If music be the food of faith, we’re starving here.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, which is not a day that likes to draw attention to itself. Unlike the brashness of Mardi Gras/ Shrove Tuesday – all pancakes and parties – the first day of Lent is a time of quiet introspection. What’s been causing me to reflect on matters spiritual for the past few days, however, is not so much the beginning of Lent as the state of music in the Church.

For the past decade or so, I have been a pretty regular member of our local Catholic church. I was brought up and Confirmed as an Episcopalian, but choose to join my husband in his church; not least because we agreed to bring up our children in the Catholic faith. I have not converted to Catholicism. I often think it would be so much easier if I had, but you can’t convert just because it would be convenient. So I continue to be a sort of semi-detached member of our small congregation, warmly welcomed yet precluded, for sound theological reasons which I do understand, from participating fully in the Mass by taking Communion. (As a priest of the beau monde at the Brompton Oratory put it succinctly when I pushed him on this fundamental point, ‘Frankly, my dear, you’re just not in the club.’)

The sticking point: transubstantiation. (photo from michaelcmorris.blogspot.com)

Anyway, what this means is that I came to Catholic Sunday worship with a weight of Episcopalian assumptions. Several things struck me as a newcomer. Firstly, the many similarities in the liturgy of the two traditions: we are surely more similar than different. Secondly, the surprising plainness of the interiors of Catholic parish churches in Britain. I suppose I should not have been surprised, having written a thesis on the pre-Reformation church in England: Anglicans (and Presbyterians in Scotland) took over all the beautiful medieval churches at the Reformation. Nevertheless, it seemed odd to me that most Catholic churches appear to have more in common with the sober, whitewashed simplicity of Presbyterian kirks than with the stained glass and ornately carved wood of traditional Anglican places of worship. Similarly, I was struck by the plain, even pedestrian, language of the liturgy: I miss the sonorous cadences of the Book of Common Prayer. Most of all, though, it was the state of the music that I noticed.

Coming from the Anglican tradition, the poverty of the music in the average Catholic service came as a shock. I grew up with the great, inspiring hymns of Charles Wesley and the evangelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: ‘Praise my soul the King of Heaven’; ‘For all the saints who from their labours rest’ (not forgetting the ‘bong’ before the first word); ‘Guide me O Thou great redeemer’ (Cwm Rhondda); the Battle Hymn of the Republic; ‘Eternal Father strong to save’; ‘He who would valiant be’ (which my father chose to be sung at his funeral); ‘The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended’; ‘and so on and so on. There are dozens and dozens of uplifting hymns for every occasion and mood. They are perhaps one of the great riches of the British Isles, if largely unrecognised: you only have to listen (pace my French cousins!) to a French congregation’s attempt at singing to realise how lucky we are in this country to have this strong tradition of congregational music.

In the Catholic churches I’ve attended in Britain, however, you would never know that any such repertoire existed. Some of those hymns, it is true, are to be found in the hymn books we use; yet they never seem to be chosen. Instead, we are asked to dredge up the energy to sing banal drivel like ‘Bind us together, Lord, bind us together with cords that cannot be broken. Bind us together, Lord, Bind us together, Lord, Bind us together in love.’ If you haven’t heard the pathetic excuse for a tune that goes with that, lucky you. The sentiment is all good, granted, but the sappy words and tunes are beyond awful. (No, go on, DB, tell us what you really think.)

I apologise for getting a bit het up about this, but the thing is, I really think it matters. Singing together is a wonderful way of building a sense of common cause, which is vital to a congregation. And singing as a form of praise should inspire, comfort and uplift, not drain you of the will to live. So why does the Catholic church turn its back upon the wealth of material available to it? My husband, being a Catholic, blames the Reformation and the consequent long break in the traditions of Catholicism in Britain. I, being a traditionalist, blame Vatican II, or rather the fact that this great reforming council of the Catholic Church took place in the Sixties, thus paving the way for a drippy army of sandal-wearing, guitar-wielding songsters. (Oh dear, now I’ve offended more good souls.) Before Vatican II, I suppose that there was no tradition of congregational singing in the Catholic Church, as the congregation was effectively only a spectator to the rite being performed by the priest. Would that be right? I can’t understand, however – or at least, I find it hard to sympathise with – the revitalised Church welcoming insipid little dirges for its people to sing every week, rather than taking the opportunity to adopt some of the great hymns of the English speaking tradition.

