I read a reflection this afternoon, written by someone I've never met. I was really struck by his line "the telltale limp of the faithful." The new song lyric by that title (music isn't finished, but imagine sort of a driving, bluesy mood) is about three minutes old. This Bible story has a lot of resonance for me; I wrote a poem about it last year, and here it is again, in another form:
Just step right up, the carny man said,
I can show you all the face of God.
For a spectacle that dazzles you and fills you with elation
you just need a small donation and a pious inclination--
I can show you all the face of God.
Come right on down, the TV preacher said,
I can show you all the face of God.
For just fifty on your Visa and the contents of your head
you never need to wonder what the Bible really said--
I can show you all the face of God.
Be careful what you use to build an altar;
be sure to question everything you think you know.
The telltale limp of the faithful
is what it’s going to cost you for the face of God to show.
You’ll be changed; it isn’t cheap
but you might find a peace so deep
that you can sleep now on a pillow made of stone.
Get going through the desert, the Holy One said,
if you want to see the face of God.
You have to struggle and you'll fight, wrestle angels through the night,
but when you stumble in that darkness, I'll be glad to give you light--
only I can show the face of God.
Be careful what you use to build an altar;
be sure to question everything you think you know.
The telltale limp of the faithful
is what it’s going to cost you for the face of God to show.
You’ll be changed; it isn’t cheap
but you might find a peace so deep
that you can sleep now on a pillow made of stone.
It’s a hard old world, my mama said,
when you’re looking for the face of God.
Be careful what you pray for, ‘cause you’re never gonna know
if it’s truth that you are seeing or a circus or a show--
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It 'consents,' so to speak, to [God's] creative love.
It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not unique from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree.
The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like God. If it tried to be something else which it was never intended to be, it would be less like God, and it would therefore give [God] less glory...
This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before it or after it did or will do...
The special clumsy beauty of this particular colt on this particular April day in this field under these clouds is a holiness consecrated to God by [God's] own creative wisdom and it declares the glory of God.
The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints. The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God. This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength.
The lakes hidden among the hills are saints and the sea too is a saint who praises God without interruption in her majestic dance.
The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God's saints. There is no other like him. He is alone in his own character; nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way. That is his sanctity.
But what about you? What about me?
Seriously. That's as close to the truth as I can get. When people suggest that I should have chosen to repress my gayness, this is the heart of my answer. Because to try to be other than what I am would be a distortion of what God created, when what's called for is a way to humbly honor God's truth in me as I understand it.
Oh, and a postscript to InVocation's concert weekend, to which I referred in my last post: it went very well. We had fun, the music was good, $ were raised for charity. It's really a gift to get to do this.
Despite the fact that yesterday, Beloved came home from tae kwon do using a cane. (I kid you not!)
I'm going to go and mow the lawn now. Continue to pray for me, please. ;-)
That came from Majora Carter, as told to Krista Tippett in Speaking of Faith's ongoing conversation entitled Repossessing Virtue--Wise Voices from Religion, Science, Industry and the Arts. In this excellent, thought-provoking series, Krista and her staff are gathering perspectives on our current economic crisis, it's moral overtones, and what to do about it. I find it a fascinating kind of reframing. One of my favorite ideas came from Rachel Naomi Remen; I've synopsized it here:
Money is stored energy.
Energy follows belief.
We need to be careful what we believe.
This crisis is an opportunity to create a new story about who we want to be, as individuals and as a society.
LOVE that. I'll be walking around with it for the next little while, I think.
...is this book, which I began reading today. If you Lutherans out there have ever found yourselves intimidated by theological jargon, consider this definition:
Angel Divine beings, heavenly servants of God, know as purveyors of godly messages, such as recipes for light and delicious food--cake and impossibly fine pasta, or the somewhat rougher traditions of motorcycle fellowship.
There's a longer exegesis (a word which, sadly, they neglected to define) of the topic, a portion of which won my undying esteem:
In art angels are most often depicted with wings upon the back--sometimes two, sometimes six--but it should be noted that in the Bible, most often do not have wings and seem to appear much like people...if you're wondering whether the six-winged angel flies faster than the other varieties, the answer is no, as two wings are used for flying and the other four to cover eyes and ensure decency (Isaiah 6:2). (Now, whether a laden or unladen angel makes better time remains a separate matter.)
