Transposition – prayer in hard times.

In recent years I have been very fortunate to work with the students of Imperial College Chamber Choir. They sing evensong every fortnight in term in the parish church of Holy Trinity (SW7 1NA) that sits snug between Imperial, The Royal College of Art and the Royal College of Music.

We are treated to superb music as the student choir creates a special evening time for reflection and prayer.

With this in mind I was struck by this recent article by the Cambridge priest and poet, Malcolm Guite Malcolm uses the idea of transposing music from one key to another as a way to explore the practice of prayer as we take in unsettling and disturbing news from the media.

The article appeared in the Church Times. I have a subscription so am posting the full article here as I think it will be useful for many for whom music is a key part of their faith and language of prayer. As ever, Malcolm’s words take us beyond words. At the end is his poem and the poem by George Herbert that inspired him.

An article by Malcolm Guite in the Church Times Friday 21st Feb 2025
THANK God for church organists who have the gift and skill of transposition! So many great hymns are set in keys that most worshippers can’t manage; but then along comes an organist who sees the problem, transposes the hymn down to a reachable key, and then — behold! — the whole church is singing again, and not just the choir.
Transposition itself is a beautiful and mysterious thing and, therefore, a compelling metaphor for much more than itself. In one sense, transposition changes all the original notes in a piece and so makes it new; but, in another sense, it changes nothing: it preserves everything that made the original music in the first place. It preserves tempo and melody, the intervals between the notes remain constant, all the harmonies and possibilities of new harmony are preserved — and more than preserved; for the new key makes them available to those for whom they were previously out of reach, out of range.
This is why George Herbert, himself such a lover and practitioner of music, reached for transposition as a metaphor for prayer in that mysterious line from his poem “Prayer”: “The six-days world transposing in an hour.”
“The six-days world” refers not only to the whole world that God made in the six days of creation, but also to “the six-days world” that is our working week, the week past, whose memory and impact we bring into church with us, and the week to come, for which our Sunday worship is preparing and reorientating us
So, Herbert offers the insight that prayer itself is a kind of transposition: that everyday experiences that have been somehow unmanageable for us, out of our range, might be transposed as we pray through them, accommodated within our range. For Herbert, prayer does not ignore “the six-days world”, the constant cycles of unnerving news, the noise and pain and clamour of daily life, but, rather, seeks to transpose that dissonance into the key of love — a transposition, perhaps, from a minor to a major.
As I worked on a poem about this phrase of Herbert’s, I realised that I was articulating something that I had felt for a long time about the damaging and depressing effect of barrages of bad news, unprayed through, accumulating as a kind of cacophony in the mind. We need the gift of transposition, and the power to hear, however tiny it might seem, the eternal tuning fork that sounds Christ’s love in the midst of things. If you have been as disturbed and distressed, as I have, by the news in recent days, I hope this sonnet will help.

‘The six-days world transposing in an hour’ by Malcom Guite.

Twenty-four seven in “the six-days world”,
In endless cycles of unnerving news,
Relentlessly our restless hurts are hurled
Through empty cyber-space. Is there no muse
To make of all that pain an elegy,
Or in those waves of white noise to discern
Christ’s inner cantus firmus*, that deep tone
That might give rise at last to harmony?

We may not seal it off or drown it out,
Nor close our hearts down in the hour of prayer,
But, listening through dissonance and doubt,
Wait in the space between, until we hear
A change of key, a secret chord disclosed,
A kind of tune, and all the world transposed.

* cantus firmus – a musical term for an enduring melody in early music, sometimes a metaphor for God’s love.

Prayer by George Herbert

Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

Working with Willingness and Wilfulness

Several years ago my spiritual mentor, who trained in the U.S., recommended Gerald May’s ‘Will and the Spirit – a contemplative psychology.’ Written back in 1982, it’s a rare source of insight and wisdom from a psychiatrist who was also a theologian. I am deeply grateful. I can’t see how I would have come across Gerald May’s writing without her suggestion.

May uses willingness and wilfulness to help us think about our prayer (and other behaviours).

To get my head around May’s use of these words I laid out this quotation on separate lines.

“Willingness implies

a surrendering of one’s self-separateness,

an entering-into, an immersion in the deepest processes of life itself.

It is a realization that one is already a part of some ultimate cosmic process

and it is a commitment to participation in that process.

