Once again I have found myself impressed, in different ways, by images of events happening in the world around me. This time there are two of them, and they are at opposite ends of the same spectrum. The first was the image of Jonny Wilkinson in the Rugby World Cup. The second was the very disturbing spectacle of squabbling architects and developers concerned with the rebuilding on the site of the World Trade Centre in New York, that deeply painful scar that has come to be known as Ground Zero. You will wonder what these two have to do with each other.
    Taking the second image first, I see in the press that Ground Zero ‘has caught up many of the world’s leading architects. It has served to illuminate the darkest corners of the architectural subconscious with all the petty ambitions, jealousies and paranoias that lie just below the superficial platitudes about culture and cooperation’. One architect said that he would not be taking part in the Ground Zero competition because the $40,000 that the finalists would be paid was ‘demeaning’. Another described the project as ‘self-pity on a Stalinist scale’. Daniel Libeskind finally won the competition after a campaign ‘that had less to do with the drawings and models submitted and more to do with power politics’. His chief rival described Libeskind’s design as ‘the wailing wall’, while Libeskind responded that his rival’s designs were ‘skeletons in the sky’. Libeskind ‘quickly discovered that he was going to have to accommodate the developer of the site, who was in line to collect the biggest insurance claim in history’.
    I won’t go on. In an arena where more should have been learned about the negative effects of hatred and jealousy, where something was needed to pay homage to the memory of those innocent people who lost their lives, we had nothing. Nothing but self-interest, power, jealousy, greed and the ‘Me-Too’ culture which seems to hold sway in so many areas of our lives.
    So, is Jonny Wilkinson in some way an antidote to this? Let me explain. When I watched the first match of the series I was first of all mesmerised by Jonny’s eyes. If you get the chance, look at any one of the many photos there are of him just before taking a goal-kick. To look into those eyes is to look into the soul of the man. There is total commitment, but also a kind of peace that comes from being with yourself. But there is more. Look at the whole posture, the position of the clasped hands especially. Listen to this quote from the man himself. ‘The hands are like a barrier erected against the outside world,’ he says, helping him to cut out the tens of thousands of opposing fans who are likely to set up a barrage of whistles and jeers in an attempt to disturb his intense concentration. ‘I looked at focusing from the inside, slowing down the breathing, relaxation, centring, which is a way of channeling my power and energy from my core.’ Here then is a man who has found his way to the point within the circle, and the accuracy of his kicking shows that it is the point from which he seldom errs.
    Here is another allegory. A friend of mine has a natural, beautiful tenor voice. In his youth, he went to all kinds of singing teachers, each of whom taught him a different technique for making his voice richer, more sonorous, projected in a ‘better’ way, but at the end, those pieces he sang in his own way were the ones that reflected his true, natural art and which were most widely acclaimed. Why? Because he was being himself, being true to himself, making his own music, not something imposed on him by others, however well-meaning.
    And here is another. I once heard Luciano Pavarotti sing the duet Panis Angelicus with his father, who had had no formal training. While Pavarotti junior made some lovely sounds, his father’s singing had a quality to it that you simply had to admire in silence, because of its natural, unaffected beauty.
    If Libeskind and the circus at Ground Zero had had the chance to find their centre, to be true to their best instincts, to understand the near-sacred mission of what they were doing with that near-sacred spot, perhaps the jealousy and bitterness, the self-interest and greed, the naked ambition and the squalor of their feelings might have been avoided. Avoided for their own good, yes, but also for the good of all those who come in contact with them, and for the more seemly creation of a building, something to remind us that hatred and jealousy must never win, and that the noise going on in the circle must never take precedence over the still small point at its centre. This is where any circle begins and ends – in masonic terms, its true humanity.
    jrees@aol.com