be like to have a magnificent physical place that I felt connected to as Rubens did.
For so many years I have had this unfulfilled craving for both of these things and more. My life circumstances are such that I doubt I will ever know either, even in a surrogate form. I have chased all about the world hoping to find something to scratch the big itch that is just out of reach. I sit here 6,000 miles from my familiar world, alone in a city of ten million where I cannot name a single person that I am even acquainted with. It makes me wonder why I am here. Co-incidentally, I note as I write these words, that my favorite painters and writers are from the Netherlands. As it happens, I am flying there tomorrow to see a long-time friend I met in the midst of crisis. Perhaps I am not as far from home as I think.
The late great British writer GK Chesterton and I are alike in that both of our lives have gone in circles. I think I am now realizing that the answer is not in a far away land but back at the ranch - just as the younger son did – in a spiritual sense in our cases. The younger son was more pragmatic in his wants – something better to eat than the bean husks being used to feed pigs. Chesterton was after the same thing in his life that I am now after in mine- something beyond sadness, despair, meaninglessness. In his landmark work Orthodoxy, Chesterton came to realize that what he was really after was right back where he had strayed from in the first place. Far from inventing something new and radical Chesterton declared, “I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before … I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered it was orthodoxy.”
T.S. Eliot put it best:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Phillip Yancey, a highly popular American inspirational writer, clearly describes having followed a similar circuitous pathway. Yancey and I both traversed the university scene during the late 1960s and even read the same oppressive books on the Holocaust and the Soviet gulag and we even read the same dark fiction – Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche. As did Yancey, “I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry … I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable.”
He then discovered Chesterton. Chesterton was a breath of fresh air for Yancey. I know there to be an unread very old copy of Orthodoxy on my shelves. First thing I am doing when I get back to familiar territory is to remove this from its glass-fronted cabinet and take a deep breath from it. I could really use some of the great optimism that Chesterton so richly contributed to those on pilgrimage. As I do, Chesterton struggled greatly with despair, evil, and the meaning of life, and even approached mental breakdown. Chesterton emerged from his melancholy and realized that pleasure in any form could only be explained by the Christian message. Like CS Lewis, he found joy in a renewed faith. As Yancey eloquently puts it regarding Chesterton’s realization of the origins of pleasure, “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time. We must hold these relics lightly, and use them with gratitude and restraint, never seizing them as entitlements.”
I should be grateful that I landed on a bench in front of Rubens today and saw a major bit of Paradise wash up on the shores of my life. Here late on a Wednesday in April in London when I spent the day in St. Martins and the National gallery, I can fully agree with Chesterton’s succinct poem of gratitude:
Here dies another dayDuring which I have had eyes, ears, handsAnd the great world round me:And with tomorrow begins another.Why am I allowed two?
Yancey says “Chesterton himself said that the modern age is characterized by a sadness that calls for a new kind of prophet, not like prophets of old who reminded people that they were going to die, but someone who would remind them they are not dead yet.” Perhaps they are sitting on our bookshelves already.
Today I found myself in a similar situation to that of Nouwen. In late afternoon I was sitting on a bench in the British National Gallery, transfixed in front of Peter Paul Rubens masterpiece “An Autumn Landscape with a view of Het Steen”. This large canvas depicts the country estate that gave Rubens so much joy. I found myself drawn into the profound sense of home, place and beauty that are represented in it. For one that has lived in fifty-eight places and never really had a secure sense of home, I can relate instantly to both paintings. In the case of Rembrandt, I can only slightly imagine what it would be like to have a father embrace me. In the case of Ruben’s pastoral image, I can barely conceive of what it would be like to have a magnificent physical place that I felt connected to as Rubens did.
For so many years I have had this unfulfilled craving for both of these things and more. My life circumstances are such that I doubt I will ever know either, even in a surrogate form. I have chased all about the world hoping to find something to scratch the big itch that is just out of reach. I sit here 6,000 miles from my familiar world, alone in a city of ten million where I cannot name a single person that I am even acquainted with. It makes me wonder why I am here. Co-incidentally, I note as I write these words, that my favorite painters and writers are from the Netherlands. As it happens, I am flying there tomorrow to see a long-time friend I met in the midst of crisis. Perhaps I am not as far from home as I think.
The late great British writer GK Chesterton and I are alike in that both of our lives have gone in circles. I think I am now realizing that the answer is not in a far away land but back at the ranch - just as the younger son did – in a spiritual sense in our cases. The younger son was more pragmatic in his wants – something better to eat than the bean husks being used to feed pigs. Chesterton was after the same thing in his life that I am now after in mine- something beyond sadness, despair, meaninglessness. In his landmark work Orthodoxy, Chesterton came to realize that what he was really after was right back where he had strayed from in the first place. Far from inventing something new and radical Chesterton declared, “I am the man who with utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before … I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered it was orthodoxy.”
T.S. Eliot put it best:
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Phillip Yancey, a highly popular American inspirational writer, clearly describes having followed a similar circuitous pathway. Yancey and I both traversed the university scene during the late 1960s and even read the same oppressive books on the Holocaust and the Soviet gulag and we even read the same dark fiction – Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche. As did Yancey, “I learned not to laugh or smile, and not to cry … I see now what I could not see then, that I was erecting a strong stone fortress against love, for I thought myself unlovable.”
