Finding Refuge and Rest in the Midst of It All (Mostly Bach, with one favorite Strauss aria)

The thing about Bach: he is going to get you there, no matter how many detours and outright shocks and a few horrors there are upon the way ... this last minute and a half of his Chromatic Fantasy really covered the week for me ... and also showed why some call him Father Bach ... out here saying "Who's your great-granddaddy?" to Wagner (the Tristan Chord!), Berg, Schoenberg, and whoever else thinks they have done dissonance since, before finally getting us safely home...

Dickens said this another way: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" ... so much struggle with accident in the family, so much opportunity going on ... the years of Hive have indeed set me up to have capacity for massive incremental efforts in community ... one highlight led to certain of my students getting tens of thousands in scholarships this week ... another led to an invite to participate in crowdfunding to pay off millions of dollars in medical debt ... while going through the emergency room and doing caretaking and handling necessary business and etc.

This during Black History Month, in a city quite well aligned with a country that actively is resisting the idea that my people have a history worth knowing, and a future not under someone else's direct control for their profit. To be a mid-40s aged Black woman in San Francisco, doing the things that I am doing, is to be a reality the city did its best to not have exist by now. I represent failure of the plans of a lot of powerful people. Lever that backwards 340 years to account for a lot of people in my country feeling the same way about women like me.

But I keep walking through all of it, having accepted that I am simply going to be a surprise every day in my locale... much as Bach's Pedal Exercitium was to me this week...

... and if so, a pleasant one as much as I can, for while I am a testimony of failure of the plans of the wicked of my own land, I exist here as a testimony of the continuing triumph of God and my own people over the wicked, and so, I go on and Blumenkind it out daily now, in walking celebration -- like this prelude and fugue by Bach -- BWV 541 is the utmost bound of joy to express the joys of this week, and of this life!

Still, the struggles are real... personal and professional... but Bach is a great refuge, and as I am out and about in the city I more and more am finding refuges in the midst of life to keep up a steady pace. I am not supposed to be in those either, to hear the city planners tell it... but, oh well!

I would rather be in my favorite parks, or doing business in my walkable radius, than going to downtown anywhere, but my composition teacher reminded me there is a way to do all of that at the same time...

-- Salesforce Park is four stories above the noise of downtown, a sizable green space planted on the roof of the city's downtown transit hub with a walking trail that goes around. So, I decided I would take an hour of break time and explore it in midwinter form.

Take a goodly number of city buses to the end of the line, find the right elevator ... that was the fun part, and led to some levels that were nearly empty, mid-morning ... the crowd had come and gone, and would not return for many hours. But at last, I found the right elevator ...

... and it opened to another world ...

... and the portal of imagination also opened, allowing a bass voice as pleased as it was deep and accented in German to musically reverberate through ...

"Have I mentioned how much I adore you in your bold mood, Frau Mathews, as you stride through new territory like you have always owned it?"

"Just remember that my legs are short -- don't make me have to double-time through here on my break time!"

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past, as usual nearly a foot taller and about that much broader as well, materialized with a laugh -- and a retort!

"I see you have forgotten who has to pace whom on these walks," he purred. "You and those short legs running this sedate ethereal octogenarian around and around -- and if I were a betting man, I would bet good money that you are even going to find some side trail in Salesforce Park off the prescribed path even though it is theoretically too small for that to be possible!"

He had me dead to rights! All I could do was laugh as he wrapped me up in the embrace of his arms and his voice, also laughing from his deep delight.

"I am glad to see you not only forging through your difficulties, not only enjoying your triumphs, but also being open to the opportunity of rest in the midst of it all. This is a deep lesson I have long awaited discussing with you -- discussing, because you have walked into it without advance instruction!"

"It seemed like the logical outgrowth of some other things we have discussed -- like way down after walk, abide, adorn, appear, and associate, appropriate was in the list, all the way back in December of 2023."

"You are a very attentive student to have remembered that," he purred. "You are right that it is the logical outgrowth, only awaiting you growing to meet it, and you have."

"Tell me this, Frau Mathews -- do you see the connection between our tropical excursions two weeks ago and your being here?"

I thought about this for a long moment.

"Not really," I said, "except perhaps by contrast, and by the fact that Bach is dominating this week's music as well."

"You are experiencing great highs and lows in your life -- the depth of Bach is again required," he said. "But also the return to Bach represents something important we have not discussed before. Beethoven, like Bach, covers every human emotion deeply, and also is always structured powerfully and is reliably going to get us through to the end. But you choose Bach much more often in your maturity. Why?"

"Restfulness," I said. "There is something about Bach, around whom anything and everything, in all of the heights and depths of human life, was happening, and yet ... I feel that in Bach that allowed him to produce so much music no matter what was happening, day after day after day."

