"The Eisenblumenkinding," Week 3: Did You Know that Iron Flowers Float, and that You Can Do Alchemy With Them? (Schubert, Löwe, Rachmaninoff)

Walk with me on this for a minute ... iron floats every day in steel ships ... in airplanes, in spaceships, whenever and wherever to purpose it is so formed. It can be done ... even a steel sardine can will float, and one can make a toy boat of it.

It was especially good for me to know this in this week ... heavy bad as folks just showed their whole behinds ... and I just lived my best heartbroken Commendatore life, a la Robert Lloyd ... I see why that came up again a couple of weeks ago ... I did the best I could, and then walked away, leaving people to the awful consequences they are going to be dealing with ...

They are going to sink, but I sail on, knowing I cannot save them because I cannot save them from choices they are still making. It is enough for me to respect the limits of my ability, and stay humbly within them. For I have learned that if I do too much, I too can founder and sink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD23R5S0aDA

I took a walk after the last work meeting, to walk from anger through depression to acceptance, knowing there was no other path ... in previous years I would have and did bargain, wrestle, plead, and cry ... and keep crying, because of the combined pain of people still choosing their own destruction and the pain of all that effort, wasted -- with me still having to throw folks off sometimes. In retrospect, I can see that it was the combination that was so utterly devastating to me -- the first is plenty bad enough for me to not need to add the other two components.

I am finding that putting up the iron wall to drama and just observing how people either figure out they need to change their behavior or double down on said bad behavior is difficult but effective ... it spares me, at least, for more important work.

On the following day I was again in the work to which I am called ... I was able to deeply bless one of my students all grown up, and prepare to do much more. I also have been invited in this week to participate in a mini-fiscal build... quite a step up for a humble Hiver, but we shall see how that goes for me and for Hive, since some of the people are interested in potentially building here as part of the mini-economy they want to build.

The natural consequence of things expanding in this way is just the next logical step in my process ... I cannot afford to be tethered to foolishness.

What surprised me, however, was how quickly peace returned to me ... sadness still present, but ... somehow walking in iron resolve kept me afloat.

I also thought of Schubert's "Der Einsame" again from last week, about how the character treats the past at the end of the day ... he examines it honestly for the good and the bad, determines to continue the bad and just lets the bad go. He is there alone -- Der Einsame means "The Solitary [Man]," -- but it is not a load upon him, for he has learned how to let what would torment him in his solitude go, and to appreciate the simplicity of his warm fire and the little crickets who have come into his home to share its warmth and are singing happily along with him. Of course, because it is that same Kurt Moll singing it, and flooding the scene with his delight in the song, one would think that little cabin was somewhere in the outskirts of Paradise ..

(The timestamp is 12:12)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPpKp4jVJ2M

... and actually, that would not entirely be wrong, because even if alone for the moment in Paradise, what would be there is peace and freedom from all evil -- and in fact, a quick read of the Gospels does suggest that everyone will have their own dwelling place, for the dependencies of family bonds at different ages and stages will not carry over. But while in this world, that is what an iron resolve to even be alone if necessary gets you a piece of -- the strength to walk away alone means you can, in the end, make for yourself a refuge of peace if you can come to terms with yourself and all that has happened.

Of course, one need not remain alone -- Löwe's "Kleiner Haushalt" shows an humble little household, a man and wife and child living in joyful communion with Creation until one day the parents are called away ... the natural order of life and death ... but without regret, for even that is provided for well in that communion. To be so tiny, and yet fed and clothed and sheltered, and then "If from the carriage we're thrown and not saved, then under the flowers, we'll find our grave!" is an ideal Germanic happy ending, given that death cannot be avoided!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yurk0W4S7s

Between the two songs by Schubert and the one by Loewe, I drank deeply in this difficult week ... sometimes walking under the flowers that were higher than my head ...

... and while doing so, began to glimpse an idea of how my life has truly become different than in previous years. I stepped away and have kept stepping away, and yet in this year I have found my students added back to me, and my ability to bless them increased as I also have leaned into taking more and deeper rest. But because of the latter, I have not added 'palling around' with anyone ... socially I am now Die Einsame Frau, the Solitary Woman, and yet in so having Creation and its Creator as my two most regular companions, I float. There is no other way to describe it. Having given up all effort to bring anyone who doesn't want to go has brought this to a point that has had me in wonder ... was I that entangled and burdened before?

The question is of course rhetorical; indeed I was.

But that also leads to the question of "Am I now adrift?"

"Not exactly, Frau Mathews ... ah, long have I waited for this week, and this lesson!"