He then discovered Chesterton. Chesterton was a breath of fresh air for Yancey. I know there to be an unread very old copy of Orthodoxy on my shelves. First thing I am doing when I get back to familiar territory is to remove this from its glass-fronted cabinet and take a deep breath from it. I could really use some of the great optimism that Chesterton so richly contributed to those on pilgrimage. As I do, Chesterton struggled greatly with despair, evil, and the meaning of life, and even approached mental breakdown. Chesterton emerged from his melancholy and realized that pleasure in any form could only be explained by the Christian message. Like CS Lewis, he found joy in a renewed faith. As Yancey eloquently puts it regarding Chesterton’s realization of the origins of pleasure, “Moments of pleasure are the remnants washed ashore from a shipwreck, bits of Paradise extended through time. We must hold these relics lightly, and use them with gratitude and restraint, never seizing them as entitlements.”
I should be grateful that I landed on a bench in front of Rubens today and saw a major bit of Paradise wash up on the shores of my life. Here late on a Wednesday in April in London when I spent the day in St. Martins and the National gallery, I can fully agree with Chesterton’s succinct poem of gratitude:
Here dies another dayDuring which I have had eyes, ears, handsAnd the great world round me:And with tomorrow begins another.Why am I allowed two?
Yancey says “Chesterton himself said that the modern age is characterized by a sadness that calls for a new kind of prophet, not like prophets of old who reminded people that they were going to die, but someone who would remind them they are not dead yet.” Perhaps they are sitting on our bookshelves already.
Musings From a Pilgrimage – Mierlo, Netherlands
It is easy to be insane as a tourist far from home – financially, with our eating, with our time. We figure it is now or never and try to do it all regardless of the emotional or financial cost involved. It occurred to me Tuesday that I had a choice – I could be an insane tourist or a quiet grounded pilgrim seeking a centered life. I have the exact same choice in my usual daily life when I am not a tourist – now or never regardless of the cost or the harder way of seeking the better way. By chance I noticed on a London city map a cathedral I had never heard of that was rather easy to get to just beyond London Bridge. Fortunately, I made the right choice and chose sanity. I was to later find I would need the grounding.
I spent the whole of the day quietly sitting and walking in the 900 year old Southwark Cathedral just south of the Thames River. This beautiful old church was nearly torn down but a few visionary people were able to see it saved rather than being razed to put up office towers. The choices of a few people who knew what was important allowed me to sit in the beautiful Harvard chapel, built into a portion of the surviving 12th century transept. The important of the consequences of choice are embedded in this cathedral. The entire nave is but a century old. The original had been allowed by a series of small choices to go into ruin and it had to be demolished. A little paint here, a roof tile now and then could have saved it but by choice they were withheld at the critical times over the centuries. It was also by choice in the late 19th century that the nave was rebuilt to exactly match that 12th century north transept. Decisions made in the moment can have consequences that last for centuries. Holy writings in all traditions say that choices made in the moment have consequences that last for all eternity. Alas, significant parts of the cathedral complex are now nothing but a few descriptions and drawings in dusty cases. Choice worked against them and office buildings and gift shops won the day.
I participated in a Eucharist in which all present were participants and not observers, as had been the case in St. Georges gothic wonder. The sermon proved compelling and I asked for a copy of it. A very hospitable steward was pleased to ask the rector about it and I ended up with an important essay on determining just who we really are and want to be. The words demand that I make choices, big ones and little ones. They demand I choose who I want to be. They also tell where to find the Power to do this. Another volunteer steward, Irene, was happy to provide pleasing bits of conversation. I had a fine late lunch in the refectory, participated in the daily offices, and sat quietly reading in the Harvard Chapel, so named after the visionary man who made the choice to found an institution of higher learning on a new continent in 1607 that bears his name to this day.
I managed to thoroughly film this place of learning and reflection very discreetly. Camera clicks and flashes can be among the most irritating reminders of insanity in the world. Happily, my camera is absolutely silent and rarely requires a flash.
I anted up and bought a book at hideous UK prices, a Yancey paperback that will be well worth the cost and I can freely mark it up, which I find myself wanting to do. I found myself back in the Harvard Chapel reading it with great attentiveness – an appropriate place to read an important book about men who have made the right choices with their lives.
A cloistered life without finance markets and all that mess seems exquisitely appealing, except for the minor detail of my vast need for socialization. I had happy ignorance of any foul deeds in my world until I signed on to the Internet later in the day. I was a wreck by the end of the day. My bank still knows nothing about my missing 105K and tells me another account is down 20K since yesterday. On top, there was little interest shown in getting it resolved after making several phone calls. This is supposed to be a holiday, knowing that my safety net has developed a huge hole? Perhaps the point of a pilgrimage is to learn that safety does not come from brokerage accounts but from a Higher Source. It certainly proved the right choice to have spent the day in Southwark Cathedral instead of chasing after tourist sites.
Holy Week is certainly turning into an epic experience. Palm Sunday mass in Westminster Abbey, an organ recital that evening, the whole of Tuesday in Southwark, and time in St. Martin’s church on Wednesday. Thursday proved even more significant. By Thursday I was several hundred miles further on my journey and a time zone further from the familiar – in a small visually stunning village of Nederland close to the Belgian border.