"He found a way to be rooted in rest, in the midst of life, and you are finding the same," he said. "The composure of mind required to create daily with everything going on requires being able to lay aside the urgent press of events and resting from it mentally long enough to bring forth a new thing of beauty again and again and again... this can be thought of a practice of rest, thought of over the course of a lifetime.

"There is another way to think about this as rest: think about the time Bach needed to compose, and had to get everyone around him to agree to give him. At a certain time in his adult life, he had to begin selecting his company for that. Think about all the things that Bach, being a big-time family man, also would not have had time for. Add on to that all the things that Bach, being a devout Lutheran, also would not have chosen, although here it must be said that choosing to live up to being a prolific composer and choosing to attend deeply to his family affairs means there were less occasions to 'not choose' something else. That is, the choice of some things includes the non-choice of many others."

"We have discussed that as well," I said. "You said to me that all things for me are in the way I am meant to walk, and that means, by inference, that all things not for me are simply outside the way. Of course, we are not exactly talking about a flat three-dimensional plane like this is generally illustrated ..."

"Frau Mathews, wait a moment -- you are not about to tickle my intellect with a discussion of higher-dimensional space, are you?" he said with a laugh.

"I am," I said, "to the extent that eternity is a known dimension, by faith, and that the daily walk in this life can be known as discovering and choosing what is coming out of eternity into time and space for the believer -- and, by inference, learning how not to choose what is not thus intended."

He considered this for a long moment.

"There is a Bach prelude -- In dir ist Freude -- that reveals itself in that way -- if you know the melody to the chorale, you know what eventually is going to show itself, but if it is new to you, you will discover it in the way as you keep listening!"

"I did not know the chorale when I first heard that," I said, "and indeed it was a journey! Did we not say that Bach covers just about everything?"

"Even the fourth dimension, understood as eternity acting and revealing its intents in time," he said. "Now, think, Frau Mathews, as Bach surely did before you: how could you not, with that understanding, be moved to give yourself rest from so much and so many, so that you can attend to all the things -- just since Valentine's Day alone, Frau Mathews, both in the pleasant and the unpleasant -- all the things!"

I had to stop walking for a bit to contemplate that, and then I saw it ...

"Let's have you win the bet you didn't make and discuss this in a quieter environment!"

He followed my eyes, and then broke out laughing.

"I knew you would find a side trail -- I knew it!"

So, in to beyond the palms and up a little hill, and into the midst of Salesforce Park, because most, staying to the path around the top of the transit center, would never enter there. We rested alone in the sunshine ...

... and that, by itself, gave the answer. There would have been no time to rest on that hill, be at Salesforce Park, or do any of the things ... choosing one manner of life completely denied the prospect of the other.

My companion waited for a long time, and then spoke gently, verging upon the double-deep range of his voice.

"When in 2024 I said to you for the first time, 'There is no bridge,' *mein geliebtes Blumenkind,' I could not then say to you, in your intense grief, that to choose what you have chosen was in itself a complete and utter rejection of everything and everyone who has not chosen what you have, with all that they were investing their lives in, knowing the pain you would leave behind you, knowing even the pain that was coming to some because of the consequences they would not avoid, as well as keenly knowing your own anguish. That is what made it so devastating: you did the most painful form of rejection anyone ever does."

He paused, and then brought his voice into even deeper gentleness ...

"Because we as humans are so quickly given to pride and hate, and rarely part relationships without one of those two being or becoming a dominant force, it is very difficult for us to understand how, if love and righteousness are held in balance, the one will never override the other ... the wicked can be truly loved, but they can never stand with the righteous or receive their rewards, so, when their time runs out to change their position, they must be left in or left to go to their own place."

He brought his voice to its utmost depth of gentleness, essentially opening the door to the Knockout Zone in advance, because otherwise I would have had to just go up home with him from the impact of what he was about to say.

"Very few people, Frau Mathews, can begin to contemplate from an understanding perspective how it is written that God is Love, but also written that He can completely reject -- damn -- all those who refuse to walk in the Way He has set forth. To very, very few, Frau Mathews, can a glimpse be given, in an experiential way, of the divine pain because of mankind's stubborn depravity in light of the brevity of mortal existence and the length of immortal existence in which the choices made in mortality are confirmed forever. That is to say, very few people can have a picture of their own to put next to the one given that Judas Iscariot and Simon Peter were equally loved before and during their betrayal and denial, but while one was restored, the other was permitted to go to his own, forever accursed, place."

My life for a decade flashed before my eyes with that perspective, complete with all the destruction that had overtaken those circles I had left behind in the 2010s, and the beginning of destruction overtaking many I have left in the 2020s ... there was not a face that I saw in that flash that I had not loved ... and yet I had left them in their own place, since that was where they wanted to stay. Perhaps, like Judas, some of them had or would have their moment of realizing they had made the wrong decision -- but too late to change the consequences already in process, a process even more inevitable than Bach's awesomely dark C sharp minor fugue from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier -- although on the organ, the "echo" of that process is pretty darn good.

