'Start Now'

Monday 17th May, 2020.  Pope St John 1st. 

Three electronic internet messages have intrigued me over the last 24 hours. First came an attachment to an email: an attachment of choirs and individuals from across Christian churches in Britain singing a blessing on the Country. It was not my style of hymnal worship but it was utterly beautiful and heart warming. It lasted some seven minutes and pictured all the various participants with the name and place of the church. They all came together across cyber space to coordinate and sing together the blessing. It was lovely to see and hear a unity of Christians especially when normally one hears of divisions and disagreements. It was all the more powerful today showing compassion, concern and the spirit of sharing. Truly uplifting.

Then came another email headed 'Mindfulness', a word which I cringe from for some silly reason. It too had an attachment. The attachment was of an anonymous violinist playing 6 pieces of Bach over 45 minutes at a subway station in New York during a morning rush hour some months ago. The music was stunning, utterly haunting and beautiful. The video had captions to go with it and they too stunned me. In the 45 minutes of play it was estimated that over 1,000 people passed by the violinist. Of the 1,000 or so 6 people stopped. They quickly seemed to look at their watches and hurry away, late for work possibly. One 3 year old boy paid most attention. He was captivated and entranced. After a short while his Mother pulled him away but he resisted. Then she dragged him and he looked back longing as he was moved to the subway. The same was noted of several other children all forced by parents and adults to move on. Overall 20 people gave a donation but did not stop...after 45 minutes 32 dollars was collected. It was then revealed on the video that the violinist was Joshua Ball, considered one of the greatest violinists of today, and that his violin was valued at 3.5 million dollars. The week before he played the subway he had had a sell out performance at a New York theatre and the minimum ticket price was 100 dollars. The experiment had been set up by the New York Times. The final captions read 'how do we perceive beauty?' And 'do we stop to appreciate it?'

This had and has gotten me thinking. Another email appeared from an elderly friend. She wrote that the lock down had had her reflect and think. She had ruminated on her life, her regrets and missed opportunities, her family and friends and on her beliefs and prejudices and thoughts as well as actions. She concluded that Ecclesiastes was correct and all was vanity. She realised that she neither liked nor loved herself.

My reply was simple and addressed also to myself: "start now".

#joshuaball #violin #subway #buskers #nyt #newyorktimes #kingdomchoir