What I can understand is that the Catholic Church in Britain might have wanted to forge its own traditions after Vatican II, rather than taking on the music of Protestants. In that case, however, why not make use of the sumptuous glories of Catholic music both post- and pre-Reformation: Mozart, Bach, Palestrina, Thomas Tallis? Most of this body of music, granted, is for choirs; but even our church choir in a large city congregation rarely tackled any such music, despite the fact that plenty of it is both manageable and immensely rewarding for an amateur choir. The result is that the entire congregation is impoverished, whether or not they are aware of it. Denying congregations the opportunity to hear good choral music or to sing stirring hymns is almost, to my mind, a sin, because such music does so much more for the spirit than guff like ‘Bind us together’.

The choir stalls in Exeter College Chapel, Oxford (photo from www.hoteldesigns.net)

This is, of course, a very subjective rant. And I am not a Catholic – sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m anything, though I’ll keep searching – so you could argue that I have no right to pontificate. Perhaps the importance I attach to the quality of music in worship is indicative of the weakness of my own faith, which needs all the support it can get. In church, I am constantly seeking that sense of the numinous, that awe-filled sense of the presence of the Divine. Personally, I find it in the soaring notes of sixteenth century polyphony. I do not find it, ever, in a modern, brightly-lit building with a group of people half-heartedly singing limp songs from the Seventies.

The point is, though, that I don’t believe I can be the only person who needs these ‘props’, if you will, to reach some spiritual communion. Many of the people in our rural Catholic congregation may never have had the opportunity to sing the hymns which I grew up with, or to experience the beauty of early Church music which I was lucky enough to hear and to sing at university. But that doesn’t mean that they might not benefit from it as much as I do. Maybe our parish can’t manage to put together a choir to sing ‘Spem in Alium‘, but we’d surely all get a filip from belting out the Old Hundredth, ‘All People that on Earth do dwell, sing to the Lord with cheerful voice’.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone has different experiences of music in Catholic churches in England or Scotland. (Of course, the great cathedrals and metropolitan churches are a different matter, having vastly richer resources to draw on than the little rural parishes.) Do most people prefer the modern songs, or is it just that they have never been offered an alternative? I guess that I have fairly old-fashioned preferences in worship. Or is it only in the (several) parish churches which I have attended that these modern tunes are preferred, while there are congregations elsewhere singing more inspiring hymns? I just can’t help feeling that, for all the unflagging cheerfulness of our lovely priest and the warmth and friendliness of our congregation, there is something lacklustre, something joyless, at the heart of our worship. And I think music is the answer.

 

You might be interested to read A rose-tinted Sunday.

The Tuesday tree: tracery

There are several things I would like to write about at the moment: the Iron Age Crannogs of Perthshire, for example, and the importance of music in Christian worship. Life will keep getting in the way of writing! First things first, anyway: the Tuesday tree. Just a few observations of the delicate, coral-like tracery of the bare branches of a mature beech tree, under which I walked on a grey cold morning recently. You can see some of the husks of last year’s nuts still clinging to the branches, like knots in the lace.

 

 

The Tuesday tree: a stroll amongst the snowdrops

At the weekend we spent a happy day with friends who live on the east coast of Scotland. It was one of those rare, fine February days that remind you that Spring is not too far away. The air was still cold enough to nip the fingers, the ground frigid enough to chill booted feet; but a pale lemon sun shone through the trees, tempting us out into the woods to walk off our splendid lunch. And oh, what enchanting woods. Under the slender grey trunks of beech trees, more snowdrops than I have ever seen carpeted the ground. Beside every path, around every turn, the earth was strewn with snowdrops.