This caused a bit of a spew, as I was reading while eating chicken soup. Consider also:
Justice A condition that most people desire for themselves, claim never to get, and have no interest in granting to their neighbors.
and
Free Will The belief--which you have no choice but to believe--that human beings are free to make their own choices.
Gentle Reader. Buy this book. You KNOW you could use a laugh. Or thirty. I leave you with these thoughts:
I've been a quiet blogger for the last couple of weeks. Must be December! I've been as busy as most church musicians are, this time of year, and my greatest comfort amidst the frenzy has been a poem which will figure prominently in InVocation's spring concert. It's from Rumi, long a favorite:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
That's a lovely, incarnational theology, don't you think?
I spend a lot of time thinking about hymnody. Selecting a hymn for my community to sing can happen for so many reasons...because it fits with the texts; because it fits the liturgical season; because it fits our particular context at the moment; because they love it or because it will challenge them; because it's theologically sound; because we need to remember that "me and Jesus" isn't the whole story, or because we need to remember that Jesus loves each of us intimately; because it has a tune that will live in their hearts and embed the text in their consciousness; because it prays; because it praises; because it laments; because it thanks; because it celebrates the gifts all around and within us.
It drives me nuts when the conversation is reduced to "I like (or, often, don't like) that one," or "Hey, that was catchy." That's too impoverished, too auto-pilot. It misses out on the richness.
And so, I got to thinking. If I could choose ten hymns that together have truly shaped me, that speak to me, that comprise my theology, what would they be? It's really a tough exercise for me, because there are so many wonderful candidates in the history of Christian music. But I think I have a fair representation here of texts and tunes that will always live in me, and the reasons for each.
1. Lord, Whose Love in Humble Service (BEACH SPRING)
Lord, whose love in humble service bore the weight of human need; who, upon the cross, forsaken, worked your mercy's perfect deed. We, your servants, bring the worship not of voice alone, but heart: consecrating to your purpose every gift that you impart.
When I was in the National Lutheran Choir, I sang the founder's (Larry Fleming's) choral arrangement of this one. Its musical simplicity and textual richness got to me, and provided one of the first prods for me to go to the seminary and study church music. Now, about 12 years later, I see the text (of which I quoted only the first of four stanzas, above) as a really wonderful depiction of that place where worship and mission intersect, to the enlivening of both.
2. For the Fruit of All Creation (AR HYD Y NOS)
Songbird posted about this one recently. Here's a men's choir singing an alternate text to the tune, in the original Welsh. I love the "For the Fruit" text (available at Songbird's blog) because, just lately, I've been trying to see every day through a lens of gratitude, and this text is just stuffed with it. This is the very last line:
Most of all, that love has found us, thanks be to God.
That line ALONE might be theology and prayer enough for me. Often, when my congregation sings it, we do a verse a cappella. The bread-and-butter beauty of the sound of all those voices, many singing alto, tenor and bass, seems a perfect living out of the text being sung--we give thanks with the very air in our bodies. POWERFUL stuff.
3. Hallelujah! We Sing Your Praises (HALELUYA PELO TSA RONA)
I love the fresh joy that's inherent in so much African choral music. It feels immediate, as if God were close enough to touch. We had this at our wedding. And at our choir wedding shower. And at an impromptu party thrown by my church choir last week for our anniversary. They surprised us by writing special words to it for each occasion...and singing the wedding version AFTER the "regular" version we used as the congregational closing hymn:
Hallelujah! You just got married! And we're singing at your wedding! Hallelujah! We sing a blessing: may your union last forever!
The only version I could find on Youtube comes in two parts:
4. Children of the Heavenly Father ( TRYGGARE KAN INGEN VARA)
Children of the heavenly Father safely in his bosom gather. Nestling bird nor star in heaven such a refuge ne'er was given.
OK, admittedly, this one is sentiment and safety to me. It's my dear grandma singing it as I sat next to her at age 3 and watched her dear chin wobble. It's my Scandinavian heritage. It's a "heart hymn" for lots of Lutherans, who tend to sing it well and lustily, which is a pleasure in and of itself. It's the simple confidence of trust in a parent God who loves each of us kids in a way uniquely suited to that kid.