In contrast willfulness is

the setting of oneself apart from the fundamental essence of life in an attempt to master, direct, control, or otherwise manipulate existence.

More simply, willingness is saying yes to the mystery of being alive in each moment.

Willfulness is saying no, or perhaps more commonly, “yes, but…””

Working with Willingness and Wilfulness

What are the first things that come to mind when we think about these ideas of willingness and wilfulness? Where do they show up for us?

Can we notice when our meditative prayer moves from ‘wilfulness to willingness’?

When do we need genuinely need to be ‘wilful’?

Am I beating myself up for being ‘too wilful’? (N.B. willfulness is definitely needed at times).

Apart from meditation when can I gently move from  ‘wilfulness’ to  ‘willingness’?

Zen in Christian Prayer

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.

I let go of my desire for power and control.

I let go of my desire for affection, esteem, approval and pleasure.

I let go of my desire for survival and security.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and God’s action within. Amen.

Thomas Keating, Centering Prayer

I like the Zen nature of this prayer of Thomas Keating. It’s written to be said before a time of silent Centering Prayer. It feels more like a health warning than an invitation. Alert: this is not an instant life hack.

It’s an unsettling prayer but I am drawn to it. It’s a prayer to use and reuse over a long period of time. To use knowing that we will never ‘get it.’

But maybe this is the prayer that works in the same way as the stark Gospel words “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matt 16:25).”

It’s a life-giving prayer for a life-giving process. Maybe this is how faith (or we could say trust) is built up slowly, day by day.

You’re having a laugh!

One of the great things about Chaplaincy in a university is hearing firsthand about current research. And often long before it’s reported in the media.

Walking between meetings last week I bumped into an old friend, Prof Abbas Edalat. I heard about this next step in his work developing computer programmes to deliver therapy to deepen self-compassion and healing. The new research is called

‘A New Algorithmic Way to Learn to Laugh.’

The invitation to participate in the research goes

“Interested in developing a sense of humour for learning to laugh in almost all contexts? For well-being and enhancing positive emotions without dismissing negative events/emotions?”

Without the personal connection, I would be highly sceptical that healing could come via an algorithm. My bias. However, I know that Abbas has walked the talk on this.

The early research appears very positive. The computer engineering delivers a practice of self-compassion related to the attachments we form in early life. You can learn more about Self-Attachment Technique on the Algorithmic Human Development group’s website.

The AHD are “a multidisciplinary research group working at the crossroads of AI, mathematical modelling, cognitive and clinical psychology and neuroscience.”

If you want to find out more or be part of the research follow the links on the site.

All desire is eloquent

Here is a short outline of the method of prayer offered by the anonymous writer of the medieval text on contemplative prayer called ‘The Cloud of Unknowing.’ It was part of a sermon for the first Sunday in Lent exploring the Cloud writer’s view that when seeking God we can trust that  ‘all desire is eloquent.’

The Cloud writer’s method for seeking God has a few key concepts;

God is God and God is beyond us.

God can be known in love and loving but not through thinking (a long tradition in theology).

The writer offers us the image of meeting God in a cloud – a Cloud of Unknowing.

The Cloud of Unknowing cannot be entered with the mind but can be entered with love.

The way to pray then is this:

We sit and silently say the word ‘love.’ (The writer suggests we see this like an arrow of desire fired into the cloud to connect with God).

We watch what arises for us – ideas, memories, feelings, or sensations.

(And what arises will be our life with all its everyday mundane aspects,  for example, what we ate for breakfast, or noticing an urge to fidget, or a concern about what to cook for dinner. Among this ‘arising stuff’ will also be the more profound matters of memories, current concerns, hopes, anxieties, dreams, and inspiration).

Whatever arises after saying the word ‘love’   we simply notice and let go. The Cloud writer imagines putting these thoughts into the temporary ‘Cloud of Forgetting’ under our chair for the time of our prayer.

We then say the word love silently again and reach out again to God who is near in the Cloud of unknowing.

That’s it. That’s the method. Repeat for 5-10 minutes (and build up slowly to 15-20 minutes).

And 5-10 mins of this practice each day over a couple of weeks will have an effect. We get better a noticing our hopes and desires, we notice the range of random and profound thoughts going on in us. We get used to knowing that God knows all these things and that that is OK. We are loved as we are. Our desires can be our eloquent prayers.

If you want to know more about how to pray with the Cloud of Unknowing I recommend reading the excellent and practical book ‘Strike the Cloud’ by Graeme Watson (SPCK 2011).