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past materialized in the near meadows of Golden Gate Park, his voice already ringing with joy.

"I have been learning again from your singing all week ... thank you for leaving such a legacy of love and wisdom, and for preserving the very best of your voice for that," I said as I came to his warm embrace.

"You know, you could have shown a little love to living bass Robert Holl or living baritone Matthias Goerne on 'Grenzen der Menschheit,' " he gently chided me. "You like to pretend I am the only basso and baritone that has ever existed and ever will, but, no."

I sighed.

"I don't understand why you keep trying to throw my attention off," I said.

"I am not here to encourage you to keep making the same life mistakes, Frau Mathews, by people -- not even me."

That got my attention, so I pulled up Robert Holl ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mIEnmFePGY

"That was indeed lovely," I said. "I like to think of how my grandfather would have pointed out these things to me had he lived as long as my grandmother did. That is what I heard in Robert Holl's interpretation, the kindness and gentleness I remember with the matter-of-factness."

"The reason I encouraged you to listen to him is that I know that he is excellent," he said, "and also because, again, you must be free to be moved to the resources you need without being dependent on any one individual. I certainly did my best to leave a nourishing legacy, but you need so much more than me, Frau Mathews, as you prepare even musically to move forward powerfully."

"One of my former students is stepping up to be my choir assistant and I'm recording all the choir songs and there's like 20 of them and 13-15 I wrote and forgot and then I'm also putting together two albums of Negro Spirituals and at the end I'll actually have something comparable to your albums for my own students and I'm saying it aloud because I've started and it is hardly real to me but I'm doing it!"

He smiled.

"I see that you let Kevin Maynor, who followed you back on Facebook and scared you half to death doing it, know of your admiration of him as a total human being ... and made his day. About time you show love to another living bass -- I appreciate all the love, but I don't actually need it from you at this stage of my existence! Living musicians do!"

"It just takes me a long time to vet people," I said, "and if I can't deal with people as complete human beings, I just don't."

"That has been your life practice, and it has spared you a lot of trouble," he said. "It has led you, however, here, to the Eisenblumenkinding of your life, an Iron Flower Child, floating if not cast adrift -- not cast adrift because you chose to move on, again. How do you feel about this?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I have been listening to you in order to learn not least because of the pain of the week ... I am surprised that I was able to get back to equilibrium so quickly."

"It is because you are at the end of the process of getting here, not the beginning, not the middle... I submit to you that this week actually marks the end, and you are here, at last."

"But where am I ... wo bin ich?" I said, and he smiled.

"I will remind you of King Marke's walk last week, and the reference to the prophet Enoch. Both men are actually situated in a responsibility, but all the time, where are they going, and with Whom?"

"Oh ... I see what you mean."

"Consider this, Frau Mathews. Geographic location is important, and often full of meaning and history. In Germany, there are people whose families have lived in a particular region for centuries, and live and die by that. They think that land is their whole past, present, and future. It is one of the things that makes songs like 'Der Wanderer' by Schubert and 'In Der Fremde' by Schumann so sad, and makes sense of 'Todessehnen' by Brahms -- no chance of ever fitting in anywhere in which culture and language and history is so completely different, and everyone is so proud of their place and knows you re not of it. Standard German is just now 150 years old this decade, and you as a German student can still hear the regional differences that were literally different states and nations before the Prussians decided it was time to have one Germany in 1870 and rebuild the Holy Roman Empire."

"Yikes," I said.

"Mobility is expected in the United States, so of course it would not strike your mind that moving to another part of the country or the world for opportunity is out of the ordinary. But believe me, a little villager from Buir who could not be content in Cologne and then all of the sudden moved all the way to Munich caused quite a bit of a stir in the middle of the 20th century!"

"I heard that from August Everding about you!" I said.

"And you know I loved to sing about bold men who got up and got moving, even if at the time they did not know where they would end up -- you can hear my passion and my joy in it, still, for here is the key, mein geliebtes Eisenblumenkind: any geographic location will work, as long as it is the one to which you are called, and you must have the courage to make your moves or not make moves based solely on that, as you keep on walking, actually, toward home. This world and nothing in it is your home -- there are just places and people to which you are called along the way."

"Now, by your age I was married, Frau Mathews, and so there is a certain amount of permanency that comes with that decision if a man is wise and takes what he utters before God seriously, as he knows God does. Now one cannot think of moving so freely without considering the needs and happiness of the family -- but if he is wise, he will have married a woman who sees life much as he does. We assume in 'In Dem Kirchhofe' in Brahms that the character is talking with a wife who understands as much as he does that while he was in the storm, the souls of those in the old graves are up above restored and healthy in the everlasting light, and so one has one's companion in life with which one may raise children in the same understanding. But still, as you know from your studies of Scripture, the path is just more difficult when two or more are trying to move together -- there are different rewards and benefits, but also different and deep risks and potential pitfalls."

