Category Archives: contemplative essays

various themes

EXTREMELY.

contemplative essays, Fundamentalism, sociology, , , ,

(first draft, published 1/13/15, edited 1/18/15)

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What is “extremism”?

And, whence its children?

Society, it is said, is like a fabric. People weave themselves into place, grouping according to belief and cultural history. But, whether political or religious, once borders are defined and claimed, inevitable fringes form. Why? Is this simply evidence of a pattern that has not been cut on the bias?

I was raised in an exclusive, sectarian Christian fundamentalist fellowship, born in the mind of one John Nelson Darby, a defected Anglican priest. Known as the Plymouth Brethren, because Darby’s following was rooted in Plymouth, England, what was essentially a cult  – reaching American shores in the mid-1800s – defined every breath I took from birth until graduation from college at age 25.

Humorist, author, and radio personality Garrison Keillor was also raised in this sect, although his references to it are veiled and fleeting. The total membership, loosely-so-called, of the Plymouth Brethren world wide probably never numbered more than a few thousand at its height.

In spite of this relatively miniscule societal representation, its governing few would rise in the ranks of the scholarly to publish a sizable collection of Scriptural commentaries so deeply doctrinaire that much of this library would lay the groundwork for the teachable tenets of the General Association of Regular Baptists’ ever-expanding seminaries.

Of course, the bliss of being part of a subculture in childhood is that trust is at the heart of everything. Dogma which labels all on the inside as “safe” (or, “saved”, per their qualifying as true believers) renders all on the outside in quite stark, clarified terms: the “lost”; the “world”;  the “damned”; and, strongly suggests that, if one is saved, then one has been rescued from an environment which is hostile in every conceivable way.

Yet, when one comes of age, and takes that first, furtive step outside of the city walls, so to speak, should one discover anything sweet, warm, welcoming, or apparently “good”, one is quickly reminded that satan is the angel of light, the great deceiver, and that now would be the time to return “home” before it gets truly dark.

Thus, the cycle begins.

And, dramatic it is.

And, so, such a child learns that, above all else, life is about drama. Every choice is addressed earnestly, with a sober mind and obedient heart. Every experience is visceral. There is no grande ritual to keep reaction at arm’s length. There are no “small things”; at any point, one could be snatched by the most disarming subtlety and set adrift, anchorless, unmoored, completely carried away. Any and all notions of “freedom” in such a context strike nothing but acute fear into the heart.

Perhaps societies are simply the macrocosm of the human cell. Once completely mature, all its components in fully developed function, the cell becomes restless; a strong, mysterious pull, followed by movement toward the opposite edges of its inner membrane by those bits which drive the inevitable process, and the cell begins its fragmenting trek toward division. It behaves as if driven to make two of itself, which is exactly what it does.

In fact, the Plymouth Brethren, once defined by the Encyclopaedia Brittanica as a non-denominational religious group “characterized by schism “, became just such a living metaphor. Indeed, their essential “cell” was never stable for more than a decade or so and, if one were haplessly born in the middle of any such ten year period, one would live out at whatever distance one’s perspective afforded at least one, major division.

I was such a child. Born in 1957, I would grow to witness both a rare merger, a reconciliation and allegedly joyful reunion of two offshoots which had come to doctrinal resolution, and two more divisions yet again before reaching my critical point of exhaustion with the whole enterprise. But, what happened in the middle would come to describe my whole life experience, creating in me a world view which was as bewildering as it was destabilizing.

You see, I do not choose such dramatic language deliberately. Rather, everything which happened could only be characterized using the lexicon of the thespian. Every personality was subject to scrutiny; every word and deed a matter of ultimate discussion. Each countenance bespoke its inner life. Each costume was carefully prepared to reflect prescribed notions of what was considered becoming to a living saint. If there were any levity, each episode would be either comparatively brief or permitted only after arduous hours at the altar of worship, ministry, and self-sacrifice. And, lest this scenario seem other-worldly in its harsh depiction, keep in mind that this was how my inner life translated what was happening around me. Remember: things are rarely what they seem, and this was never more true than amongst the closed assemblies of the Plymouth Brethren.

So much detail. Such analysis. Layer upon layer of behavior, always subject to an unspoken, never formally acknowledged, austere leadership. If a heirarchy formed, the term was whispered about by its women, who were otherwise kept strictly silent. God would forbid such assumption of any power; yet, power there was, in abundance, and held as close to the vest as an armor plate by the one or two who managed to persuade the entire collective to take a single step in any direction.

Hence, my emotional and psychological growth, as imperceptible now to me in retrospect as it was then, was utterly subsumed by this system of spiritual governance. I had the “double whammy” of being born a girl, placed in a brother sandwich, and raised to become some version of a woman living in a body and mind that was not my own.