I found my good friends Hans and Yne intent on fully celebrating Holy week, which was more than fine with me. It is something that I have wanted to do over here for twenty years. We stopped by their house before going to the church, and had just time enough for a glass of wine after our three hour drive cross country. We then went to a Maundy Thursday service that was really more of a Seder meal. Tables were arranged in a ‘u’ shape with the celebrants and new communicants arranged at the front. We were arranged around these essentially barren tables. Children who were to have their first communion served the elements – bread in large baskets and wine in several chalices. The liturgy was long and complex by American standards and it abruptly stopped with the arrest of Jesus after the meal. The abruptness of the ending was very impressive, making the actual event of twenty centuries ago very real. A large beautiful Easter candle was burning towards the center of the space defined by the tables, representing the life of Jesus. The service was not a quick 40-minute microwave version; the order of service was fifteen pages.
We will return in an hour for a Saturday observation of that middle of the three sacred days that range from Good Friday until Easter Sunday- that day when the world had lost Hope of knowing a better way – on that day there was little more than a few crimson stains in the ground and talk of how the sky had grown strangely dark the afternoon before.
This has certainly been the most intense experience of my Christian journey to date, even more so than when I actually walked in Jerusalem from Caiphas’ house to the place of the skull. This week has seemed so real time to me. Tomorrow we will see the wonder of the re-ignition of the hope that is so desperately needed in a very dark world. It has been a compelling experience to experience the Lenten season and Holy week in three different cultures and in about five religious traditions. It seems the whole point of the Hope of the Resurrection is that it is for everyone who chooses to embrace it.
I spent the whole of the day quietly sitting and walking in the 900 year old Southwark Cathedral just south of the Thames River. This beautiful old church was nearly torn down but a few visionary people were able to see it saved rather than being razed to put up office towers. The choices of a few people who knew what was important allowed me to sit in the beautiful Harvard chapel, built into a portion of the surviving 12th century transept. The important of the consequences of choice are embedded in this cathedral. The entire nave is but a century old. The original had been allowed by a series of small choices to go into ruin and it had to be demolished. A little paint here, a roof tile now and then could have saved it but by choice they were withheld at the critical times over the centuries. It was also by choice in the late 19th century that the nave was rebuilt to exactly match that 12th century north transept. Decisions made in the moment can have consequences that last for centuries. Holy writings in all traditions say that choices made in the moment have consequences that last for all eternity. Alas, significant parts of the cathedral complex are now nothing but a few descriptions and drawings in dusty cases. Choice worked against them and office buildings and gift shops won the day.
I participated in a Eucharist in which all present were participants and not observers, as had been the case in St. Georges gothic wonder. The sermon proved compelling and I asked for a copy of it. A very hospitable steward was pleased to ask the rector about it and I ended up with an important essay on determining just who we really are and want to be. The words demand that I make choices, big ones and little ones. They demand I choose who I want to be. They also tell where to find the Power to do this. Another volunteer steward, Irene, was happy to provide pleasing bits of conversation. I had a fine late lunch in the refectory, participated in the daily offices, and sat quietly reading in the Harvard Chapel, so named after the visionary man who made the choice to found an institution of higher learning on a new continent in 1607 that bears his name to this day.
I managed to thoroughly film this place of learning and reflection very discreetly. Camera clicks and flashes can be among the most irritating reminders of insanity in the world. Happily, my camera is absolutely silent and rarely requires a flash.
I anted up and bought a book at hideous UK prices, a Yancey paperback that will be well worth the cost and I can freely mark it up, which I find myself wanting to do. I found myself back in the Harvard Chapel reading it with great attentiveness – an appropriate place to read an important book about men who have made the right choices with their lives.
A cloistered life without finance markets and all that mess seems exquisitely appealing, except for the minor detail of my vast need for socialization. I had happy ignorance of any foul deeds in my world until I signed on to the Internet later in the day. I was a wreck by the end of the day. My bank still knows nothing about my missing 105K and tells me another account is down 20K since yesterday. On top, there was little interest shown in getting it resolved after making several phone calls. This is supposed to be a holiday, knowing that my safety net has developed a huge hole? Perhaps the point of a pilgrimage is to learn that safety does not come from brokerage accounts but from a Higher Source. It certainly proved the right choice to have spent the day in Southwark Cathedral instead of chasing after tourist sites.
Holy Week is certainly turning into an epic experience. Palm Sunday mass in Westminster Abbey, an organ recital that evening, the whole of Tuesday in Southwark, and time in St. Martin’s church on Wednesday. Thursday proved even more significant. By Thursday I was several hundred miles further on my journey and a time zone further from the familiar – in a small visually stunning village of Nederland close to the Belgian border.
I found my good friends Hans and Yne intent on fully celebrating Holy week, which was more than fine with me. It is something that I have wanted to do over here for twenty years. We stopped by their house before going to the church, and had just time enough for a glass of wine after our three hour drive cross country. We then went to a Maundy Thursday service that was really more of a Seder meal. Tables were arranged in a ‘u’ shape with the celebrants and new communicants arranged at the front. We were arranged around these essentially barren tables. Children who were to have their first communion served the elements – bread in large baskets and wine in several chalices. The liturgy was long and complex by American standards and it abruptly stopped with the arrest of Jesus after the meal. The abruptness of the ending was very impressive, making the actual event of twenty centuries ago very real. A large beautiful Easter candle was burning towards the center of the space defined by the tables, representing the life of Jesus. The service was not a quick 40-minute microwave version; the order of service was fifteen pages.
We will return in an hour for a Saturday observation of that middle of the three sacred days that range from Good Friday until Easter Sunday- that day when the world had lost Hope of knowing a better way – on that day there was little more than a few crimson stains in the ground and talk of how the sky had grown strangely dark the afternoon before.