"Also not ideal, unless called to it," I said.

"Very few people, to age 44, have realized that before entering it," he said, "but in life we are often mercifully led to and through what we do not fully understand in time. If two people have true love, and walk in it, they will find it will lead them to the proper placement for that love."

"I saw and sang with my grand old soldier on Memorial Day Weekend," I said. "I know exactly what you speak of there."

"I know that you do, Frau Mathews. I will leave the subject with this thought: even in terms of human associations, any and all of them can be right, so long as they are the ones to which you are called."

"Consider this, then, mein geliebtes Eisenblumenkind. Consider what you have done in 44 years, and why you may feel adrift. I am naming it because you may not realize you have achieved the realization of one of life's most difficult blessings. You certainly have paid, into this year, a high enough price for it, but have succeeded in one of the most ruthless forms of self-discipline there is: you have now removed everything and everyone not connected to your calling from the investment of your life.

"This is not to say that you do not have concern for matters clear around the world, and do not act upon them through prayer and various means of support as you can. This is not to say that you do not occasionally 'visit' with things and people you are not responsible for, in your always caring way. But in terms of how you invest yourself, your massive intellect, your deep love, your time, your energy, and your ability to create both art and also solutions to problems, you have become so ruthless, my beloved Iron Flower Child. You are still such a sweetheart ... but you have also become so ruthless, pouring so massively into what is yours by calling and by choice, and sparing so little for everything else!"

"I suppose that is how a lot of people see me now," I said.

"I guarantee you they haven't even figured it out to that extent yet," he said, "but are going through various stages of confusion not even understanding what they are seeing. For we all know iron doesn't float ... or at least, we think we know ... so how can you, Frau Mathews, as sweet and as loving and as solid as ever, just somehow be out of reach without even bothering to explain? How have you done this? How it is possible? How have you un-moored yourself from everything but what you are called to -- and not even looking to come to port anywhere they would consider a good destination?"

"I just keep climbing ... and appear to have stepped out into the air here," I said.

"At least higher than the low fogs that are seen covering the valleys and lower heights," he said, "into the sunlight above -- but remember: that fog is no safe floor, and without care you could drop right through again."

"Understood," I said. "Not safe yet -- not home yet."

"Safer than you were, although you will find that there are storms and other obstacles at this height too," he said. "But at least they will be of this place in your life -- not the others!"

We walked on a little while in those peaceful near meadows ... it was a beautiful spring day to enjoy, not too warm, not too cold ... so much freshness of beauty ...

He himself fell silent, the beauty of the wonder-shining month of May having its way with him for a time, the songs of the happy birds not even permitting that there should be a need for his voice to add anything. There was light and there was fresh air and there was music, and there was the certainty that the Blessed Hand had provided this day to be enjoyed ... so there was love, all around, and peace, and contentment.

"So this is what you have chosen in place of all the distractions of the world for recreation and refreshment -- you left everything else for just this?" he said at last. "Of course, no one comes to this contentment without doing just as you have done. It was always here, and always available, and does not need to be even in Golden Gate Park ... it does require making that walk in the mind, and in the heart."

We walked still further on, and then he spoke again.

"When I briefed this lesson for you two weeks ago," he said, "I said there was a part of it that you would provide out of your own studies of Scripture, but I did not say precisely from where. Last week we did reference Enoch, and how he walked with God until one day, he walked all the way to God's home. That is a good framework to understand how you are living now, ever walking around what you are responsible for as you are called, but ever walking in your calling toward that day when you will find that you will walk from wherever you are, all the way home. But what do you think that kind of life looks like to anyone who does not understand?"

I thought about this for a long moment, and then it came to me ...

"In John 3, the Lord Jesus speaks to Nicodemus about the life of those who are born again -- called in Christ, if you will, by the Spirit of God, and He said, 'The wind goes where it will; you hear it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.'"

"You are 44, and you read that first at five years old, with your new Bible and nothing but time on your hands to read it completely," he said. "Since then, you have heard of people choosing to live different kinds of lives to be 'free spirits' ... the idea echoes in common grace, so much so that as a San Franciscan, you have Germanically identified yourself with the flower children a generation older than you -- *ein Blumenkind,* the flower child!