Lent; exploring compulsions

In the Christian calendar, Lent is a time of reflection and fasting. This can come to be seen as a time to give up certain kinds of food and drink. I was struck by these Lenten invitations from Ross Thompson to ‘give up’  our compulsive, unquestioned commitments to doing good things. A case of noticing when ‘good intentions go bad’.

Maybe one or two of these observations might provoke some reflection – and if we can see them in others (easy to spot!) we can be sure some version can be found in our own behaviour (not so easy to spot!). Remember, whatever you recognize in yourself here, don’t judge yourself for it, rather accept it as a gift of self-knowledge.

Be led into new life, don’t beat yourself up.

“The compulsive pursuit of perfection becomes impatient with weakness, angry and judgmental.

The compulsive pursuit of compassion becomes swamping and possessive.

The compulsive pursuit of success denies the fact and value of vulnerability.

The compulsive pursuit of beauty and creativity becomes an escapist ego trip.

The compulsive pursuit of knowledge leads us to become miserly hoarders of knowledge, locked away in ivory towers.

The compulsion to obedience becomes fearful and legalistic.

The compulsive pursuit of enjoyment becomes selfish, devious, and addicted.

The compulsive pursuit of justice becomes vindictive and power-hungry.

The compulsive pursuit of peace leads to a desire to please everyone and a loss of integrity.”

From ‘Spirituality in Season’ by Ross Thompson.

There and back, and there and back again: reflections on pilgrimage

A sermon on the theme of Pilgrimage for the College Evensong in Holy Trinity Church, Prince Consort Road sung by the students of Imperial College Chamber Choir. There is more information about these services on the Chaplaincy website.

There is a short journey I do every year. It’s a visit to see a collection of objects at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Among this set of objects is a small blue box, with a smooth, shiny surface and an intricate gold pattern. It was made to hold the relics – bits of bones – of Archbishop Thomas Becket. Becket was a friend of King Henry II who appointed him to be ‘his man’ running the church and limiting Becket’s secular power. But once in post, Becket vigorously defended the church from the demands of the King. Perhaps you remember Henry’s infamous words “who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” His knights hearing this took it upon themselves to go to Canterbury cathedral and murder Thomas. You might know the story from TS Elliot’s play ‘Murder in the cathedral.’  

Every January, I find myself on a kind of micro pilgrimage to look at what’s called the Becket Casket. It is one object of a collection we look at during a session on funeral practices for 4th-year medical students taking the Humanities Philosophy and Law course. Looking at funeral objects from different times and cultures is an indirect way for students to reflect on the experiences of death and dying that they have witnessed in their medical training.

The Becket Casket prompts reflection on the link between the bones of one dead person and the desire for healing on the part of the pilgrims who traveled to pray in the presence of the relics. In the high medieval period, many people went on long journeys visiting a shrine connected with a saint whose body or a relic was housed in a shrine in a monastery or cathedral–Becket in Canterbury or St James in Compostela in northern Spain. People go on pilgrimages, then as now, for many, many reasons. Large among them is the desire for healing – of body, mind, sense of self, meaning, or purpose. The quest seems part of the search to find and heal the thing we feel we lack.

There was, without doubt, an economics to this medieval pilgrimage practice, especially for the towns or monasteries that had the relics of a well-loved saint that attracted pilgrims from all over Europe. The Becket Casket was a high-value item in design and manufacture.

The phenomena could be compared to us traveling a long way to see a favourite band play or to watch our team play in the UEFA Cup (both of which also take place in huge venues a scale like cathedrals). These trips are never just economic matters but journeys of adventure, emotion, meaning, transcendence, spirit, soul, opportunity, dreams and hopes, and even healing. (And I am not just talking about football).

The classic pilgrimages are to a place of religious significance like Rome, Jerusalem, Canterbury or Compostela. There are routes being created, for example, to give us space to dwell in the landscape with local Cornish saints – or with the Celtic saints like Aidan and Cuthbert and Hilde that brought Christianity from Scotland into the North East.

Pilgrimages are within the universal human experience of finding meaning in the long journey – especially the journey that is walked. So, The Camino is popular with those who are religious and those who are not. A pilgrimage can take many forms and be motivated by many desires.

The features of pilgrimage it seems are:

• moving from what we know into the unknown or less well-known.
• an intentional choice to be more open and more vulnerable.