This has certainly been the most intense experience of my Christian journey to date, even more so than when I actually walked in Jerusalem from Caiphas’ house to the place of the skull. This week has seemed so real time to me. Tomorrow we will see the wonder of the re-ignition of the hope that is so desperately needed in a very dark world. It has been a compelling experience to experience the Lenten season and Holy week in three different cultures and in about five religious traditions. It seems the whole point of the Hope of the Resurrection is that it is for everyone who chooses to embrace it.
Musings - Charing Cross Road - London
I wandered over to Charing Cross Road, once famous for its collection of fine specialty and antiquarian booksellers. It is now just like any other street, selling DVDs and fast food. There are only about four bookshops and the prices are hideous. Used books that I would find at home for 25 cents are ten dollars or more here. I never found a single book to read with a cost benefit ratio that suited me. The road is certainly far removed from the one described in the endearing play “84 Charing Cross Road”, the attendants now being brusque and pre-occupied. It is a major commentary on how secular England has become, in that a couple of shops told me they had no religious books out and had them boxed up. Two other shops had very minimal offerings. I never saw a single book by any of the fine Christian writers of the past hundred years. I would like to have found a single volume of any sort by Chesterton, Merton, Nouwen, Lewis, MacDonald – even one by some of the popular American Christian writers, such as Lucado or Swindoll.
I did make the happy discovery while poking around of a newly opening Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is in its last day of preview, which means I got a seat in the center for $15. The practice here is to offer a few weeks of preview on a new show at big discounts so that people will act as free advertising for the show. I had not planned to go see any plays this time in London as I have a season series in Atlanta for six musicals but with movies here costing $13.50, I figure it sure is worth $15 to see a fine live play.
I went to the British Museum, figuring to see all of the grand paintings of JMW Turner and Rembrandt, only to find out that the British Museum and the British National Museum are quite different institutions and in all of these years I had, in fact, never been in the British Museum. What I found was a vast archeology collection on four floors. Unbelievably, there is no restriction on photography (even flash) inside the museum. I have never heard of such a thing. I got a major bonus in that a very fine Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, and Toltec exhibition from Middle America was up. I spent fully an hour photographing everything in it (without flash) and also making pictures of all the descriptive texts and maps. This will increase the quality of my Mayan lecture by orders of magnitude.
I was also amazed to find the Rosetta stone housed here and I was able to make macro images of all three writing forms on it. My camera is not at all irritated by glass display cases. I wandered on further and found that virtually the entire original frieze of the Parthenon is installed to full scale in here. It seems one of Britain’s big boys helped himself to it back in 1819 and brought it back. Actually, when he found it, it was strewn about on the ground. The Turks had used the Parthenon as a gun powder magazine in 1679 and blew the place up accidentally. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that this frieze work could be the impetus for a complete restoration of one of the most significant buildings standing on earth. Alas, the heavily polluted air of Athens would destroy it in a few decades and at least it is now in a climate controlled environment and well preserved. I find it really strange how stuff ends up in museums in other countries where it really does not belong.
There is a grand collection of materials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and nearby regions, dating back 6,000 years. Sadly, with the destruction of the Great Iraq Museum, this collection I saw today will become even more important. The museum in Iraq could have been protected from total destruction by a mere ten coalition soldiers. They had been warned in advance the museum was at risk of being ransacked. It was a bittersweet experience being in museums today, knowing the incredible museums that have been lost in the past couple of years. The Taliban destroyed the contents of the great archeology museum in Kabul several years ago (some 6,000 items). Six years ago the insurgency in Cambodia cut up parts of Angor Wat with chain saws, the grandest archeological site on the planet, and sold it off for weapons.
I was heartened to see that the magnificent reading room of about two hundred years has been completely rebuilt and is now open freely to anyone who wishes to take a reader’s card. It reminds me of the vast space in the Bodelian Library at Oxford – breathtaking.
I walked a few blocks further down and went into the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. This proved a haunting experience for me. The four floors of the place are paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of people who have made their lives count in a major way for the betterment of the world. I found myself getting rather introspective, especially when viewing the portraits and descriptions of men and women who had made great contributions in the fields of science and medicine. I wondered greatly again about what might have been in my own life, if a few things had turned out even slightly differently for me. It was almost like having a bit of a mid-life crisis while walking through those grand halls. There is a major driver in my psyche that really wants to make a major contribution to the world condition, but I have never gotten the focus to make this happen. I don’t know that I am driven by fame as much as the idea that those of us who have been gifted with fine educations and opportunities have a major responsibility to give them back to the world in an enhanced form. I don’t often have the sense that I am giving anything of consequence back to anyone, certainly not in a way that is commensurate with my education and experience.
Think I need a good ale or strong lager.
I did make the happy discovery while poking around of a newly opening Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is in its last day of preview, which means I got a seat in the center for $15. The practice here is to offer a few weeks of preview on a new show at big discounts so that people will act as free advertising for the show. I had not planned to go see any plays this time in London as I have a season series in Atlanta for six musicals but with movies here costing $13.50, I figure it sure is worth $15 to see a fine live play.
