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.