Two generations, at least, of our friends’ family have worked to achieve this effect, diligently dividing up clumps of bulbs and replanting them every year to encourage their spread. The success of their efforts is in the fact that the woods ‘feel’ entirely natural. At this time of year, many of Scotland’s great houses open up their grounds to the public for snowdrop season. (Not us, as yet, although I think our gardener has plans for the future.) I suppose I have seen more dramatic policies than these, where the snowdrops tumble down steep banks by mountain burns (streams); and grander, where the little white flowers nod against a backdrop of ancient stone and dark topiary. To be honest, though, I don’t think I could think of anything more perfectly pretty in February than snowdrops in a sunny beech wood.

 

You might enjoy: A Valentine for an Ent?, Signs of Spring.

Friday flowers

Just because….we all need flowers to brighten our lives sometimes, and these joyous, gaudy anemones have been doing the job for me this week. Hope you like anemones too.

 

 

 

 

 

You might also need an antidote to grey.

The Tuesday tree: conifers for moongazers

As fellow moongazers will know, there is a full moon tonight. You’ll notice, then, that these photos were taken a few days ago. ‘Our’ moon rises between a stand of tall conifers at the end of the lawn in front of the castle, so we have a wonderful view of it from the front door as it floats slowly up through the trees like a helium balloon. Tonight’s full moon was spectacular, glowing amber through thin pink cloud as it rose: sadly my camera could not do it justice. I like these shots, though, which I took on Saturday afternoon, soon after five.

This first was taken looking out from under an ancient yew. The shorter looking (actually just further away) trees in the centre are Douglas firs, with their characteristic floppy tops. Am I allowed to say that I’ve always thought that they look a little effete? The tallest tree in the photo is a massive Sitka spruce. To get an idea of its size, you can just make out the bare branches of a fully mature sycamore (a century old or more) in front of it. Some Christmas tree!

In the photo below, you can see the Sitka on the left and, on the right, a most un-characteristic Douglas fir, at least for us. This is a different variety from our floppy ones. To my eyes, it is not nearly as appealing: stiff and rather dull. I am glad that it is the softer variety that was planted in such numbers here in the first half of the nineteenth century, making up the glorious cathedrals of mature trees that we enjoy today. Give me the swooping fronds and sweet fragrance of the more ‘effete’ Douglases any day.

You might enjoy In praise of the Douglas fir, which gives more about their history here.

two kinds of cold and a bowl of soup

Dancing Beastie has been a little erratic recently, for which I apologise. The truth is that my thoughts have been on other things. In fact, I would go so far as to say that my head is full. (You must appreciate that, since my brain injury, it doesn’t take half as much thought and information as it used to to fill my head.) I have been pondering new beginnings: expanding my writing and photography into more areas, perhaps; a new approach to food and diet, and a possible new source of (voluntary) employment. All those ideas, in other words, that you have around New Year and usually (in my case at least) have allowed to evaporate by the time February comes in.

A powerful post by my blog friend Heather helped to galvanise my resolve.  (Thank you, Heather!) This year, I am going to try to hold onto the idealism of January and actually try to realise some of these plans. The only way to do it is to shut your eyes and jump in. Rather than blogging, then – or I should say as well as blogging, as words and images for Dancing Beastie are always in the back of my mind – I have been busy this week signing up for things before I could talk myself out of them. Thus I found myself in the middle of a rather delicious detox diet (but with a fearsome caffeine-withdrawal headache) at the same time as trying to write a ‘why do you think you are suitable for this job’ piece for an application form, with a deadline of the end of this week. The last time I had a job interview was, umm…just over eleven years ago. So you might understand why it’s taking up a lot of head space.

Meanwhile, in the world out there beyond my laptop, it has turned properly cold and frosty for the first time this winter. We were staying with friends last weekend up in the hills, where there was already a bit of snow.

Britain has just caught the edge of the massive area of intense cold hanging across Europe, which means that we have been getting pleasantly bracing temperatures of minus five or six Celsius (around 22 F) first thing in the morning. The lochans have frozen over almost completely in the last few days,

so small boys can have a lovely time smashing the margins of the ice with sticks.