I went to the British Museum, figuring to see all of the grand paintings of JMW Turner and Rembrandt, only to find out that the British Museum and the British National Museum are quite different institutions and in all of these years I had, in fact, never been in the British Museum. What I found was a vast archeology collection on four floors. Unbelievably, there is no restriction on photography (even flash) inside the museum. I have never heard of such a thing. I got a major bonus in that a very fine Mayan, Aztec, Olmec, and Toltec exhibition from Middle America was up. I spent fully an hour photographing everything in it (without flash) and also making pictures of all the descriptive texts and maps. This will increase the quality of my Mayan lecture by orders of magnitude.
I was also amazed to find the Rosetta stone housed here and I was able to make macro images of all three writing forms on it. My camera is not at all irritated by glass display cases. I wandered on further and found that virtually the entire original frieze of the Parthenon is installed to full scale in here. It seems one of Britain’s big boys helped himself to it back in 1819 and brought it back. Actually, when he found it, it was strewn about on the ground. The Turks had used the Parthenon as a gun powder magazine in 1679 and blew the place up accidentally. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that this frieze work could be the impetus for a complete restoration of one of the most significant buildings standing on earth. Alas, the heavily polluted air of Athens would destroy it in a few decades and at least it is now in a climate controlled environment and well preserved. I find it really strange how stuff ends up in museums in other countries where it really does not belong.
There is a grand collection of materials from Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and nearby regions, dating back 6,000 years. Sadly, with the destruction of the Great Iraq Museum, this collection I saw today will become even more important. The museum in Iraq could have been protected from total destruction by a mere ten coalition soldiers. They had been warned in advance the museum was at risk of being ransacked. It was a bittersweet experience being in museums today, knowing the incredible museums that have been lost in the past couple of years. The Taliban destroyed the contents of the great archeology museum in Kabul several years ago (some 6,000 items). Six years ago the insurgency in Cambodia cut up parts of Angor Wat with chain saws, the grandest archeological site on the planet, and sold it off for weapons.
I was heartened to see that the magnificent reading room of about two hundred years has been completely rebuilt and is now open freely to anyone who wishes to take a reader’s card. It reminds me of the vast space in the Bodelian Library at Oxford – breathtaking.
I walked a few blocks further down and went into the National Portrait Gallery for the first time. This proved a haunting experience for me. The four floors of the place are paintings, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of people who have made their lives count in a major way for the betterment of the world. I found myself getting rather introspective, especially when viewing the portraits and descriptions of men and women who had made great contributions in the fields of science and medicine. I wondered greatly again about what might have been in my own life, if a few things had turned out even slightly differently for me. It was almost like having a bit of a mid-life crisis while walking through those grand halls. There is a major driver in my psyche that really wants to make a major contribution to the world condition, but I have never gotten the focus to make this happen. I don’t know that I am driven by fame as much as the idea that those of us who have been gifted with fine educations and opportunities have a major responsibility to give them back to the world in an enhanced form. I don’t often have the sense that I am giving anything of consequence back to anyone, certainly not in a way that is commensurate with my education and experience.
Think I need a good ale or strong lager.
Beauty is Right Under Your Nose - Waterloo Station - London
It has taken several days to get wired so I am just now getting started on my travel imaginings. I tried embedding photos into nice two-column magazine text format. They looked beautiful but I would have drawn curses from all over the planet if I sent large attachments, thus I am sending plain text only for now. I am writing this from a small café latte in the Waterloo Station in London.
One does not have to go a great distance to find grand beauty. In a world that is struggling with growing unrest and discord, beauty is often lost to those who stay glued to the visceral images of CNN. So many have told me they are exhausted watching these images. Mold-green tinted night vision images of war zones don’t constitute beauty. I am compelled to ask people why they do optional things that only bring inner turmoil and exhaustion. I have not yet gotten a reasonable answer. I suggest the power off button and get a quizzical look.
As I was packing to make this journey across the sea on Thursday, I found time in the morning to photograph the pure white irises that had erupted into full bloom in the front yard during the night a mere six feet from the house. I found myself lamenting that these vast delicate blooms would be long gone in six weeks. Curiously, these have never previously bloomed. They obviously liked being dug up and moved last year. I also found the pansies growing up around the statue of St. Francis in the early morning light to be worthy of putting onto a disk and preserved.
I left Anderson about 9:30 AM and arrived in Atlanta via 17-year old Toyota without a problem and even saw gas for little of nothing by current standards. The car barely used 3 gallons to make the 140-mile journey. Any bids for it? I left my car at a pleasing little Episcopal Church south of Atlanta, close by the airport and even got a spot in the shade for it. A member there took me to the airport and left me to find my way to the other side of the planet.
Atlanta being what it is, it proved easy to have a magnificent Thai meal before going to the airport. A cashew shrimp dish with rice made for a fine cosmopolitan culinary farewell, although I have to confess to being well fed by a card carrying 100% Italian for some months now, so it was not quite the radical departure from my normal eating habits one would expect. I am not found at McDonalds or Burger King drive throughs. Anyway, I arrived at the airport early and fatted.
In the Atlanta airport the High Museum of Art has set up a satellite series of top rate art exhibits. There is a magnificent collection of stone sculpture from Zimbabwe that is fabulous. The cold stone seems almost warm and organic. It is mostly of mothers with infants, larger than life size. Some of the blown studio glasswork is spectacular. Again, beauty was to be found close at hand. There is also a green thumb lurking in the place as the international terminal has a fine collection of full size tropical trees and plants under glass atriums. One does not normally think of airports as museums and art galleries. As one would expect in this precarious day and age, security was impressive but the people were polite and efficient and the process did not detract from my three hour experience in the airport of wandering around viewing fine art, getting in a five mile walk, and wandering onto the plane very unhurried.