So, when I observe the behavior of those labeled “extremist” in present-day culture, I experience a form of recognition. I see the zealots; I hear the cries. I feel the passion, emboldening the anonymous with meaning. I know their drives, their panic, their crazed determinations. Theirs is a duality, of powerlessness and barbarism, embodying rage and delusion. Belief drives them, and reason cannot. They are the mobilized discarded. Their weapon is terror, the quickest way to be seen and heard, because they look inside themselves and find nothing. In living paradox, they annihilate their bodies in an attempt to claim an ultimate identity.

So, what is a lucid, responsible global citizenry to do?

As an American society, we must protect our vulnerable, those we call our “own”, from all monsters. We should know by now that changing the structure of a society will not change its mentality. But, mutations are occurring all over the sphere. Cells are both forming, and dividing, all around us with the rapid replication of a torrid malignancy. If we do not take the necessary steps to neutralize them, the tumors will overtake us. And, we need some preventive medicine, to save our children.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo 1/13/15 all rights reserved. Thanks.

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Dimitri.

classical music, contemplative essays, nostalgia, , , , ,

” SEEENGH! mit deh chellow! SEEEEENGH!”

His tall, gaunt, angular frame strode back and forth in front of me, that perpetual smile permitting in one corner a puff puff of his aromatic pipe between each declaration.  Bootsie the cat, the size of a small child, sat at the right edge of the bow’s trajectory, batting away at each return. And, I, the tender thirteen year old, spread my bow stroke as wide as I could, intensifying the left hand vibrato, and pulled as soaring a sound as was humanly possible from my plywood prototype.

Dimitri Erdely, a real Yugoslavian, a true musician, held command at each cello lesson like a prince of the court. I was thirteen; I didn’t practice much. The only room in the house that provided enough physical space to play like Dimitri wanted me to was our livingroom, and most of the time the instrument and its accompanying music stand were just in the way, a regal disruption in Mom’s otherwise spotless house. More often than not, on days when I’d choose to get everything out of the case and make the attempt, any sound I made would end up competing with Mom and her vacuum cleaner, its wheezing and braying around me on all sides.

Dimitri was a first-generation Yugoslav; his wife, Elaine, an American. Her once lovely frame had already begun to curl up, succumbing to the degenerating effects of cigarette smoking. She’d meet each student at the door in her velour robe with the long zipper straight up the front, a new cigarette already lit, and then retreat into the adjoining room to have her smoke while each of us prepared to either carry the cello into the studio livingroom or pack up to take our leave.

Golterman was the first musical work Dimitri presented to me. A concerto for early players, the piece was, like most solos designed for the instrument, easy at the opening theme, challenging in the development, and virtuosic in the home stretch. I always managed a glorious exposition.

Then, there were the studies. “Etudes”, by Fredrich Dotzauer. Two pages each of a selected rhythmic motif, transmuted through every key in the Western diatonic system, and back home again with a closing flourish. I was, of course, partial to the first eight measures. Which I would polish to perfection – seeenging mit deh chellow with all my heart.

Each lesson would usually center around the ninth and tenth measures of the etude.

Sigh. Predictably, I’d run aground – first with a dramatic expulsion of air from my lungs, followed by the exasperated, grinding halt. Each week would provide for Dimitri a newer, even more imaginative reason for my “problems” with measure nine. And, each week, Dimitri would smile graciously, take the cello, sit down, and play the measure – and, all the measures that followed – with the grande, convincing ease of a true European.

And, then it would be my turn again.

What happened next represents the fuzziest part of my memory. There’d be some technical maneuver, easy for him, flummoxing for my little piano hands, and around we’d go again. Mostly, I’d take with me the whole display of his performance – the tone, the vibrancy, the song that burst forth from him every time he sat to play.

My favorite part of the lesson was what happened at the end. While I was packing up to wait for my mother’s car to arrive, Dimitri would pick up his classical guitar.

He’d place his right foot on the special steel shoe platform designed for classical guitarists. He’d set the angle of the instrument high, and drape his right arm over the strings at the tone hole. His fingers were endlessly long, lean like the rest of him, and they’d begin their quiet runnings across the strings as he set the music alight with his gentle left hand. His smiling head would dip over the guitar, then raise its face to me, then down again, as the lone melody rang out over his feathering underlayment. In those moments, he was my minstrel, my Medieval knight, a dim reflection of my father in the costume of an ancient, exotic civilization.

Then, the clock, or the front door, and that burst of cold air signaling the arrival of the next student, always a stranger who interrupted my reverie. And, Elaine, appearing right on cue, to take a coat and speak a gravelly greeting.

These exquisite encounters marked the beginning of what would ultimately become my life with the world’s richest music. Most would call them private cello lessons, but they were my weekly visits to Dimitri Erdely’s command performance. He was in every sense an artist, an authentic character of a generation now lost to history, my first embodied orchestra, a profound gem of humanity.  As my father would so often fondly intone, I say now to him:

“Thank you for living.”

