Get the word out

from Daniel:

 Made in God’s Green Image

With Sister Confianza del Señor and Frank Granshaw 

May 5 to June 2, 2022

A weekly online series of five 90-minute sessions through Ben Lomond Quaker Center

Thursdays at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern Time

Creation stories in the Bible describe a God who creates, tends, and takes joy in the natural world. Genesis 1:26 says that humans are made in God's image. How do we live that out? In the course of the program, we’ll explore relevant Bible passages, celebrate nature, and learn some of the science of climate change. Participants will have the opportunity to share thoughts and experiences around environmental issues and take steps toward climate mitigation and resilience. We’ll also hear creative solutions from around the world, including rural Honduras where Sister Confianza lives, and Frank’s experience as a COP-26 observer for Quaker Earthcare Witness. 

Registration open soon at www.quakercenter.org 

BEN LOMOND QUAKER CENTER 

Box 686 

Ben Lomond, CA 95005   

831-336-8333     

mail@quakercenter.org

Quartet for the End of Time

This is from Steven:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0014ymr

Released On: 06 Mar 2022. Available for 29 days

The BBC Symphony Orchestra's Total Immersion 'Music for the End of Time' in January this year focused on the Theresienstadt Ghetto of the 1940s. Here many of the finest musical talents of the time were held pawns in an appalling Nazi propaganda exercise, then taken to the concentration camps from which they never returned. Over the course of a day at the Barbican, to reflect their fate, the number of performers on the Barbican stage dwindled from full orchestra to conclude with just four.

Messiaen composed his Quartet for the End of Time for fellow musicians imprisoned with him in 1941 in a Silesian camp, saying of the premiere: ‘never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension’.

Outstanding musicians from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama gave a performance described by The Guardian as 'sensationally played'. Recorded at the Barbican on Sunday 23rd January 2022
Presented by Georgia Mann Messiaen: Quartet for the End of Time
Sabine Sergejeva (Violin)
Ben Tarlton (Cello)
Cara Doyle (Clarinet)
Ben Smith (Piano)

From notes from a 5 December, 2021 performance, now deleted

Messiaen's spiritual masterpiece, Quartet for the end of Time, written while the composer was imprisoned by the Nazis in Stalag VIII-A at Gorlitz and first performed in the camp to the other prisoners. He took his inspiration from texts in the Book of Revelations: a mighty angel, apocalyptic scenes, birdsong, heavenly silence and the end of time itself.


A Note of Reconciliation

The senior civil servant, now retired
Neither knows nor does not know
There shall be no more time, Searching for a time and place to die.

And he continued flicking through the TV News.

And the Apocalyptic angel
Sware by him that lives forever and ever,
who created all things
That there should be time no longer.

So an opportune shopkeeper opened a shop
And advertised hundreds and hundreds of gallons of time
And the people all came for his glistening cartons
And bought all his packets of time.
And the shopkeeper died
And they opened their packets
And they found there was

No

More

Time

And all the little people shouted out

There will be time
There will be time
There will be time

Until there was time no longer

Which meant they didn’t.

Steven Willett, June 5, 1972
Evanston Township High School, Illinois, U.S.A.

The quotation is from the King James Version of the Book of Revelations 10 v.6

I discovered from the programme notes of the superb first concert of the RNCM New Ensemble on October 21, 1996 that Olivier Messiaen was inspired by this quote to write his amazing "Quartet for the End of Time" while in a concentration camp during World War II. It used to be the most popular of the poems that I perform.

I met Messiaen's widow in 1998 at a dress rehearsal of his huge oratorio, Saint Francis of Assisi in four acts of over five hours.

We were told Yvonne Loriod was in the audience during the first interval and I spent the second act rehearsing my high school French to ask for her address and tell her that I thought her husband's "Turangalila Simphonie" was the only piece of music that was exciting as Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" and that I had taken a group of 17 friends to hear it in one of the opening concerts by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on 22 September, 1996. I asked her would she give me her address so I could practice writing in French to her.

She used her Zen meditation to look at my mind and could immediately see my long history of mental hospital admissions but let me see how important was their appreciation of fine French cooking and wines.

I could also see that shining like a diamond through here personality was the fact that she regarded his Quartet For the End of Time as by far her husbands's finest masterpiece.

She declined to give me her address.

Olivier Messiaen was ground crew in the French Air Force and wrote the Quartet in a prisoner of war camp with the only available instruments, an upright piano, a violin, a clarinet and a cello bought by a collection from the prisoners and guards.

He said the audience in the yard of the prison was the most appreciative he had ever had.

Not the cheapest but the version I have. MESSIAEN Quartet for the End of Time Vogt van Keulen etc new sealed BBC CD album | eBay

£4.99

MESSIAEN Quartet for the End of Time Vogt van Keulen etc new sealed BBC ...
Isabelle van Keulen (Violin). Lars Vogt (Piano). Product of BBC Music Magazine. BBC Proms Live 20th July 1999. £4.99 or $6.60

commitment to truth

Attenders are still processing a meeting a couple of weeks ago when an attender went on an incomprehensible rant that took up all of the visiting half of the meeting. Others spoke, but he didn't hear. We listened and there was absolutely nothing we could do.

It is hard to know for certain when someone has lost touch with reality, when they are in the proper spirit even, or when there are subconscious issues that we can feel but really not understand due to the unclarity of speech or communication. It puts in in an awkward position of being the judge of what we are willing to tolerate in a given meeting. I am proud to say that we have never banished anyone from our meeting, nor blocked anyone or prevented their entry. And we will avoid that option as long as we can.

We hold that attender in the light, as well as those who have been banned from one meeting or another due to awkward communications that tend to be very disturbing for some attenders. As mental health care nosedives and nationwide care of those on the brink has gone by the wayside, this kind of meeting is more and more common. We in a meeting, any given meeting, cling tightly to the idea of truth and the hope that genuine compassion will allow all attenders to be heard and come into the fold of those of us who seek Truth in the Light.

Lost Meeting

I set out from the Oklahoma panhandle with family, a seven and a half hour trip on small eastern New Mexico two-lanes, through towns like Nara Visa, Clovis, Portales and Roswell. I knew I'd have trouble with the Cloud Quaker meeting so I gave log-on and password to a friend. She, however, still couldn't get on. The computer did not give her the option to say "I am the host." When I logged on by phone, out in the plains near Roswell, same thing. It didn't recognize me and told me to wait for the host.

It turns out I could have prevented it by going in there way before hand and setting up two or three hosts. This will be my New Year's resolution.

My sincere apologies for a lost meeting, to all who tried to log on and attend.

I was out in the plains near Roswell, with a car full of family and dogs, unable to do anything about it.