"But you are something more than that, my Iron Flower Child who has forgotten that she is even more than that ... you smile at me getting overexcited in my joy and just piling on pet names for you, but every one of them has a meaning, mein geliebtes Eisenblumenkind."

"I have gently hinted to you in the past, though it was by no means what I as a German who loved my earthly homeland wanted to do, that Germany was not what your heart was longing for in your youth. From Germany and Austria's own artists, themselves seeking, you learned more of where you were going, but it was ever here, into the way of your calling, and content to be wherever on earth and whatever relationships are a part of that. You have come back to your own legacy of music because of this as well -- a great rush of opportunity and ideas that will take you easily around the world when realized. Yet your journey does not and will not look like anything those around you more convinced of the necessity of everything in this variation of the world system would think possible or desirable. Are you not finding it is getting to the point that there is no point in even explaining with many?"

"Indeed they hear me," I said, "but since they do not know where I am coming from, and where I am going ... even in common grace, to say nothing of matters of special grace, there's no way to get things across."

"There is no bridge, Frau Mathews. I have been saying it for five seasons, and it has revealed all its aspects to you as time has passed. Now you see, with acceptance."

"There is no bridge," I said. "Now I see."

"We could not have everyone disturbing you here, Frau Mathews," he purred, "and when I say we here, remember: I'm just the echo."

"John 14-16 and all that pruning -- ouch," I said. "You call me ruthless ... it is nothing by comparison to that pruning from on high ... but I have realized the utter necessity!"

"My heart has ached for you this week, Frau Mathews," he said. "Tut mir leid, mein geliebtes Eisenblumenkind, tut mir leid!

"Folks were like Don Giovanni not knowing the pit is about to open, not wanting to be responsible and repent, not possible to take anywhere else no matter how much I want better for them -- I saw it. I saw it all. Had to leave everyone right where they are with consequences overtaking them as they will. It's done. I wish I could have walked straight up into Heaven to leave all pain behind, but this turned out to be far enough."

"Plenty far enough," he said, "because you know that the Blessed Hand has scattered His gems of beauty all around in a life of love and peace, and given you a place among them, a place to which you have had to walk with heels made of iron, with aching but resolute heart, with, as your ancestors have said, 'a made-up mind' ... but you are here, Frau Mathews. You are here, and because you are here, though you must still walk with iron in the world, you can more than that."

His glowing up was not as noticeable to me because the day was so bright, but when I looked at him I could see the height of his joy ... all the shine of a May day of victory...

"Well, you know, as a seven-year-old German on the wrong side of V-E Day in 1945, I missed all that celebration," he said, "although in retrospect the victory was to be alive ... and I of course made of every day thereafter all that I could, as you know! But this day -- this day for your sake is extra bright!"

He dazzled me with his smile, but I also smiled back, leaning into the moment ... I did not feel exuberant ... to be here alone was not the victory I wanted, but it was the victory I had been granted, and I was grateful. The way had been long and hard, and there was no guarantee that I would get here, and I could still misstep and slide back if I was not careful, or simply was caught by surprise ... but I had come to the place I had been called and chosen to come to.

But more than that: "For many are called, but few are chosen." Not one person I had left behind me had not been called to better from common grace onward to special grace. I had made it my business to faithfully echo all of that, as it had been faithfully echoed to me over the course of a lifetime. But it was not possible for me to open eyes and ears to truly hear, to catch the sight and sound of higher ground and be filled with the need to set forth -- that I could not choose for anyone, and had enough to do to be grateful that my ears and eyes had been opened.

My companion, seeing me smiling back at him, laughed merrily, his timbre just brushing that edge of approaching being overjoyed.

"I delight in seeing you choose the joys chosen for you, my dear," he purred. "Keep thinking along the line that you are about being called, but also chosen ... I will sing at the appropriate places!"

In the more serious of Schubert's two songs called "Sehnsucht," anyone might be complaining about living in the fog, but to be given a glimpse of another land in beautiful light, and then be allowed to see in that same fog that a boat with all sails ready had been brought there from another place by which one might at last escape that horrid place ... that indeed was a miracle of grace that one had been brought into ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLSHYeqrxGE

... and then, once escaped into the light, the same character finds himself in peace and joy upon the ocean ... moving with the wind and no rudder, but so certain that he has been brought into the marvelous light that it does not matter where he lands ... the whole world of light is blessed and so there is not a blessed isle but a blessed world -- "Selige Welt."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR--x2gSlZY

Now, anyone else who heard this without understanding might readily think, "A boat with no rudder, only sails? Not enough control for me -- I don't know where I might end up!" Indeed ... but the one glad to be brought to the light, moving with that wind, not tangled up in needless affairs, trusting in the Spirit, will understand ... even in common grace, the one who returns to the rhythm of Creation itself will understand.