The 777 launched into the sunset and then circled around to do a semi-great circle route that took us across vermillion Eastern seaboard skies then into the indigo skies over the Canadian maritime provinces. About the time the sky went from vermillion to indigo a fine meal was presented along with two bottles of wine. I was in good shape. Even with the now necessary plastic utensils, the presentation was fine and the two Scottish women next to me were happy to feed me their extra things. Beauty of an auditory nature is certainly to be found in the entrancing accents of northern Scotland. Tell me to do anything with one of those accents and I am on it. These two women were grand and pleased I had been in their town of Inverness, even knowing my castle haunts there. The music system allowed me to listen to Samuel Barbers “Adagio for Strings” and Ralph Vaughn Williams “Lark Ascending” all night as I drifted in and out of cat naps. I had the best seat with a front row aisle position, which meant no bulkhead or seat in front of me. On a plane, space is a very beautiful thing. The china blue edge of morning light transformed into platinum and then orange as we had breakfast and made the nearly eight mile drop onto the runways of London’s Gatwick.
In this day and age, it takes a bit of extra effort to find beauty, but it is to be readily found all about us. It can be found as close as the smile of a nearby child. It doesn’t take the technology of jet turbines to gain access to it. Turn off CNN and go out singing that old classic “What a Beautiful World.” There is a lot to live for wherever you are. I just have the good fortune to be ‘wherever’ a long ways off at present. Perhaps one day everyone in this world can seek beauty. It might be just six feet outside your door.
One does not have to go a great distance to find grand beauty. In a world that is struggling with growing unrest and discord, beauty is often lost to those who stay glued to the visceral images of CNN. So many have told me they are exhausted watching these images. Mold-green tinted night vision images of war zones don’t constitute beauty. I am compelled to ask people why they do optional things that only bring inner turmoil and exhaustion. I have not yet gotten a reasonable answer. I suggest the power off button and get a quizzical look.
As I was packing to make this journey across the sea on Thursday, I found time in the morning to photograph the pure white irises that had erupted into full bloom in the front yard during the night a mere six feet from the house. I found myself lamenting that these vast delicate blooms would be long gone in six weeks. Curiously, these have never previously bloomed. They obviously liked being dug up and moved last year. I also found the pansies growing up around the statue of St. Francis in the early morning light to be worthy of putting onto a disk and preserved.
I left Anderson about 9:30 AM and arrived in Atlanta via 17-year old Toyota without a problem and even saw gas for little of nothing by current standards. The car barely used 3 gallons to make the 140-mile journey. Any bids for it? I left my car at a pleasing little Episcopal Church south of Atlanta, close by the airport and even got a spot in the shade for it. A member there took me to the airport and left me to find my way to the other side of the planet.
Atlanta being what it is, it proved easy to have a magnificent Thai meal before going to the airport. A cashew shrimp dish with rice made for a fine cosmopolitan culinary farewell, although I have to confess to being well fed by a card carrying 100% Italian for some months now, so it was not quite the radical departure from my normal eating habits one would expect. I am not found at McDonalds or Burger King drive throughs. Anyway, I arrived at the airport early and fatted.
In the Atlanta airport the High Museum of Art has set up a satellite series of top rate art exhibits. There is a magnificent collection of stone sculpture from Zimbabwe that is fabulous. The cold stone seems almost warm and organic. It is mostly of mothers with infants, larger than life size. Some of the blown studio glasswork is spectacular. Again, beauty was to be found close at hand. There is also a green thumb lurking in the place as the international terminal has a fine collection of full size tropical trees and plants under glass atriums. One does not normally think of airports as museums and art galleries. As one would expect in this precarious day and age, security was impressive but the people were polite and efficient and the process did not detract from my three hour experience in the airport of wandering around viewing fine art, getting in a five mile walk, and wandering onto the plane very unhurried.
The 777 launched into the sunset and then circled around to do a semi-great circle route that took us across vermillion Eastern seaboard skies then into the indigo skies over the Canadian maritime provinces. About the time the sky went from vermillion to indigo a fine meal was presented along with two bottles of wine. I was in good shape. Even with the now necessary plastic utensils, the presentation was fine and the two Scottish women next to me were happy to feed me their extra things. Beauty of an auditory nature is certainly to be found in the entrancing accents of northern Scotland. Tell me to do anything with one of those accents and I am on it. These two women were grand and pleased I had been in their town of Inverness, even knowing my castle haunts there. The music system allowed me to listen to Samuel Barbers “Adagio for Strings” and Ralph Vaughn Williams “Lark Ascending” all night as I drifted in and out of cat naps. I had the best seat with a front row aisle position, which meant no bulkhead or seat in front of me. On a plane, space is a very beautiful thing. The china blue edge of morning light transformed into platinum and then orange as we had breakfast and made the nearly eight mile drop onto the runways of London’s Gatwick.
In this day and age, it takes a bit of extra effort to find beauty, but it is to be readily found all about us. It can be found as close as the smile of a nearby child. It doesn’t take the technology of jet turbines to gain access to it. Turn off CNN and go out singing that old classic “What a Beautiful World.” There is a lot to live for wherever you are. I just have the good fortune to be ‘wherever’ a long ways off at present. Perhaps one day everyone in this world can seek beauty. It might be just six feet outside your door.
