On Finding Home Away From Home, in the Way One Is Called (Strauss, Negro Spiritual, Schubert, Brahms)

Photos by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, from December 1-11, 2024, with one Throwback Thursday pic from December 28, 2023

My journeys took me to Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco twice this week for my walks ... the first I had just gone to sit in the sun and relax before heading home ...

... the second I did not intend, but a waking nightmare intervened, and when thus confronted I do tend to climb up ...

I was not asleep yet, but had been considering all that I have seen and which is incomprehensible to me in what I have seen online and off in my own nation ... and then it became comprehensible... the theory of everything that nobody really wanted ...

A significant plurality of my fellow citizens, without regard to their politics, no longer think beyond the petty pleasures that help them cope with the miseries they think they cannot change and help them feel that they are at least superior to someone else.

To someone who focuses on solutions and growth, and who does her best to understand things deeply and thoroughly, this was not the desired thought for the evening ... but a lifetime of experiences made sense, as did the past election.

Had this been a physical heart attack, I would be dead. The emotional pain was so intense in that brief moment that I understood why people in such moments would reach for anything -- anything -- that would stop the pain. Even last year's autumn glimpse of the abyss was not that intense, because that was a looking back on past grief. This was different. This was a coming to terms, openly, with grim reality across U.S. history ... and it would be the easiest thing to do, if one did not know there was nothing else to do than sit in such a room, to step off into the abyss, since in essence, one was already there. The weight of that reality replaced the pain with a sense of compassion ... as Thoreau had said all the way back in 1840, "Most men live lives of quiet desperation."

In 1999, my beloved singing witness to such things had lit up the event horizon of a whole black hole of despair ... the occasion for the character is the loss of the one person who was light in the darkness, and at last I could look at it from the point of view of understanding that level of despair ...

... but then, there is a difference between a deeply understanding witness and someone actually living in that room ... and just as Kurt Möll powerfully shone with light and love through his long career, with Germany having been through far worse than the United States has yet seen, I decided that so would I ... for if there is deep darkness, what better antidote to it was there than walking in and reflecting the light ... to walk, abide, adorn, and when need be, appear, as a beacon of hope? After all, my own ancestors had taught me well ... and baritone Stephany Scott sings it so well...

... so, the moment, intense as it was, passed ... most of my sleep went with it, but, soon enough, the morning looked in ...

... and given the lateness of the year, and the premium of sunshine time, I decided to go back up to Alta Plaza Park's western side to sit and walk in the hours it would afford me in the sun, without the crowds of Golden Gate Park or even Alamo Square Park.

Autumn has been lavish in its gold this year, and once out in the sun I thought of last week ... and a glimpse foreshadowed even in the general sense ... for although matters were grim, it was not for me to walk in darkness. That was ...

Only for those who refuse or are led astray from walking in the clarity, openness, and discernment possible while walking in the light, Frau Mathews. I sequenced our lessons about walking and abiding in the light before adorning and long before appearing for this reason.

And, even in general terms, I could not actually be isolated. I had seen that also, for there was a general sense of this reality as well.

I open to you a deep matter of walking in love between mortality and immortality. If there is a mortal man who shall make you his wife, it cannot be that he shall not be overcome and overflow with the beauty and power of that three-note chord between the love of the One Who sent him to love you, his personal love for you, and your love in return. It is said of another type of cord that 'A three-fold cord is not quickly broken' -- the analogy applies equally well.

Generalized, I did see that slowly I was finding and being drawn more into the circles of generosity-based people ... some of my old associates had grown and had come on the climb and overtaken me, and I had found that I could rely on them at least in terms of mutual work. I had found an increasing number of professional connections that had suddenly appeared and were generosity-based as well, and also training for business that at last fit me. At last! In such a moment of darkness, those walking and reflecting light were appearing to me and I to them ... and then THIS had happened, staying with the golden theme ...

That had struck me as the Cherubic Painter had struck me, having painted a "Heart-Full" person who resembled me and handed that to me the day we officially met and I picked that sight unseen ...

"Because, Frau Mathews, mein goldenes Blumenkind, you are appearing where you must, as you must ... a heart of gold full of warm love cannot forever be hidden by any darkness ... and even if you do not aspire to think of yourself as the sun, even then, the darker the night, the brighter even a little star will be seen shining, mein kleiner Stern."