5. Silent Night (STILLE NACHT)
It's got a great back story. It's got a beautiful, simple melody that needs no adornment to really WORK. It's popular enough that people are able to sing at least the first verse (and sometimes two or three) without reading along...and yet, it doesn't grate on me by Christmas Eve like so many other Christmas carols that are piped in to every single place you go in December. It's still widely enough used that, when doing it on Christmas Eve, I have a sense that churches all over the world are doing the same--that we're all part of something so much larger than our own congregations: the great cloud of witnesses, all together. Most importantly, it uses imagery beautifully to depict the Light that Shines in the Darkness and Is Not Overcome.
6. O Sacred Head, Now Wounded ( HERZLICH TUT MICH VERLANGEN)
Text attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux. Tune by Hans Leo Hassler. Harmonization by J.S. Bach. Quality and timeless beauty all the way along the line. And there's something about the text of this verse:
What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend for this, thy dying sorrow--thy pity without end? O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be Lord, let me never ever outlive my love for thee.
Love and commitment to the very end, coming from and going back to God. Powerful. Profound.
7. Will You Come and Follow Me (THE SUMMONS)
Sometimes a song can change your life. This is mine.
Let's go back eleven years. I was in seminary, newly in love, deeply in the closet, and terribly conflicted. As a music student, I was drafted to sing in the choir for a campus hymn festival, and heard this hymn for the first time. It's about vocation, which is personal under any circumstance; I was seriously doubting mine at the time, not believing that God could possibly be inviting me into both vocational church work and a love that many of God's people wouldn't understand.
I brought all that angst into the chapel with me like a backpack full of bricks. When we got to stanza 4, I wasn't singing any longer. I was broken open, at peace for the first time in a year, weeping openly. Because God spoke to me in that lyric, in that moment:
Will you love the you you hide if I but call your name? Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same? Will you use the love you've found to reshape the world around, through my sight and touch and sound in you, and you in me?
God knows all of our dark places...and just lights 'em up. :-)
A side note: the lilting melody is Scottish traditional, and it beautifully supports a well-crafted text. Folk music of all stripes is often really good at this--easy to learn and remember, but carrying the character of its culture into the interpretation of the music.
8. O Day Full of Grace ( DEN SIGNEDE DAG)
It's an anthem of Lutheran theology. Saved by grace through faith. Simul justus et peccator. Not to mention the whole Christian story and continuing mission compacted into five stanzas. And a side note...this arrangement was created by F. Melius Christiansen, founder of the St. Olaf Choir and catalyst for the whole midwestern Lutheran choral movement. He'd love that a high school choir is singing this, and so well. Crank this sucker up!
9. Shepherd Me, O God (SHEPHERD ME)
This setting of Psalm 23 has, simply, a beautifully crafted melody line that is perfectly married to its text. The tonality captures both the solitude and the presence; both the danger and the trust. I couldn't find an online recording that does it justice.
Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants beyond my fears from death into life.
10. I Want Jesus to Walk with Me (SOJOURNER)
Because I DO. Because African-American spirituals can be so deeply evocative of lifelong pain pierced by a clear, strong ray of faith. Because they can be sung with equal integrity whether they're done with congregational simplicity or soloistic virtuosity. Because this is a haunting melody that carries the prayer for God's presence along with me wherever I go...and still doesn't become an earworm. Because it's beautifully simple, and still richly textured. Like the presence of God.
Now, all that having been said, there are so many more that I value...for all the reasons listed in my opening paragraph and for some that are too deep for words.
So, TAG, Gentle Reader--PLEASE join in! I'm really interested to know what yours would be and why. What group of hymns tells the story of your faith?
Oh, andIf you'd be willing to link to this post, it'd be fun to see the conversation that's generated!
Always have, from my earliest memories. I credit my parents with a big piece of this. Neither of them has any training as a singer. They sing like most people sing: sometimes a little off-key, sometimes with an uneven tone, never with a well-developed technique. I remember a number of occasions in church when Mom would give Dad an elbow to the ribs because he was singing lustily and in a key just slightly southwest of the rest of the congregation. Dad, bless him, didn't care a bit. He sang for all he was worth.
Mom used to wander around the house, singing and whistling as she worked (sometimes simultaneously!). She'd take popular songs and make up nonsense words to them, which made my sister and me giggle when we were little...and roll our eyes as we became all-knowing adolescents. Mom sang because it was fun.
I sing for a living. I also sing for life. I truly believe that heaven will be one great big songfest...maybe even just one really greatchord, in tune and multi-timbered and brilliant and originating somewhere in the deepest layer of our souls. I credit my parents with this, because they found joy in singing with abandon, and they let my sister and me see and hear that joy.