I have been playing through this fugue this week on my piano, my mind drawn to how in the world Bach built this massive thing out of that sparse theme ... the process ... inevitable once begun, set forth out of a mind in complete control of the process ... one note after another, consequence after consequence in perfect logical order, proceeding to a known and unavoidable end. As I reconsidered my life, and the process those I had left behind were going through, the reason the funereal beauty of that fugue had called to me became apparent.

However, in that moment as in the years previous, I was gently interrupted and called away ...

"The process," my companion said, now in the utmost depth of his voice, "is awesome and terrible and inexorable ... and yet, you may remain obedient to the reality that from it, you have been given rest."

That last word had a note: his well-known C#2, softly undergirding the last note of Bach's great fugue. To it I yielded, and was wrapped up in it like as in the deepest, blackest, softest velvet.

"You have made the right decision, again, mein geliebtes Blumenkind. You will continue to be abundantly rewarded."

He sang, such that spring came and caressed an entire bush into blooming...

... as he sang the last song of Admiral Morosus in Strauss, when at last the old admiral has understood how to live in joy and peace and love with his beloveds and chooses it, and receives what he has chosen. The old admiral sings himself to sleep ... and the voice of gold that animated that scene has sung me to sleep with this scene many times ... this was no exception.

I opened my eyes in the quiet of that moment in the midst of the park, resting comfortably in the grass. My companion had folded his jacket and placed it under my head as a pillow, and he was sitting and quietly keeping watch. Not that there was anything much to see ... most people are not looking to go off the beaten path in Salesforce Park.

But ...

"You keep forgetting you're not actually on my security detail," I said gently.

"Du bist richtig, meine liebe Dame," he answered with a smile.

You are right, my loved lady...

He was going to keep forgetting it, of course. I lay back and closed my eyes again for a little while, and as I was doing so I saw his smile widen ... mingled with the golden sunshine, that reminded me of Bach in his C sharp major mood...

At last I had rested enough, and we stepped all the way across the park to the other side, and back onto the path. My companion was glowed up considerably ... he had enjoyed facilitating my rest very much, and had even more enjoyed me leaning into it. And, he intended that I should lean even more ... his smile widened and his eyes sparkled at the sight of something I could not yet see at my shorter height, although my eyes were happily engaged...

... but then we got close enough, and I started laughing because in the same way I was going to find a side trail, he also had a knack for finding refreshments...

"Darf ich dir ein Koffee spendieren?"

May I buy you a coffee?

We were four stories high in the Financial District in San Francisco. One might as well as offered to pan some gold, which pays by the ounce. But some weeks earlier, I had agreed to give him room, so ...

"Natürlich," I said, "und Vielen Dank."

His grin and his glow up, combined, were enough to stop the flow of foot traffic ... and then people looked down at who this big, handsome European of mature age was smiling at ... and then stared ... and kept staring as he opened the door for me and we glided up to the counter and I ordered what I wanted ... and he smiled even more, and more tenderly, as he saw how modestly I availed myself of his resources ... a simple small coffee, without the many other things I might have ordered from the menu.

I realized what lesson he was giving me in miniature, a reprise of that of Valentine's Day with an extension. In real life, every day, I am able to walk through my city and make the advances I can because of the love and grace of Him Who calls me ... His favor moves things and people that I couldn't move on my own. Humility and gratitude must walk hand in hand, however ... I appreciate but dare not presume beyond the limits of good stewardship, just like I am not going to get a $8-10 type of coffee drink on anyone's dime. Good stewardship extends favor as well, in the long run.

Outside into the sunshine ... there were tables and we took one ...

"This is some good coffee -- thank you again," I said.

"Gern geschehen," he said, that smile having never left his face since we got there. "How in place you are, enjoying yourself in any calm garden or park, mein geliebtes Blumenkind! And, spring is coming!"

I sipped my coffee, put it down, and smiled.

"Your birthday is in April and you are already planning the foolery," I said.

His laugh was heard clear from one end of Salesforce Park to the other -- and -- !

"Du bist richtig, meine liebe Dame!"

He was laughing so merrily that I and everyone around started laughing ... he was so tickled that laughter was still musically bubbling out of him as he and I were at last going to the elevator, getting ready to return to the city below.

"Oh my, we are laughing across three octaves still," I said. "I cannot imagine what you are about to be up to!"

"Frau Mathews, du hast keine Idee."

You have no idea.

"But," he continued in English, "keep doing what you are doing -- attend faithfully to all things in which you are called, including to rest, and in due time, the abundance of all that you have chosen will be shown to you! You have no idea -- but you will know in due time!"

Down into and through the streets of San Francisco -- he walked me to my next appointment and bade me farewell with a glowing smile.

"Until next time, Frau Mathews!"