Clearly, someone was not at all over our last two meetings at Thanksgiving and the week following ... and I mean he was doing his Old Blush thing to the hilt ... that red-brown hiking suit playing smoldering havoc reflecting on his skin and hair -- the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past was still lit up, his voice in the timbre of his most intense joy, his eyes and smile so radiant one would think there were still two suns in his sky ... and he needed to encourage that little one, so he was going to just love on that little one until she understood ...

"Ich gratuliere," he continued. "I congratulate you on that nomination -- a long journey for you and your book, but that slow and steady pace we were speaking of last week is picking up!"

"It was like that golden time just came and flooded so many other parts of my world, all of the sudden," I said. "I'm not sure what is going on, but I am working with it."

He reached out and gently drew these flowers near to me without breaking them from their plant.

"Do you think, in any December in the Northern Hemisphere, that the beauty of these would escape a passer's notice?" he said gently.

"Not at all," I said.

"Do you think they would not only draw the eye, but the heart of those sensitive to such things, and be collected at least in a photograph because such beauty is rare in such cold, dark days in general?"

"Well, in San Francisco we are doing fine on dark, but cold we are not yet managing -- but I see your point -- yes."

His smile grew larger, and he said it slower this time, caressing the words with his double-deep purr ... "Of course you are flooded in gold, mein goldenes Blumenkind."

I got it the second time -- my golden flower child.

"You walked into gold -- hours of it -- and your first thought was to spread that light -- you blessed Hive with buckets of it, and Web 2 got a little bit, and friends of yours who needed encouragement ... you see, you collect, you reflect, and somehow you thought that at some point, you would not be reflected upon, Frau Mathews?

"You had no need to be working so hard on that fifth book, all year, Frau Mathews. None. You could have simply used what you know, taken all that you invested in people to help you and put that into the market and been up four times from when you started. And yet, having the knowledge that you have, you saw, you collected, and you reflected -- but somehow you think that you would not see that reflection come back to you?"

"Not all waters are clear, and not all surfaces reflect," I said. "You know the state the reflecting pool and lily pond were in when we last saw them ... and just last week, we discussed how there are those who, seeing the sky itself reflect the sun, would prefer that all that go out and they be left in their darkness."

Pain suddenly hit me ... why had someone I knew felt the need to tell me, after Bitcoin had hit 100K and Hive had topped 40 cents again, that they had just been too busy when I had given them the info a year ago, but that we could catch a whole new investment together? Why was it that certain people refused to acknowledge that all they had to do was pay attention when it came from me, but then wanted to run off on a whole new tangent in which they could take credit for introducing me to it -- while still having $0 on $0 on everything?

Why did so many people refuse the light, in order to find their little hurdy-gurdy man to play their little tunes even though that meant the death of everything -- from "Die Nebensonnen," song no. 23, to "Der Leiermann," song no. 24 of Schubert's Winterreise, that is the journey, for both men in that second song have scavenger beasts waiting for them to fall to the earth and die, and both men are past even considering going to safety ... so fixed on their will being done, epitomized by the obstinacy of the hurdy-gurdy tune played by the half-frozen older, dying man, that they are willing to never come out of the night that must fall on them ...

However, I was not to hear "Der Leiermann" then ... the voice that had made for such a compassionate, sad first-person witness in that song had other matters to attend to.

"Tell me, Frau Mathews," he said, in the deepest sweetness of his voice, "on this path that we are on, is the sun less bright and pleasant because some do not know to climb up here?"

"Not at all," I said, and began to come from the recurrence of that horrible moment of the previous night ... with his voice wrapping itself in all its velvet strength around me, pain was being escorted out, gently, but firmly...

"Do you think the city's skyline, seen from its last northern ridgeline, is less lovely today because most people never see it from this perspective?"

"Not at all," I said.

"Now, granted, we are speaking of inanimate objects," he said. "I know that you cannot be indifferent, Frau Mathews ... and rejection, when you mean the best and did the best, hurts deeply. But your dark insight about people was correct, and you have known it for a long time ... you read Pilgrim's Progress in adaptation as a child, and you know that an angel might stand over a muckraker with a crown, and that man convinced his treasure is in the mud is never going to see the angel or the crown."

"They are saying it now as a thing -- 'get it out the mud,'" I said, "and all the while in this abundant universe --."

"That will not permit them to play God, and is running out of light for them to even play what little consolation games that they can, while they can," he said. "Now that you have revived a little bit, I shall remind you of last December's lesson in 'Der Leiermann' -- ."