At the V and A being in the presence of objects from people of long ago has a mild challenge to what we think is normal for us.  At the other end of the challenge spectrum is the pilgrim on foot who relies on others for shelter, water, and food.

There are many sisters and brothers who have no choice but to face challenging journeys and to rely on the kindness of strangers – those who are homeless and those fleeing for their lives.

For the rest of us, there is pilgrimage –that we might see our familiar lives in a new way and know what it means.

The metaphor of the journey can be overused and under-explored. The words of Jesus in the reading we heard today give us a metaphor that also resonates with the pilgrimage experience and daily life;

 

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’    
Matthew 11:28-30

 

The intentional pilgrimage journey comes to an end. When the Camino brings us at last to Compostela and we have touched the great door of the Basilica of St James a new journey begins – the return, where we have to weave the experiences of the Camino, the Way, into our old daily life.

The Summer Choir Tour to Compostela may not have much walking and is still months away. It will certainly be a musical pilgrimage in body and heart. There will before then, for all of us, be journeys, movements, trips, and pilgrim moments. And without leaving our usual place there will be in two weeks’ time, on Ash Wednesday, the setting out on a pilgrimage in our imagination and hearts that goes through a desert landscape, enters a city, and moves outside that city, through a garden, to a hill, and then to a lakeside, and finally after Pentecost taking us to ever new places.

One of T.S. Elliot’s poems has the line you may already know,
“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”

Go well.
Rest well.

When that bad thing to do at a party is a tried and tested way of handling distractions and overwhelm in meditative prayer

Because of conversations with students and staff and my own experience, I am continuing to think about how distractions during silent prayer, or resistance to starting a time of meditative prayer, can become our gateway to prayer.

The writer of the Cloud of Unknowing must have known all about distractions. The writer lived at a time of epidemic, war, economic collapse, and social turmoil in 14th-century England. There were many causes of anxiety and deep uncertainty, then as now. The Cloud writer does not name these issues in the book. Knowing the social context gives even greater weight to the wisdom.

Martin Laird (Into the Silent Land) quotes the Cloud writer in a passage on handling our ‘judging thoughts.’ But we can use this ancient/contemporary method for whatever it is that we are finding most distracting.

“At no time are we trying to push away our judging thoughts. Nor do we indulge them by getting caught up in their narrative. Instead we ‘look over their shoulder,’ as the author of the Cloud of Unknowing tells us, “Try to look over their shoulder, as it were, searching for something else – and that something is God, enclosed in a cloud of unknowing.” There is a certain genius in his advice: in order to look over their shoulder we have to let the judgemental thoughts be, but we won’t be able to look over their shoulders if we get wrapped up in the narrative of the judgemental thoughts.’

Looking over someone’s shoulder at a party to find someone more interesting to talk to is both rude and offensively distracted. It turns out to be a useful technique in the struggles with ourselves that we find in the practice of silent prayer.

Befriending resistance to doing silent prayer and meditation

Recently I find myself collecting quotes that suggest the resistance to doing meditation or silent prayer (and the distractions when trying) are in fact gateways and invitations into prayer and presence. Here is a passage by Simone Weil that I found helpful. It’s a quote to be practiced or enacted.

“Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.”

From Simone Weil’s ‘Gravity and Grace’ (1963) quoted by Martin Laird in his book  ‘Into the silent land, The Practice of Contemplation’(2006).

Epiphany invitation: seeing with the heart

This season of Epiphany invites us to think about how the transforming love of God is seen and shown in the ordinary and every day.  Ruth Pitter’s poem The Bird and the Tree seeks a  unity of vision – being able to see fully both the bird and the tree.

It also contains this line ‘But the inner love is not whole.’

A hint perhaps that it is our incomplete inner love that prevents us from seeing fully or completely.

You can read further reflections on the poem on Malcolm Guite’s blog.

The Bird and the Tree by Ruth Pitter.

The tree, and its haunting bird,

Are the loves of my heart;

But where is the word, the word,

Oh where is the art,

To say, or even to see,

For a moment of time,

What the Tree and the Bird must be

In the true sublime?

They shine, listening to the soul,

And the soul replies;

But the inner love is not whole,

and the moment dies.

Oh give me before I die

The grace to see

With eternal, ultimate eye,

The Bird and the Tree.

The song in the living Green,

The Tree and the Bird –

Oh have they ever been seen,

Ever been heard?