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo

1/8/15

all rights. Thanks.

The Gift.

civic commentary, classical music, contemplative essays, , , ,

In the childhood of my generation, the word “talent” was common. A label, those who wore it seen as having been born that way, and what would later be described by the community of faith as a “gift.”

But, what of such a gift? Can I tell you?

In the spring of 1982, I took a job as a third shift waitress in a Greek dinor. In that restaurant, nobody sought talent. What was expected was skill, a product of presence of mind. The application of effort to the task at hand. And, presence of mind seemed to me to be that most elusive of traits, the mother of common sense.

Presence of mind meant that you would think only about that which was right before you in the literal world, the job to be done. And, common sense was its essential and automatic recognition.

And, so I had neither. For the first time in my life, I had willingly placed myself in an environment within which I could not function, let alone conquer. Having come to believe at the tender age of thirteen that fame meant nothing, and power meant friends, I also saw that friends brought power, I had few, and power was everything. And, here, I had no power at all.

Oh; I was twenty five years old now. Perhaps this is significant.

Yet, here we were, in a room full of people prepared to take everybody at face value. And, I was a disaster. I couldn’t pour coffee; I couldn’t make change; and, worse, I couldn’t remember how to do anything despite being given instruction by somebody who dropped the “g’s” from every active verb. I was “Vera”; I had to learn this craft.

Talent had been my identity. I “could do” things that mystified others. From childhood, from the earliest coordination of crayon to thumb and forefinger, images emerged on paper that bore their recognizable likenesses. I was at a loss to explain it. Later, years later, I would be at equal loss to defend it.

A waitress in a dinor was incognito. A table-server could hide – behind a polyester uniform, and a name tag that looked like everybody else’s. And, a good waitress could remember, and retrieve, and assess, and react, and do all of those things in constant physical motion. This wasn’t art; this was something else. Nope; not talent, as I knew it.

American society having been founded upon common sense, and through the presence of mind of its revolutionary survivors alone, it stood to reason (if nothing else) that artists and notions of talent were to be relegated to the recessive gene pool. [ see: Hitler and the extermination of Jewish artists.] And, said society gathered its own under the banner of practical, God-ordained common wisdoms. Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian; yet, among American statesmen, he marched right along with the parade of saints. Saints, who bowed at the altar of industry and hard work, both hands to the plow.

America’s athletes have been displacing its artists for decades, establishing a status in the eyes of the masses equal to that of the shamans and mystics of the East to their own people. Michael Jordan — who was he? Was he a “talent”? He appeared to have a natural, effortless ability to “do” in a distinctive, unparalleled style and at a consistently superior rate. But, Michael Jordan had rickets,and stayed after school in junior high every night to shoot a basketball into a hoop until he could do so every time. And, because he was the only boy who did, he became: Michael Jordan, an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind professional.

Talent?

If talent manifests as an effortless ability, many are alienated; if the result of effort, people respond with admiration. In early childhood, traits which distinguish one child from the group disconnect him or her from the greater society. Children with like distinguishing traits (or, like observable traits) learn that a group formed of their own kind must follow certain rules: each member must compete against the others for supremacy, to bear the banner of highest standard.

But, inborn traits are beyond the vessel which contains them. When the vessel is expected to prove its worthiness as a carrier, that vessel needs fortification to avoid springing a weak leak. Whence does this come? Love, acceptance, identification, bond….the requirements of the sustenance of life. And, how will such a child find them? How will he or she attract these if the requirement to prove inherent worth as the vessel is constant? And, if he finds them, how will he avail of their nourishment without sacrificing at the altar of social commodity?

Children born with outstanding traits learn to expect to be exploited. Their world is a small, exclusive stage, set apart from the larger social forum. As they move through the spheres of life, they do not need to be taught the meaning of commodity.

My grandmother, born in 1890, was, as a child, not regarded by any who knew her as a person of talent. She was neither a singer, nor a dancer, nor actress, nor painter, nor poet, nor a skater, a skiier, or gymnast. She learned to cook, as second maid to a wealthy Eastern Pennsylvania family, and cultivated flowers and vegetables that rivaled the Secret Garden. She opened her home to her extensive family and friends, gathering them all around her dinner table. She learned to sew, making clothes and draperies and, together with her husband, braided rugs and home made bread for all who knew her. She wrote letters to hundreds of loved ones throughout her entire life, and sat in her rocking chair praying for each one. Hers was a spiritual faith, not bound by the expectations, conventions, or systems imposed by the theater of human behavior.

Contemporary American society persists in making its own monsters. It exalts itself, represses its most treasured, and takes its own prisoners. Learned, or inborn, on the world stage Americans are its most talented actors. If, by life’s end, there is a glimmer of good to be had, may all the best gifts manifest in us all.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo

circa 1997/revised 1/7/15

all rights reserved. Thank you so much.