I'm reading Praying Twice: The Music and Words of Congregational Song by the cosmically wonderful hymn writer Brian Wren. In it, he discusses the "indispensable" nature of singing together in worship, as well as the fact that congregational song is in trouble. These assertions aren't new to me. In fact, my whole life as a church musician is to guard that little flame and to blow on it gently (from my diaphragm, of course).
I think he's onto something about the reasons for this situation; he lists all the standard reasons about how performance-oriented our modern culture has become, about the soloistic construction of modern music, about spectator culture. But I've never quite been able to articulate the concept of "electronic discouragement" as he does:
Studio recording demands a high level of professionalism, with retakes, multitracking, mixes and fine tunings. (It) has become normative, as it is lip-synched in videos, TV appearances, and even sometimes in "live" concerts. The result for many is "electronic discouragement," as the quality of recorded sound persuades us that our own voice has little value.
Most popular music today is delivered through high amplification. Audiences expect a thumping, throbbing, enveloping, sometimes ear-damaging sound. The knock-on effect is that, in other contexts, such as church worship, singers and instrumentalists often crank up the volume unnecessarily and diminish their personal connection with the congregation. The microphone takes over, whether or not it is needed, and whether or not there is a live musician in our midst. So the sound is bigger than life, and the person who makes it is regarded as bigger than life. If that person then tries to encourage audience participation without dropping the volume, the amplified voice overwhelms the communal voice and discourages the participation that was sought.
In other words, we unwittingly create situations that feel "normal" to the worshiping assembly which both:
discourage their participation in the music, and
say to them "you're not good enough to be part of this."
I think he's spot on, and I have serious practical and theological problems with that result. Is the message we want to send really anything like "listen to the cultural norms; they should be your guide" or "you're not good enough to be part of this?" Cripes.
Further, Wren writes:
So congregational song is in trouble, nowadays not because authority frowns on it, but because our culture undermines it. One result, as composer Alice Parker (one of Choralgirl's personal heroes) records from conversations with public-school music teachers, is that many children come to school with no musical background except music videos and TV advertisements. "They have never heard an adult they know well sing for pure pleasure; have never sung around the house." Their idea of music is shaped by electronic music (Choralgirl speculates: perhaps those toys that play little beeping tunes...the ones I'd like to run over with my car), soloistic styles, high volume, and instant gratification.
Jesus wept.
I have a giant soft spot in my heart for pastors who are willing to sing in church, no matter what their level of skill is, and despite raging self-consciousness. Because it models what we want to model, right?
That, in order to truly lead, you must be brave and honest, and not Take Yourself Too Seriously.
That some things are just more deeply real when they're sung.
That we're all members of the Body of Christ, and that's more important than anything.
That, in the end, it's not about us...about our skill, about our competence, about any label we can wear. It's about being part of something bigger than ourselves. It's about making a joyful noise (according to God's invitation), not a perfect one. It's about news so good that we must sing.
Can badly-done music be distracting? Certainly. But perhaps we could model our Christian charity in worship, encouraging one another along the way and making room for mistakes and growth and, well, color. One thing is sure: I'd rather err on the side of earnest imperfection than that of disenfranchising one singer of God's song.
And that's what I want the little ones at my church to see and experience, so that they might have access to the joy of singing like my mom and dad and I have. They're not getting that training in most of the places that previous generations have got it, and we need to find a way to help 'em out.
So please, SING. Whether you "can" or not. Sing to your kids, sing with your congregations, sing at birthday parties and family gatherings and for no reason at all.
Sing because it's a purely human thing to do, and because all you need in order to do it is "inspiration"—all you need, literally, is breath.
I have to go call my parents now, to thank them for being brave and silly and joyful about music-making.
Idolatry is the worship of the part as if it's the whole. –Rabbi Harold Schulweis
Strap yourselves in, folks. This is a big one. (As the medieval poem says, I'm going to stuff "heavene and earth in littel space.")
I posted on Tuesday about community, and about how we all hold pieces of truth. In that post, I referred to a story of Truth as represented by a shattered mirror. As it happens, I've discovered that it's actually a combination of two stories, both heard on my favorite-in-the-whole-world radio program, Public Radio's Speaking of Faith. I'm about to break those stories apart, so that you might have a more accurate sense of their origins, and then bring them back together, so that you might have a sense of the extraordinary thing that happened to me tonight.
