conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

friday mumblings: mandodoxy

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?
-Elvis Costello

I have a candle lit on the mantle again. The icon of St. Benedict is standing next to it, leaning against the brickwork. I am trying to get into a rhythm of prayer again. I go in and out of it. I've always struggled to maintain a rule when on my own. The structure of a community rule makes it easier of course. Everyone stops to pray, not just you. But when I am all alone in it...Well, that's just a different story.

There are so many distractions. Advent is a distracting time in the life of most churches. There are special services and events to take care of. Everyone pitches in and it can be a great time, but it is not "waiting in quiet expectation." And I have let this dynamic run amok in my prayer life. I am sure I am not alone in this at all.

So, I do what I always have done. I come back to the beginning of my prayer discipline. I light a candle and I stand quietly before the icons. I pray "Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world..." It's a beginning. I breathe. This does not take much time. It is a beginning.

Lot's of things have this ebb and flow in my life. Music. Prayer. Marriage. There are so many ways to become distracted in life. There are so many demands on our time. And to pay attention to one thing is to not pay attention to the others. Simultaneous attention is something I have not yet mastered. I am not sure that I want to...but there are days.

I missed my mandolin lesson this week. I needed to go downtown for something else that came up. It was a worthwhile trade of time. Trish was not feeling well and needed a ride home. She will always win out over the mandolin lesson. The Mandoguru understands this. Plus, I surprised him last week with an unexpected skill. He even said the words "Very good, Tripp. I'm surprised!" So, maybe that took the edge off the disapproval. I don't know. Surprising the Mandoguru is not an easy thing to do. And it is fun when it happens.

He was going to teach me a Christmas carol. I think it was "Joy to the World" or something. So, he assumed that it would take the whole lesson to get me around the fretboard. A fair assumption. Even when I know the jig or reel it takes a lesson to get me around the fretboard. Last week we went through five tunes in our thirty-minute lesson. There was no sheet music. There were only the tunes. That is all. And that, my friends, was a first.

I play the mandolin very well by ear. I can think through a tune and intuit my way around the mandolin much faster than I can sightread a new jig or reel. It's just been that way. My whole life is that way. I intuit my way through something successfully well before I begin to consciously use the tools. I learned to sightread music in as a choral singer well after I was being paid for it. I listen and memorize. I intuit the next interval. Playing the mandolin is no different in this respect than using my voice.

The instrument is tuned in open fifths. This is the most "primitive" tuning I can imagine. It is basic. It is primeval. The mando lends itself to the pentatonic scale. The "innovations" of the fourth and seventh intervals can be ignored. It's easy to invent a tune from the very beginning. The instrument wants you to play it. Does this make sense? Again, intuitively I just know how to play this thing. Now, if I could only get the rule, the rhythm of reading a tune to be so easy. But that takes discipline.

And here we are back at disciplines. Rules. Regula. Standing before an icon and mumbling old words does not make one a Benedictine. That is for certain. Some days I wish it were that easy. I do. But it is not so simple. One cannot simply intuit a way into a Religious vocation. Such a life is a life of discipline, of obedience, of commitment.

Intuition helps, though. It does. It helps me navigate the waters of prayer. It helps me to navigate the fretboard of the mandolin. But at some point I have to begin to name the things that I am doing. I have to learn the language of a tradition. Terce. Sext. None. Jig. Reel. Scale after litany after fret after service...

This is working the warp and the woof of a life...planing the grain of the universe.

Posted by tripp at December 14, 2007 06:58 AM