Just as the lovely tingly cold weather hit, however, I managed to catch another cold from my darling son. When you’re fizzing with germs and not feeling very hungry, the best comfort food has to be soup, don’t you think? So I made a big pot of vegetable soup with what I could find in the larder. Into the pot alongside the predictable carrots, parsnips, cabbage and so forth went a generous amount of chopped fresh root ginger. This was an experiment, but I think it was a very successful one. I’d recommend it for when you’re in need of a bit of a boost: you can almost feel the antioxidants setting to work!

Unfortunately, my son (who will not eat soup of any description) has since developed his own particularly nasty form of the bug we all have. A frighteningly high fever and sore throat have made him really very poorly over the weekend, poor lamb, to the extent that we spent this morning (Sunday) at the nearest cottage hospital rather than at home in bed where he should have been (but that’s a rant I’ll save for another day). Thank heavens, the fever has broken today and I think he is on the mend, though a duvet day is in the offing for Monday. It seems very bad luck for him that this illness hit on our first weekend of decent snow cover. The boys had been planning all sorts of sledging exploits and so on but, in the event, the younger one managed only about twenty minutes in the snow before exhaustion and soaring fever returned. Still, at least that was just enough time to chuck a snowball or two at his loving mum. That’s what winter should be all about, after all.

What with a head full of job applications, plus broken nights, a sick child and the rest, I’m not feeling very coherent or creative at the moment. Please bear with me! And I hope that you have had a lovely weekend, snowy or not.

You might enjoy: Obviously, I’d never do this.

Serendipity

Of all the creatures who share the woods with us here, it is the roe deer that have me enthralled. In a garden they are a menace: I have seen them steadily nibbling every bud off an azalea bush, and they can do terrible damage to tender young trees. In mature woodland, however, they are in their element. Surrounded by trees as we are, it’s therefore not surprising that I see at least one deer on an almost daily basis. Capturing them on camera, though, is a different matter. I have only the most basic point-and-click pocket camera, and there is little hope of getting close enough to these swift, shy animals to photograph them without a zoom lens.

But last week, for once, camera and deer coincided. We have seen a group of five roe deer hanging about near the house for the past week or so – apparently such groupings are common in the winter months, although five is the biggest group I’ve seen. (If you must have a gang of youths hanging about near your house, it’s pretty great if they are deer!) When I opened the back door to go outside on Thursday morning, there they were at the far end of the lawn, wandering off into the woods. We were heading that way too.

There are three deer visible here if you look carefully (two are behind the dog)

It was a beautiful frosty morning. I was standing under the trees, trying to capture something of the sunlight in the branches, when a large brown blur flashed past. One of the deer, startled out of hiding by my inquisitive dog. I stayed quite still. The dog came to sit quietly at my feet. The deer halted in her flight, and stood watching me from the top of a bank.

How beautiful they are, these wild deer, with their strong delicate legs and shadowy coats, their sooty noses and their huge ears twitching this way and that. My camera was already in my hand, so there was no fumbling or whirring to spook the doe. She stood undecided while I took photo after photo, none of them close enough to show her beauty but each closer than I’ve managed before. Framed by the trees, I thought that she looked almost mythical: a creature from a medieval tapestry.

I took a cautious step closer. Her ears twitched. One more step…and she was gone, an empty space where she had been.

Breathing out, I became aware that the woods were full of birdsong. And I would swear that the sun was shining that little bit more brightly as we continued our walk.

You might enjoy The path through the woods or Gratuitous fluffy animal pictures.

To a mouse – and a poet

Today is Burns’ Night, when Scotland celebrates the anniversary of our national poet, Robert Burns. As a child with an English mother, I struggled to follow the rich language of Burns’s lowland Scots. It was worth persevering with an English-Scots dictionary to hand, however, until I was familiar enough with both tongues to enjoy the poems as they stood.