SOF is regularly wonderful and thought-provoking; if you haven't heard it before, it's available for podcasting and for streaming here. The archive is a treasure chest. Seriously.
My favorite program was entitled Religion and Our World In Crisis. It was a conversation between Muslim scholar Dr. Khaled Abu el-Fadl and Jewish scholar Dr. Harold Schulweis. They both find a strong relationship between truth and beauty, as well as numerous reasons in their respective holy books for people of all faiths to listen to one another. Their conversation is both fascinating and full of hope.
In humankind, God has created you, male and female, and made you into diverse nations and tribes so that you may come to know each other. –the Koran
To know is to love, and to love is to know. –Rabbi Schulweis
So...the first half of the composite story in my head came from Rabbi Schulweis:
There is a most remarkable parable illustration that's used in the Talmud. The question is: how could it possibly be that 600,000 Israelites were at the bottom of the mountain when revelation took place, and God spoke with one voice to the entire group, but everyone was convinced that God addressed him or her individually? How could that be?
The answer that a Rabbi Levy gives is: because God appears like a mirror, and everyone looks into that mirror...and, inevitably, a portion of his own self is reflected. But you have to understand that there are multiple visions and that there is no Immaculate Perception.
Everybody sees according to his particular history, according to his narrative. So what should be done? What should be done is that we should find out from each other: what did you see? When we gather together and form a collective kind of image, then we have a clearer picture as to what God is.
So. Pretty great.
Story Number Two came from Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who (a cancer patient herself) has an unusual way of interacting with her patients: she listens to them. (Not slamming doctors here, but if you listen to the SOF program Listening Generously, you'll know what I mean.) Dr. Remen's grandfather was a mystic; he told her a story for her fourth birthday that stuck with me...about the concept of tikkun olam, the repair of the world (which Schulweis and el-Fadl also talked about):
Ms. Tippett: You recount this idea of the Kabbalah, which I had known, but — I don't know, I think maybe because you're a storyteller, it was very vivid for me. That — this idea that at the beginning of the creation, the holy was broken up, right?
Dr. Remen: Oh, the story of the birthday of the world, yes.
Ms. Tippett: Is that how he told it to you?
Dr. Remen:Yes, exactly. Actually, Krista, this was my fourth birthday present, this story. In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.
Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times. And this task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It's the restoration of the world.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Dr. Remen: And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you.
Ms. Tippett: The world into which you have proximity.
Dr. Remen: That's where our power is, yeah. Yeah.
And now you can see this warming up, right?
So...Beloved and I went to the orchestra tonight. On the program was a percussion concerto on the tune Veni, Veni Emmanuel (that's right, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," the one you know!) by Scottish composer James MacMillan. MacMillan is a devout lay Dominican who often employs religious themes in his work.
It was extraordinary, performed by the excellent Minnesota Orchestra and the virtuosic percussionist Colin Currie. (Soloist part includes 6 temple blocks, 2 wood blocks, 2 bongos, bass tubular bells, 2 cowbells, 2 congas, large cymbal, sizzle cymbal, bass drum w/pedal, 6 gongs, 5-octave marimba, 2 tam-tams, 2 timbales, 6 tom-toms and vibraphone.) Whew! VERY exciting music.
This clip is the last two of five continuous sections, described thus by the composer:
The climax of the work presents the plainsong as a chorale followed by the opening fanfares, providing a backdrop for an energetic drum cadenza. In the final coda the all-pervasive heartbeats are emphatically pounded out on drums and timpani as the music reaches an unexpected conclusion...
At the very end of the piece the music takes a liturgical detour from Advent to Easter—right into the Gloria of the Easter Vigil in fact—as the proclamation of liberation finds embodiment in the Risen Christ.
About five minutes into the clip (which is not the MN Orchestra), you'll notice a tinkling sound. Listen for it.
That sound is the rest of the orchestra playing little bits of broken mirror, tapping them with small metal rods.
Theologically speaking, that is a home run for me. Not in the sense that "Yea, Christianity wins!" Yech—far too simplistic. Instead, it seems to me that Christ—who came to repair the world—is represented as a beautiful expression of the Kabbalistic broken light...of the Muslim connectedness of truth and beauty...of the Talmudic coming together of many points of view.