Another Kind of Birthday Party - Royalty in the Nederland
I had a rather splendid day that was quite outside of the tourist dynamic. It happens that the Netherlands has a royal family headed up by a beloved queen. The entire nation takes a national holiday on her birthday and each city and village celebrates with parades, games, costumes, and the presentation of banners by the traditional guilds. Each year the queen visits a city and a small village for the presentations. Again, I walked with Hans and Yne to the village center, not expecting of the scale that I was to encounter. We found instead thousands of people and all manner of colorful things to photograph. The guild members were in traditional intense costume with brilliant banners and sterling guild shields. There is a very elaborated process in which the banners are presented to the Queen’s representatives in each city and village. The guild structure is a core Dutch tradition dating centuries in which apprentices became skilled craftsmen in their chosen trades and advanced through the guild structure.
I found it most pleasing to be right there with all the locals participating in something that would never show up on a tourist agenda. All the children had their bikes brilliantly decorated with the traditional blue and orange colors of royalty. A fine community marching band played and then marched through town with a children’s pony club following, and then the spectral horde of decorated bikes.
A four-hundred-year old windmill was open and I was able to climb up inside of it and photograph it in some good detail. I still am amazed at the ability of people to build things of such scale and durability without benefit of power tools of any kind. There was a most pleasing volunteer woman attending to the mill and she was quite knowledgeable about the mechanics of it. Hans and Yne didn’t hesitate to climb right up the very steep ladder-like stairs into this mill. I have a sense of Dutch people being strong and confident in many ways. In America this mill would never have been open to the public, fear of liability lawsuits would have kept it closed up tight. The litigation lottery does not exist here.
The afternoon and evening proved quite different and equally unlikely if I had been on a canned tour. After the formal celebration, we went to Margaret’s apartment in Eindhoven at 2 PM to find that she actually lives in a magnificent penthouse overlooking the whole of Eindhoven. From her terraces one could see three of the great Catholic Restoration cathedrals. It would have taken me no time to adapt to living in such a place. We had fine refreshments including luscious nuts and cakes. A heavy rain came up but it did not last long and we then ventured over into the market center, half a kilometer away at most. There were uncounted thousands of people out for the national holiday, most of them seeming to be bent on the high-level consumption of beer. The intensity of life and activity going on was again nothing short of breath-taking. We ventured over to a large flea market by St. Catherine’s and I was able to find a couple of rather splendid CD’s for 1 euro each and a German original print for 2 euros.
We sought refuge from the crowds and noise back in Margaret’s penthouse and had the surreal experience of watching the dense cloud break open at sunset and ignite all the buildings with an intense orange brilliance. The clouds soon followed suit in transmuting through a good portion of the color palette. Hans and Margaret disappeared for a while and reappeared with no less than fifteen containers of a magnificent Indonesian cuisine. I felt like I was having dinner in something from Architectural Digest and I ate entirely too much. We ended up doing a tasting of liqueurs that was splendid, most I had never seen or heard of previously. Margaret is obviously used to a very well-kept life. I am feeling well kept at present myself. For the first time since coming to the Netherlands, I went to bed the same day I got up. Hans did as well.
Eindhoven, The Nederland
I found it most pleasing to be right there with all the locals participating in something that would never show up on a tourist agenda. All the children had their bikes brilliantly decorated with the traditional blue and orange colors of royalty. A fine community marching band played and then marched through town with a children’s pony club following, and then the spectral horde of decorated bikes.
A four-hundred-year old windmill was open and I was able to climb up inside of it and photograph it in some good detail. I still am amazed at the ability of people to build things of such scale and durability without benefit of power tools of any kind. There was a most pleasing volunteer woman attending to the mill and she was quite knowledgeable about the mechanics of it. Hans and Yne didn’t hesitate to climb right up the very steep ladder-like stairs into this mill. I have a sense of Dutch people being strong and confident in many ways. In America this mill would never have been open to the public, fear of liability lawsuits would have kept it closed up tight. The litigation lottery does not exist here.
The afternoon and evening proved quite different and equally unlikely if I had been on a canned tour. After the formal celebration, we went to Margaret’s apartment in Eindhoven at 2 PM to find that she actually lives in a magnificent penthouse overlooking the whole of Eindhoven. From her terraces one could see three of the great Catholic Restoration cathedrals. It would have taken me no time to adapt to living in such a place. We had fine refreshments including luscious nuts and cakes. A heavy rain came up but it did not last long and we then ventured over into the market center, half a kilometer away at most. There were uncounted thousands of people out for the national holiday, most of them seeming to be bent on the high-level consumption of beer. The intensity of life and activity going on was again nothing short of breath-taking. We ventured over to a large flea market by St. Catherine’s and I was able to find a couple of rather splendid CD’s for 1 euro each and a German original print for 2 euros.
We sought refuge from the crowds and noise back in Margaret’s penthouse and had the surreal experience of watching the dense cloud break open at sunset and ignite all the buildings with an intense orange brilliance. The clouds soon followed suit in transmuting through a good portion of the color palette. Hans and Margaret disappeared for a while and reappeared with no less than fifteen containers of a magnificent Indonesian cuisine. I felt like I was having dinner in something from Architectural Digest and I ate entirely too much. We ended up doing a tasting of liqueurs that was splendid, most I had never seen or heard of previously. Margaret is obviously used to a very well-kept life. I am feeling well kept at present myself. For the first time since coming to the Netherlands, I went to bed the same day I got up. Hans did as well.