" -- and then, Frau Mathews, remind you of a man who chose a different path as we look down over this lovely valley ... a man who remembered the beauty and wisdom he had learned in this abundant universe, and came home."

Oh, Strauss's glorious "Das Tal" -- a man at last returns to find where he needed to be all along: in the valley in which he grew up. In its abundance he may live fully with no need to chase the things of the ravening world system ... and die in peace, and in such a way that furthers the legacy of that place to bloom on for the next generation.

To hear him sing that, in full rejoicing, was to forget what pain was. What problems? I did not know that I had any by the time he finished the song and stood radiantly in the intense joy he had shared with everyone in earshot. And of course, those who did not speak German and saw me closest and most radiant in reflection reached the wrong conclusion ... but, what problems? This was actually the lesson ... a bound lovingly reestablished between other people's problems and mine.

In this state of joy, we decided we would go up to the top of the hill, and it was not long before we topped a little rise and turned to look back ...

... and found trees already with a Christmas ornament glowing ...

... those that had survived, anyhow.

"The trees know not their time, and neither do we as human beings -- but while living, we do well to walk, abide, adorn, and appear in the light," he said.

As we stayed there a little while, he went further.

"I make a necessary observation about you gently, Frau Mathews. You have come so far, and climbed so high, but there is a part of you that is still grief-stricken, and at or near every new level, you are thrown back emotionally. I commend you in that you moved through this most recent and extraordinarily deep pang very quickly -- you accepted it for what it was, acknowledged it, and moved through. However ... that was an extraordinary moment. Almost 28 years of the same kind of pain, contracted to a moment.

He paused, and then said, very gently, "I rejoice that you have broken the patterns that would connect you to more such pain, because already, someone less resilient would have reached for all the things you thought of, and even you have a limit, although apparently, we have not seen it yet. You are still content reaching for some little old German bass's voice ... and not always even in need of him, for you addressed yourself to Whom I merely echo, and resolutely turned over and sought to rest and found it. You are growing deeper than your grief, Frau Mathews, like trees grow deep roots to grow high branches.

"And yet, though of course you have no control over what your subconscious mind chooses to dwell on, and though of course your experiences of the last 27 years of being called, and blessed, and gifted in a nation that is as you realized it to be are deep ... has it yet as consciously occurred to you that you are not yet 44, and discovering the joys that will attend you 27 years hence?"

"Me at 70, almost 71?" I said. "I mean, if I take care of myself, I should make it ... and if not I shall be in my alto seat on high ... I think often that I would prefer the latter, but also know that is not my decision on timing."

"And so you have made up your mind and your will to endure and reflect the light for others ... have you yet made up your mind and will to enjoy, mein goldenes Blumenkind?"

This was a question that seemed to bring another level of brightness out of the sky ... for while a flower was inanimate, I was not, and it seemed that the warmth of the day became even more pleasant ... there was shade, but that light and warmth somehow reached around it to caress me even in the temporary shade, encouraging me into more of its fullness.

Nor was this lesson new ... it was a continuation of last week ...

"I am glad that I chose Blue Heron Lake, and that beautiful dinner and walk with you," I said. "I certainly enjoyed that."

He smiled, a slow look of deep satisfaction and affection combining as his eyes lit up.

"So did I ... and I especially enjoyed you enjoying that jewel of an apple."

"I would have asked you which of the daughters of Atlas or which of the Nibelung maidens did you sing to in order to obtain that golden apple," I said with a smile, "but since you made a lifetime of refusing to even pretend to be the likes of Wotan or Hagen, I knew you would not have done either of those two things."

He lit up even more, and then laughed uproariously as I added, "But singing to some manager at BiRite to get the best one of the lot out of the back -- oh yeah, you definitely would do that!"

"Natürlich!" he merrily carolled.

"I must say you are successful -- that was a whole experience," I said. "I mean, I could have just looked at it for its beauty, but I was not ready for sweet bananas and other tropical notes in the aroma and the flavor ... a tropical fruit salad in an apple bowl!"

I paused, and then smiled.

"Who would have that an apple, from a cold climate, could have such warm, deep depth of flavor ... so you are moving on from singing to me in the language of flowers to that of apples!"

He grinned.

"And you hear me on all channels," he purred. "I did borrow from a story of old ... I know that you will know it, immediately."