Now, ten months earlier, the singing of "Selige Welt" in combination with seeing me recovering from Covid-19 by resting in the same near meadows had driven the heart of my companion into such a height of joy that he had almost taken me out ... he had embraced me and then remembered at the last second to bring that voice down. On this occasion he had gone far off into the meadow, and was trying his voice against the breeze ... that breeze let him stretch out a little more in his joy, and take his time walking back to me to wrap his arms and his voice around me...

"Fancy meeting you here, floating in the light of a blessed world," he said.

His voice was at such a pitch of beauty I was reminded of a favorite piano piece by Rachmaninoff ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXY8qoA3v1s

"I am so overjoyed I think I can do the last summer's alchemy again ..."

He swept me back across the meadow to another eucalyptus tree in all its golden blossoms...

Around this tree he swept me, counting while golden flowers floated overhead...

"Eins ... zwei ... drei ... mein Blumenkind ... mein Eisenblumenkind ... mein goldenes Blumenkind!"

My Golden Flower Child ... he had called me that in the previous year ...

"But you see, it is not in me to turn iron to gold, or to steel or gild a lily. You had to grown through every stage ... to realize who and what you are, to learn to protect yourself, and to emerge again, in the midst of the other gems laid out by the Blessed Hand, as who you are. Because you have responsibilities in the world, you may well be the Iron Flower Child to the world, protecting your heart of gold ... but to those called as you are, you will be able to see and be seen as who you are at the heart.

"Gold is precious, bright and dense, but soft, and a gem made from it can be damaged relatively easily ... it is not meant to be misused, but cherished. To a ravening world and its ravening people, show them the iron if you must show them anything, for they do not know what to do with a gem any more than swine know what to do with pearls. Now of course, there is a whole different lesson about becoming das unsichtbare Blumenkind..."

He let me think this out in German until I broke out laughing ...

"Un-sightful -- invisible -- the Invisible Flower Child!" I cried. "What does that even look like as a concept -- never mind, it doesn't look like anything -- it's invisible! You are so silly!"

"Basso profondo buffo, remember," he purred and had me laughing again. "But follow the analogy thus far: first of all, you will not always want to be cleaning hand and head marks off an iron front, and more serious attacks on that front will rattle you even if they cannot harm you. However, and second, remember that what people see depends on what they are looking at. Whatever they are not looking at is in essence invisible to them. So, third: since you are not seeking the spotlight of the world anyhow, you might as well go on and think about who even should have the privilege of seeing you."

"Wait, what?"

He laughed.

"You are already doing that, Frau Mathews. Whoever does not want to see the beauties of Creation has already been denied the privilege of seeing and interacting with you on many a day -- you are already the Invisible Flower Child, so why not take it more seriously?"

Then he broke out laughing and could not stop for some time, because he had come up with this thought: "Don't you think you should just do it for the ultimate in opera titles? Not even Wagner could hope to cope with Die Unsichtbareblumenkindung!"

"But no -- aber, nein -- absolut nicht! Wagner couldn't cope with it and I can't either -- how many syllables even is that? What even is that?"

He was so tickled, and had neither ribs nor lungs to impose a halt ... so for half an hour, the near meadows of Golden Gate Park were made merry because no one could hear his beautiful rejoicing and not at least smile. Little children got just as tickled as he was, and all crying and pain for them ceased. Now gravity could not completely handle all this joy ... so we had put our arms around each other and I had thrown on Q-Inspired's extra gravity enhancers for just such an emergency. So there we were, the golden flowers dancing in their floating overhead, him laughing and me laughing at him laughing as the wonder-shining month of May and spring itself smiled on.

"What a month it has been," I said as at last as he at last settled into gravity.

Yet although at last he had stopped laughing, that did not mean he had come down, for he did not grow tired. He had laughed himself up into an absolute ecstasy of joy ... so much of the gold of the spring and the sunshine had gathered itself into his eyes and his voice...

"I confess I am more than just a little excited for you, mein goldenes Blumenkind," he said. "What will June hold? I confess I am more than just a little excited!"

"I appreciate you having enough excitement for both of us for now," I said as I laid my head upon his shoulder. "I'm still recovering from all that has happened ... but I will catch up."

"You do not have to," he said gently, "for it is not required that you be of my temperament. All that is required of you is to keep walking forward into what is next, humbly and gratefully ... and for now, we may rest here, our journey to here done."