A Very Happy Christmas To All My Readers



Church attendance, baptisms and religous marriage vows may be on the decrease, but the Holy Spirit is at work, with a great spiritual awakening in Europe that goes beyond institutional structures. There is in general an increased awareness that we are spiritual beings with an invisible dimension that demands our exploration and understanding. The yearning for the sacred is universal, and love, the highest of all human and divine expressions, is the crown jewel of spiritual life - Stafford Whiteaker.

The image is of a copy of a 16th century portable icon from the Monastery of the Transfiguration at Meteora, Greece. Stafford Whiteaker has been a member of a Christian monastic community, and is author of the Good Retreat Guide.

For more on spiritual awakening take An Overgrown Christmas Path to There is a green hill faraway called Taizé
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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Classical music has a lot to learn

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In June and July 1945 Yehudi Menuhin performed at camps for “displaced persons” – Holocaust survivors – including outside where the demolished Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had stood. He was deeply shocked by what he saw; yet in 1947 he returned to Germany to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the recently de-Nazified Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin was the first Jewish musician to perform in post-World War II Germany, explaining that he did so in order to support the rehabilitation of German music and to help heal the spirit of the German people.  My header photo shows Menuhin playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in 1966 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the  now fashionably-reviled Herbert von Karan. The Jerusalem Cinematheque - Israel Film Archive describes that collaboration as an example of how "how music can still contribute to reconciliation today". Coincidentally, or possibly not, both Menuhin and Karajan were yoga practitioners. Menu
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Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of
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