"A golden apple in a silver scarf," I said. " 'Oh, mein lieber Herr Altesrouge, it is written, 'a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver'! You remembered that is one of my favorites among the Proverbs! I shall have the scarf to always remember ... danke schön, danke schön, danke schön!"

"I shall always remember, long after that apple is gone, what you look like in sunshine, in a silver scarf... under gold-blushed angel trumpets ... you forgot that you had that scarf, but I didn't. I merely encourage you to enjoy what is your own, Frau Mathews."

I started laughing ...

"You're right -- I had forgotten -- thank you all the more!"

"I'm just the echo," he said, "of the One that is already told you that He has given you all things richly to enjoy, Frau Mathews. So often you forget, because you have such deep concern that people are even missing common grace, to say nothing of special grace -- but take that difficult realization you had last night for what it is. You cannot change the way anyone is -- it is a reality that is grief-worthy, and a danger for you of over-exposure beyond what you are specifically called to encounter. But in place of so much enduring, you may choose for yourself to enjoy all things there are for you to enjoy, at every high point you are graced to climb to!"

We reached the highest point, and what a stunning vista it was, with Buena Vista, Corona Heights, and Sutro Hills all there in one view under a delicately painted sky!

"Hear me, Frau Mathews, you who love wisdom, and seek the apples of gold only as they may be found in pictures of silver ... you who require so little of this world, and so much of the next, and has been granted all things by grace that are rightly to be enjoyed, and there are so many, so many that accord with love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, patience, meekness, faith, and self-control!

"Consider even in business -- you who chose the humbler path, and now are finding those who have done the same, you who prayed and persevered to at last enjoy making the generosity-based connections you have needed to move forward more boldly -- and on time! And even some of your friends who you left behind to the breaking of your heart -- have you not met them again in these circles -- are they not restored to you?"

"I see it," I said. "I'm just ... I'm just not used to it ... I'm not settled in here yet."

"It is all as new as ... an apple that is a tropical fruit bowl ... experienced, but not entirely understood ... but you will get to eat enough of them while they are in season, Frau Mathews!"

"But there are things one can never get used to," I said. "Every apple is a different experience as is every variety, as is every day in the wonders of Creation. And then, there are voices ... I know one dark as midnight, bright as the whole Milky Way, warm as velvet and as soft, mighty as a thunderstorm at need, but preserved for the humility of a legacy of love, all around ... ."

Oh, he blushed there, over a face raised to a near-ecstasy of gratitude and joy ...

"I pray I never get used to it, and to so many other things ... only to increase in the joy of gratitude."

When he heard that, he lit up even more ... it was a good thing the sun was so bright there, for otherwise it would have been all too obvious that realms were meeting. Before he spoke, he had thus illustrated what he was about to say, and finally, he laughed, overjoyed, across three octaves, with enough successive peals so that everyone in the vicinity was smiling ...the Laughing Big One had struck the northern ridgeline of San Francisco, and it was wonderful!

I was of course completely dazzled ... it had not occurred to me that it was mutual ...

"Frau Mathews, you are touching the answer to the well-known prayer -- "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in Heaven" -- do you not know that in refusing to take any grace for granted but to seek to increase in the joy of gratitude, you already are beginning to live on Earth as you will in Heaven? Can you begin to comprehend the moments and hours and days that will attend your next 27 years, so long and as often as you choose to live in this way -- for although you are still physically here on Earth, already you now know why it so often seemed that I was going to slip gravity toward home when I was your age, and now you know how I live now ... you have it! You have it!"

I was confused ... happily confused because my brain always struggled to process him like this and for good reason ... in his joy, he could carry an opera house or a recital hall, living the dream and just taking everyone along, so of course ...

But then I realized in this brilliant light what I was missing ... his had not been the joy of a man overcome with the gratitude of living a dream that he would wake from and go back to a miserable existence ... no, by the time he was my age, his was the gratitude of a man in his reality. He would not be living on the memory of the moment in the sun and telling that story until everybody was tired of it -- no, that was home. He had met the grace of the opportunity and climbed right into the grace of living up there and rejoiced all the way.

But then again, he had said that. He had told everyone what the plan was in singing Brahms's "Mit vierzig Jahren" ... with forty years ... how difficult the climb, how painful from the straining muscles to the lungs gasping for air ... and how lonely ... but at last ... at the top ... taking that moment to rest, to look back upon youth and all its strident joys, and even the pain just described ... but then to turn around and see that great sunlit plain that at length would meet eternity ... a gentle decline as strength failed toward the end, but one that ended "in port," at home...