Many qualities make the work of this 18th Century Ayrshire ploughman stand the test of time. His broad sense of humour, his keen eye for satire and his thrilling way with a story are all showcased in one of his most popular works, ‘Tam O’Shanter‘. (Anyone familiar with any of Scotland’s Calvinist history will also relish ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer‘.) There’s his romanticism – well hidden, as with most Scotsmen, behind a bluff exterior – which has melted many a heart since he penned ‘My love is like a red, red rose‘. But the quality that has won him most followers across the world is probably his ability to empathise with all creatures under heaven, of whatever standing, recognising that we are all muddling along together. You see it in the fine poem sung at the opening of the Scottish Parliament, ‘A man’s a man for a’ that‘; and you see it in the quiet little verses of one of my favourite works of his. This poem came to him after a day’s ploughing, when he accidentally broke open a mouse’s nest in the stubble. Even in a mood of melancholy and self-pity, he could find empathy for this tiny fellow-creature. Here’s to his immortal memory.

(For those who find the Scots vocabulary impenetrable, there is a decent translation into standard English here.)

To A Mouse

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry man’s dominion,
Has broken nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
What makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request;
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell -
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me;
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects dreaer!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Robert Burns, 1785

 

As a postscript, I was interested to find that a contemporary poem by Gillian Clarke on an almost identical theme has become a set text for GCSE English Literature exams. If you would like to compare the two, you can find her poem, ‘The Field Mouse’, here.

You might also enjoy A loch, a lonely glen and a visit from Rabbie Burns and Immortal memories: just an ordinary Burns’ Night.

 

The Tuesday tree: the serpent-rooted beech

What is there not to like about beech trees? Apart, that is, from their wood being particularly dense and heavy, so you wouldn’t want a beech tree falling on top of you. (Mind you, any old tree falling on top of you wouldn’t be good news, I suppose. Heaven forfend.) And beech trees have shallow root systems, which makes them vulnerable to high winds. Since the storms, I must admit, I do look up a little warily at the old beeches as I walk underneath them: they don’t seem as permanent as once I thought.

Nevertheless, beeches remain some of my favourite trees. They have probably featured more than any other kind of tree in these Tuesday posts: in fact, it was a beech that was my inaugural Tuesday tree. Today I am looking at that same individual tree, but at its roots rather than its grey, sweeping branches. The sinuous roots of ancient beeches are a thing of beauty in themselves. Tennyson described beech as ‘serpent-rooted’ and I do see what he means, although there is no sinister undertone intended, I think.

Growing on a steepish bank, this beech has buttressed itself beautifully against the sloping earth. It looks almost as if it is made of many slim trunks melded together, like the great trees you get in tropical jungles. My faithful spaniel sits dutifully once more in the photo below to act as a sort of ‘scale model’, giving you an idea of the size of the root system. (As you can see, she would much rather be investigating the interesting smells at the top of the bank.)

If I am being prosaic, it is because I am trying to avoid going off into lyrical and mystical excess. Beeches, you see, seem to me anything but prosaic. Dreams may be woven into these meandering, mysterious roots. I’ll leave you with a couple more photos without further comment: in these roots, you may weave your own dreams.

 

 

 

There are more mossy roots in Morning sun in the beech woods.

Frosty morning

I love mornings when you open the bedroom curtains for that first bleary look at the world, and see that the landscape has been transformed through the ‘secret ministry‘ of frost. (That link, by the way, will take you to the source of the quote, Coleridge’s utterly beautiful ‘Frost at Midnight’.)

The dull darkness of fields and woods has become a wonderland of pale pastels, as delicate as a stage backdrop for the Sugar Plum Fairy – although here are swans on the icy lochan, looking so elegant in their silvered setting that perhaps this is more Swan Lake than The Nutcracker.

 

Outside after breakfast, I find the sun still low in the branches. The fronds of yew are rimed with frost, and even the tallest lime trees are white as breath on the cold air.

Every twig, every blade of grass, has a sugar coating this morning.

 

 

 

 

Frost flatter old and young alike. The poor ruined deodar wears a gauzy veil of white over its wounds,

while a variegated holly, only recently planted and still just a tiny shrub, looks worthy of a Christmas card in its crystalline prettiness.

 

 

The temperature is only a couple of degrees below zero (Celsius) however. As the sun creeps up across the sky, the frost melts from the trees, remaining only at ground level. I walk back across the pale fields to the house, filled with peace bestowed by the fleeting beauty of the morning.

 

You might enjoy the details of frosted landscape in Sunlit details, Frost and November riches: silver and gold.