I think old Abraham must be grinning right now; the three Abrahamic faiths shared a lovely dance tonight.
What if that depth of beauty underlies everything in our world, which waits for us to know and love one another, and to heal what's broken? And all we have to do is find that hidden light?
But that's a whole separate post.
Shalom, y'all.
P.S. It's Saturday morning now, and my friend Ruth also has some loveliness to share on this topic. Check it out!
P.P.S. And now it's Tuesday, and you've GOT to read Shalom's sermon using these ideas. Wow.
For one human being to love another:that is the most difficult of all our tasks,the ultimate, the last test of proof,the work for which all other workis but preparation.
I believe this to be true, and find that, like many truths, it positively seeps from our daily experiences. The ability to love another person is also dependent upon one's ability to participate authentically in her own life--to experience genuine pain; to acknowledge fear without being consumed by it; to perceive a real I/Thou boundary, across which genuine dialogue is possible.
I've known several people who are purely incapable of perceiving a "thou." Admittedly, we all have our days, but this impairment is particularly pronounced in some. They tend, in my experience, to create eddies of chaos around them, in order to obscure (and perhaps to appear to justify) their own inability to cope with the separate needs and viewpoints of any "other."
It is not easy for me to relate to this in an ongoing way, and there's someone like this in my life right now. Wears me out. Too much time & energy must be spent on border patrol, and not enough is left over for the good stuff. Am trying to extricate myself from the situation, but in the meantime, here I stand at sentry duty, trying to keep my powder dry and my compassion intact.
However, it also highlights just how wonderful it is to encounter people who are at home enough in their own skins to participate in I/Thou relationship. It is a gift to be authentically seen, engaged, nurtured and valued. And it seems to me that, the better we are at cleaning up our own emotional yards, the easier it is to invite others over...to drag out our picnic tables and have a block party, relationally speaking, and to truly commune with one another.
There is a deep sense of peace and safety present in an authentic relationship--with God, the eternal Thou, and with each other. Much groundwork, honesty and courage is required of each of us, but isn't that moment and arena of connection the real glory of being human?
con·cin·ni·ty (kÉ™n-sÄn'Ä-tÄ“) n. pl.con·cin·ni·ties
Harmony in the arrangement or interarrangement of parts with respect to a whole.
Studied elegance and facility in style of expression: "He has what one character calls 'the gifts of concinnity and concision,' that deft swipe with a phrase that can be so devastating in children"(Elizabeth Ward).
An instance of harmonious arrangement or studied elegance and facility.
But the opportunity to commit to a "serious" piece of music, the benefits of that stretch for my choir, the chance for them to do something "special," the fun of studying and teaching a piece with so much depth, and finally, the opportunity to collaborate with our neighbor churches (one Methodist, one Episcopal) won out. It's good for us to work together, to build a neighborhood presence, to move out of our own comfort zones a bit...to be a community.
The service was powerful, in a very different way than I'd expected. I got to just sit with all the elements of the service for a while yesterday afternoon, and let them work on me: the Good Friday story of the crucifixion as told in Luke, the text and music of the Requiem, and the "within our darkest night" chant got to me, in a way that opened the possibility of a new experience of Good Friday, and deep gratitude that I get to do this work, especially with as many gifted partners as I've been given.
I've been reading the wonderful memoir The Florist's Daughter, by local author Patricia Hampl. In it, she describes her experience of growing up in St. Paul, the child of an immigrant florist with a true vocation for his work. About him, she writes:
Beauty wasn't simple loveliness for my father. It was the highest token of reality.
It doesn't GET much more real than Good Friday. At the foot of the cross, it's hard to hang on to the illusions and rationalizations that get us through most days. The stark reality of humankind's fearfulness and inventive cruelty is right in front of us. Not much beauty there.
But that's not the only reality present there.
Even on Good Friday, the darkest of days...even within our darkest night, God is at work. God is kindling the fire that never dies away--not even in the moment of Christ's death on the cross.
The gift of music is that we got to sing that light into being last night. Beauty truly became that highest token of reality...and I'm not talking here of perfect musicianship, because it's too easy for that goal to point us toward ego, in the end. It's our job as artists to "chip away all that is not art" (Michelangelo), but that is secondary to our humanity. Our primary task as human beings is to bring our true selves, warts and all, to relationship with God. Music serves as a form of communication within that relationship: honesty, courage and beauty work in concinnity.