The timestamp is 10:55, but I like to take the last four as a parallel to Brahms' Four Serious Songs, and you are welcome to do the same!

He had sung it, and then, he had done it! And slowly it was beginning to dawn on me ...

"Meine liebe Dame," he said, "I look upon you with the respect and love of one who recognizes and understands that you have also have done your climb. If you are still aching at times, and still breathless at times, and you do not yet know how to operate here because the habits of the 27 years getting here have not fitted you for this new stage of your life, well, I congratulate you even in that because you are human! You need time to adjust -- have all of it, Frau Mathews, that you need!"

"But also, you have not turned aside to bitterness and fear and despair. Even last night, in that moment, you refused disgust and disdain ... you again chose compassion for those circling the pit, and to more deeply learn the lesson I taught you through Strauss's 'Der Einsame.' But you also have deepened in wisdom ... you called above instead of lingering in that terrible moment, and were answered by Him Who loves you best, Who gives His beloved sleep. So, trusting in Him fully to do all things you cannot, you rested. You transcended an adult lifetime of over-compensating behaviors in that one act.

"So then, Frau Mathews, I will repeat myself from the spring, and I think I can help you a little more now ... ."

He drew me gently into his embrace, and between the sun on one side of me and him smiling and beaming like that, I could feel all the love I was surrounded by.

"More and more you will see the evidence, and you will make yourself at home ... for you are to be at home here ... welcome home ... wilkommen zu Hause, meine liebe Dame."

"I certainly feel welcomed," I said. "Danke schön."

"Gern geschehen," he purred. "My duty, my honor, my pleasure!"

The days are short in December ... in summer we might have lingered there for many more hours, but the instant the late afternoon wind moved my hair despite him blocking most of it, he half-turned and took note of the position of the sun in the sky.

"We must go now if we are to have the sunlight fully on us to the level-ground bus stop," he said. "Watch your step also on the turn that we saw just below these benches -- the dirt here is not terribly well compacted, and it is steep in one that spot in a way that is easier up than down."

"I saw that -- danke," I said as we set off.

We got to the spot and indeed that was a bit dangerous ... but his arm went around me, and although I did slip a little, that was it. The ground and I were not to be acquainted that day.

"You don't think San Franciscans ought to practice shake, rattle and roll?" I teased.

"Your fellow citizens are highly accomplished people," he said with a smile, "and far be it from me to disturb their practice. But as for you, walking with the day watchman from Buir -- from little Buir, born at such a time as that for Germany, and still permitted this honor to be assigned by Him Who loves you even more -- not on my hour of watch. Nicht auf meiner Uhr."

"You often forget that I am the child of a little Californian villager, too," I said. "It is an honor that, given the glories in which you now reside, that you even bother to come here to get me over slightly washed-out park paths."

"I have said to you before and I will say it again ... as you choose to walk, abide, and adorn yourself as you are called, you are making all those so called very much at home with you. I surely feel this world and its coldness in a way you cannot yet understand, not yet knowing what it is to live beyond it in full deliverance ... but around you, and those like you, I feel very much at home."

"Well ... wilkommen zu Hause," I said. "Home away from home, for a little while ... I suppose we both understand that concept."

"Now you understand the day's lesson, Frau Mathews. I do not at all chide you for considering it to be better to be in your alto seat above by 70 years old -- you are right. It is far better. I know more than it is permitted for me to tell you about that. I am glad the eyes of your faith perceive this, so you are not in love with this world that you are called out of and are already leaving. But while you are here, the way in which you are called is meant to be enjoyed as your home away from home in this world, and richly enjoyed with all those called as you are. Now, you understand."

I did not feel the need to move away from that arm around me, at all, as we came down safely near the jeweled trees we had seen in the great view from above ...

... and back into the streets of San Francisco, in a soon-to-end but still sweet golden-hour caress ...

... and although we were no longer in the heights of Alta Plaza Park, and although the gold of this day was soon to end, I felt deeply at home ... it was indeed beginning to sink in.

"Far be it from me to disturb the peace except with more joy," my companion purred, "for it is time for me to crack you up with my German accent attempting to sound like a Southerner of your own land to advise you: 'You ain't seen nothin' yet!'"

Mission accomplished! I laughed all the way to the bus stop -- and he would catch up with me on the other side of his advisement, soon enough!