Eindhoven, The Nederland
Flow - Earls Court - London
As soon as I headed for London I entered into a rather pleasant state of flow. I got to the train station two plus hours early because of the timing of my ride to Axminster. Two days ago I was told by the train service center on the phone that I would have to buy another round trip ticket for $40 just to get back to London one way, even when I had already bought a round trip for $32 four months ago, just because I wanted to get back to London a few days sooner. As it turns out, there was another train going to London eight minutes after I got to the station. Not only would I not have to wait hours, the stationmaster told me to go ahead and get on the train and did not take a penny from me. The fellow running the trolley quoted me twice the printed price for some red wine. I called him on it and he gave me the wine for less than the printed price.
After the conductor in the train really did validate my ticket without extracting more portraits of the queen (money) from me and I had a glass of red wine and was watching the emerald Devon countryside pass by, my temperament was in a good state. I was in London by 3 PM, had train tickets to Windsor Castle for today (Saturday), a weekly journey card for the underground, and was situated on the fourth floor of a hotel by 4 PM.
With unlimited travel in town I went over to Westminster Abbey at sunset and listened to the chimes of Big Ben, no doubt the grandest clock in the world. I just missed the evensong in the Abbey but will be there for the festival Palm Sunday mass at 11 AM and then an organ recital at 5:45 PM. I wandered around the House of Commons as war protestors were on one side of Whitehall Road and police with machine guns were on the other. There were no American tourists around the city that I could discern. There is clearly a much stronger police presence here than in the past but the city does not feel uncomfortable to me. For certain, Americans are staying close to the roost and are not manifest here.
I went to the theater district just to see what was on, figuring everything would be sold out and if not, $50 or more per ticket. Tourism must be down. I could see anything I wanted. I found a new show “Mum’s the Word” at the Abery Theater that could be seen from the cheap rafter seats for ten pounds. I bought a ticket and then wandered off on Charing Cross Road to find a healthy vegetarian Lebanese dinner nearby and still had a few minutes to poke around in a second-hand bookshop before the show.
I went back to the theater expecting to be escorted by the porter to the five flights of stairs to the ozone region. He took me instead to the main floor and put me in the fifth row dead center, perhaps twenty feet from the stage. I showed him my ticket and said there was an error. He insisted I stay there. No complaint from me. Amazing how differently my day flowed. My life used to flow like this all the time. The show was a comedy satire of six women going through pregnancy, childbirth, and raising toddlers. It was rather a good laugh and I had rather pleasant conversation with two couples during the intermission. We agreed that this show would make a good sex education module and would prevent most teen pregnancies. The show through comedy showed just how exceedingly difficult the job of being a mother really is. Teens are clueless. I was amazed at how much my mood improved during the show.I have been photographing castles for a long time, ever since I lived in one in 1984 up north near Glasgow. I thought I had seen really big castles after the likes of Edward the First’s giant Caernavon in Wales. I was to get a new definition of big and opulent today. After fifteen journeys to London, I figured it was time to ante up and go see Windsor Castle. I went to the station this morning and found the same kind of flow I had yesterday. A train was leaving for Windsor in five minutes. I arrived in Eton an hour later, where Windsor is located and walked into the magnificent St. George’s chapel in Windsor Castle at precisely the beginning of a communion service. The timing was surreal. St. George’s Chapel is a late perpendicular gothic structure that feels much like the magnificent space in the King’s Chapel at Cambridge with its fine glass, fan vaults, and much gothic ornamentation. I found it a rather complex experience to take communion in the same chapel, as have kings for 800 years. What made the experience rather peculiar in one respect is that there were exactly four of us that took part in the entire service, aside from the clergy. During the entirety of the service a continuous flood of hundreds of tourists flowed around the perimeter of this numinous space. It is the first time I have participated in a communion service and felt a little bit like I was on stage. This is a commentary on just how completely secularized western culture is becoming. Churches are essentially seen as museums here, rather than structures to contain living functional Christian communities. It was disquieting. Most of the active Christians I know living here in the UK do not attend church.
After the service, I had plenty of opportunity to fill my eyeballs and visual cortex with opulent images of the state apartments in the castle. “Apartment” is a completely misleading word. The space is probably in excess of 50,000 square feet, perhaps more with 25-foot ceilings. The castle covers thirteen acres. In 1992, a large portion of the state apartments were destroyed by a fire that took 18 hours to douse. Five years and $56 million later, there is no evidence of a calamity that opened the place to the sky for the first time in half a millennium. Most of this money was generated by opening the Buckingham Palace apartments to the public for the first time since the place was built. As one might guess, both sites are filled with Rembrandt, Van dyke, and every other notable that painted or made anything. After four hours of gawking about the realm I went back to the station to find a train leaving in 90 seconds. And I am in my ninth day with no rain and the moon is presently visible over London.
It’s hard to find real English people in London, it would seem. At breakfast one table had three French girls, another had a Spanish couple, a single girl from India was at one and the people running the hotel are from Eastern Europe. I notice the same thing on the underground and on the streets. There are people here from every place on the planet. I think the only place with a higher density of humans than Leicester Square on Saturday night is to be found in Calcutta or New Delhi. I roamed around tonight while eating a take-away dinner, observing this incredible organism of a city in a state of frenzy. Small towns are not so bad in some respects.
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