There's a moment during the Agnus Dei, for example, when we've been singing a plea for mercy, addressed to the Lamb of God (which certainly takes on added power when sung on Good Friday)...and then, sweetly and softly, a shaft of light breaks that dark moment. The light is sung into existence as the sopranos enter with a sustained note on the word lux: lux aeterna (light eternal)--in other words, the light that never dies away. The light arrives in that musical, human moment, through our openness and effort in tandem with God's grace.
Hampl again: Only poems and music ... could express the real things, which were the unsayable things.
On Good Friday, the Christian's darkest night, our singers' voices became the instrument of God's grace in space (our sanctuary) and time, measured out in triple meter. The beauty that all these 65-or-so singers, instrumentalists and worship planners and leaders worked so hard to create became, in that moment, both the token and the vehicle of our deepest reality:
God's eternal light that breaks every darkness. Even the darkness of death.
God, is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit? To be out of your sight? If I climb to the sky, you're there! If I go underground, you're there! If I flew on morning's wings to the far western horizon, You'd find me in a minute-- you're already there waiting! Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark! At night I'm immersed in the light!" It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you; night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.
--Psalm 139, vs. 7-12, translated by Eugene Peterson in The Message
I've had two conversations in as many days with dear ones deep in despair. The triggers are different, but the root cause is the same: depression.
Damned depression. How I'd love to wipe out that disease. It drifts over competent, wonderful people like a toxic fog...like a dementor, in J.K. Rowling parlance (see above), and hisses in their ears (these bright, talented, loving people) that they are worthless and alone, and that it will never be any different for them. That their best efforts are simply not good enough. That no one will ever really love them. That they are powerless to change this. And, for good measure, that they'd better not bother anyone else with their problems, thereby reinforcing the "you're all alone" message. Damn and double damn.
That is the way, it seems to me, that evil works, too. Divide and conquer. Keep us off balance and alone and aching for relief and connection, and believing that we don't deserve goodness and life and love.
Do we deserve goodness? It's a fascinating question, actually-- and I mean fascinating in the sense of being gripped by a question with no answer, being held in thrall because you can't resist.
I can really only speak for myself here. On my best days, I still mess up countless times. I'm selfish, I'm an idolater and a liar and something of a glutton (at least where chocolate and my carbon footprint are concerned). I don't do particularly well at Sabbath-keeping, and what I don't know is a lot. For every flower I water, I've tromped on countless blades of grass to get there. But I'm also loving and funny and gifted and mostly well- intentioned, and willing to take seriously my relationships with God and my neighbors, to live deeply, and to try to find joy and share it.
In other words, I'm human...broken and beloved in the sight of God, here by God's good grace, cared for by the grace of other broken, beloved beings.
Do I deserve the goodness in my life? I think that's the wrong question--a distraction from the sheer gift we've been given. I try hard to participate in it, and to stay open to the beauty and pain that each day brings. Some days it works, some not so well, but always, always...life is a gift.
It's pretty hard to keep track of that with a dementor hissing in your ear, though. You can ask Harry Potter if you have any doubt.
And if it's a matter of deserving goodness, aren't we sort of done before we start? Part of our American "consumer" consciousness is driven by the idea of getting what we "deserve" to have, but holy cats--what if that actually happened? I submit that a tally of our respective successes and failures as a basis for participation in God's purpose would be a disaster for every one of us.
Besides, that's not where Jesus would land: Jesus who hung out with the rabble, who chose ordinary dopes like me as his disciples and who died for us. That alone makes me and you and each of us a pearl bought at a great price.
So please don't talk to me about what we deserve and don't deserve. That's been asked and answered on the cross. We do the best that we can to be part of the Great Song of Life...to sing our part with beauty and intention, and to acknowledge that some days, the song starts as a wail. Especially at times of death...and at times of new life just being born.
I love my friends. I salute their courage in dealing with this sometimes-overwhelming feeling of despair. I know that brain chemistry is a crucial, world-altering factor here. And please, friends, please hear me when I say that you are not alone. Keep trying, keep working the treatment questions, and keep reaching for a hand to hold, no matter what. There are lots of us who will reach back, hold on, sit with you until the darkness passes, and give you a piece of chocolate, such as we have. And, darkness or light, God is there, can see you clearly, (even when you can't see or feel God), and loves you more than you can possibly imagine.
