A Meditation; a performance

Which came first, the cello or the bike? I was asked yesterday. And the same question, more or less, today: is the bike or the cello more important on this journey?

The answer comes without hesitation. Libre, my beautiful black, curvy, shiny, companion – my cello – is what makes possible the daily offering of the Meditation on the Seven Last Words. This is what the journey, the pilgrimage, is about.

So why, asks Chris perceptively at lunch (a confusingly Sunday lunch on a Saturday afternoon) is your blog so much more about the cycling than about the performing?

That’s a good question. When I offer the Meditation to an audience in a cathedral, I do acknowledge that it’s a performance. But I stress it’s also meditation, so that it shouldn’t be interrupted with applause. I don’t want to claim too much for the performance – I’m not a properly professional player, and you haven’t paid to listen.

This isn’t a concert tour. It’s a pilgrimage. Hence, perhaps, the emphasis on the journey and its encounters. A pilgrimage should involve physical effort, as well as mindfulness. The Meditation is my offering to the holy place – in this moment, the moment of my holy encounter here.

The question why a lapsed vicar, whose short answer to whether he believes in God is no, is undertaking a pilgrimage – well, that’s another question altogether. There’s still a month to go, so maybe we’ll get to that in due course.

But Chris isn’t so easily appeased. He’s trodden the boards himself all his life, and he sat in the front row today, he says, to enjoy the performance. I saw you, he says, gently prodding; you were performing.

Yes, OK, I acknowledge. It is performance, just as much as it’s meditation. It wouldn’t do if I lost my place, or interrupted myself; if I did it carelessly, perfunctorily, or less than the best I could. It isn’t perfect, obviously, and lots of people would perform the notes themselves better. But it’s real. It’s alive. It’s in this moment, in this place. It’s my offering, of my art, my self, my soul, to you in this place and this moment.

I’m performing, and that’s why, when I pedal out of a cathedral, I’m drained.

Some of the audience, I feel, is also drained. The Meditation is, after all, intense. The music of J S Bach is deep. The poems, reflections on the words Jesus is reported to have said as he was tortured to death on the cross, are not comfortable. We are dealing with the universal human terror and incomprehension of death. If you want a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park, go somewhere else. Sorry.

Afterwards, people tell me their stories. I can see some of them coming – I see the eyes being dabbed, the hands being held, the sighs, the heads bowed, or raised to heaven. And I know that my performance has touched hearts.

Yes, of course, there are the questions about the rain, and the number of gears on the bike. But there are also deep confessions and connections. There is acknowledgement of hearts healing, of permissions given, of secrets gently exposed.

In these cathedrals I’m often overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed by their beauty, their history, their spirituality, their otherness. I’m also overwhelmed by the sound of this music, and these words, in this moment and place. And I’m overwhelmed by the people coming to me afterwards and telling me what the performance has meant to them.

I’ve performed my small art, my complicated soul, my pilgrimage, for you. And sometimes the only thing to do then is to get back on the bike and let the pain of tired legs take the focus from the tears that might otherwise follow.