The dynamism of compassion...

which demands intelligence, not just a gooey feeling" is Karen Armstrong's topic here. Excellent!

Outrageous peace and costly grace

Let us sing songs of

outrageous

peace.

--Susan Palo Cherwien

I got this extraordinary book of poetry about a month ago, after hearing some selections used as part of a gorgeous hymn festival sung by the choir in which Beloved and I met. I've since been savoring Susan's precise, vibrant wordsmithing...an extraordinary circumstance, as I tend to devour beautiful books.

I found the quote above at the end of one of the poems, and have been pondering it deep in my heart, marveling at the unlikeliness of that word pairing: outrageous peace. As is my wont, I looked at the prettiest definition most closely: "highly unusual, extravagant, remarkable."

And then I re-watched a movie tonight, and it brought me to a deeper, more difficult definition: "grossly offensive to the sense of right or decency."

The movie was Dead Man Walking. It came out in 1995, at the tail-end of my callow youth. I saw it through the eyes of a young woman, and took two things from it then: the conviction that the death penalty is wrong, and a deep admiration for Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ.

Tonight, it seems to me that Sr. Helen made outrageous peace. It deeply offended the parents whose children had died violently, violated, at the hands of the condemned man whom she was trying to counsel. It offended correctional workers, worried her mother, alienated others with whom she was working. It offended the condemned man, because she held a mirror in front of him.

And yet.

Her willingness to throw herself into the gaping maw of others' pain, to face head-on her own self-doubt, to claim unequivocally the love of Christ for all people, even society's "monsters..." This willingness of hers made outrageous peace: the condemned man faced his crime and asked for forgiveness. His family found a measure of dignity and comfort. A parent of one of his victims began to heal from his searing grief and got back on speaking terms with God. She made room for kindness within the coldest of human processes.

She made peace where there could not be peace; further, she made peace that offended people deeply. It seems to me I've heard about some of other guys who sang that song: Bonhoeffer. King. Mandela. Jesus. The song required everything of them.

It changed the world, with each of them...and the song of outrageous peace goes on.

I wonder I'll get to sing a verse...and if I'll be able to do so. I pray that I'll have the courage to lift my voice, if called upon.

Living as "we" in an "I" world

Art is the transfer of emotion from one person to another.

--Leo Tolstoy

Hmmm. Yes.

So, what's the appropriate application of this idea to church music?

• Music can serve as "testimony"--I can tell you my own hard-won faith story through music, and I can hear yours in the same way. This is, I think, why we have so much "I" music that's done in the middle of an essentially "we" experience. It's immediate emotional connection.
• Music is able to place us in another time/place in much the same way our sense of smell does; the scent of lefse on the griddle transports me directly to my maternal grandmother's house every time I make it. And there are a million songs that can take me directly back to high school, for better and worse. Because of this, there's an inherent sentimental attachment to any number of hymns and spiritual songs; they recall our beloved dead for a moment, and remind us where we've come from. Again, immediate emotional connection.
• For many of us, it's difficult not to get caught up in a well-executed song of praise or lament...consider the power of the "Hallelujah Chorus," for example...or the way that we can BE "lost in wonder, love and praise" if the music leaders and congregation do "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling" well. [Reader, insert your own example here.]

Here's the thing, though. Because of music's emotional power, it's easy for it to become a tool of manipulation. As soon as we worship planners forget that, the music rings false to the thinkers in the crowd. It's one of the true challenges of worship planning...not to put words into people's mouths that weren't there to begin with. Let's face it: we all come to the worship planning process with biases. It's easy and fun to plan worship that expresses my own belief and feelings. It's much harder to try to place myself in someone else's Cole Haans or Adidas or Manolo Blahniks or steel-toed boots. And so, when I'm not a little bit uncomfortable, it's time to be concerned that my own preference is holding too much sway over a community's shared worship experience.

But I suspect that many--even most pew-sitters are not approaching worship that way. They come wanting to be moved, even transported. For many people, that means that if we don't use something in their preferred style or lexicon, they don't connect with worship...which is a rather consumer-oriented approach to a community experience.

It's sort of a conundrum for me, really. It seems to me too little to hope for to just get off on worship; it should work on me a bit. On the one hand, worship should be a kairos moment, and I should be able to forget myself and my location in time/space; that's both a relief and a communion. On the other hand, how will my faith grow if I don't learn to figure out where to discover the gift in music that doesn't immediately speak to me personally? Because that also builds communion over the long term; it teaches me connection in the way that synapses connect axons to dendrites: they learn to connect by needing to connect.

If we don't experience the gap, how do we learn to cross it? And if worship includes all that we are in the presence of God and one another, isn't the willingness to weave those connections an essential part of that experience?

So, yes--music transfers emotion from one person to another. But not always without our willingness to make it happen--to be full agents of the musical experience for ourselves and for one another, to the greater glory of God. That's what makes church music a bit different: the minute we act like an affinity group, we veer off course from our deepest purpose. In the end, it's not about the music itself. It's about learning to live as "we" in an "I" world.

Loveliness

Beloved and I are home together this evening, having played with the pups, done a Saturdayish potpourri of keep-the-household-running things, and shared a lovely dinner. Tapping away on our respective computers, she's working on school stuff and I'm writing program notes for the next InVocation concert program. Pups are snuggled up, and we're all enjoying this:

Dvorak + Yo Yo Ma = yummy.

Thoughts for the first music rehearsal of a new program year...

...from Thomas Merton:

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound

but because of the silence that is in it:

without the alternation of sound and silence,

there would be no rhythm.

If we strive to be happy

by filling in the silences of life with sound,

productive

by turning all life's leisure into work,

and real

by turning all our being into doing,

we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.

If we have not silence,

God is not heard in our music.

If we have not rest,

God does not bless our work.

If we twist our lives out of shape

in order to fill every corner of them

with action and experience,

God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts

and leave us empty.

The telltale limp of the faithful

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--

where will you go to find the face of God?

Where will you go to find the face of God?

I can haz konduktr funneh

moar funny pictures

The aftermath

I was expecting elation.

I've spent a decade working and praying in many and various ways for the votes that came on Friday. And I'm grateful and inspired by the (mostly) civilized dialogue that the ELCA managed to conduct around one of our National Hot Button Issues last week. I'm hugely relieved, on a personal level. And, as one member of my own congregation said yesterday, I'm glad for the sense that "Christ is leading us, and it's up to us to figure out how to follow."

But elation isn't the word for where I really am. I'm grateful that dear friend B (and SO many others--maybe even me, someday) can now be ordained. I'm grateful for the witness of the Lutheran church to those outside it. I'm grateful for the many kind, supportive words and hugs that have come my way this weekend...and over the long haul.

I'm sad, too. I'm sad that some people feel that they've lost their church. It seems unnecessary to me, after hanging in there all this time, that one decision could cause someone to feel like an outsider, when what I was really hoping for was the possibility of growth in relation to those who see the "issue" differently.

It's not elation. It is, as retired Bishop Chilstrom commented on Friday night, "bittersweet." And it's clear to me that we're going to need to work harder than ever for a while, to nurture conversation wherever we can and to turn that legislated welcome into reality.

Meanwhile, leadership is going to continue and to emerge anew...like this sermon, which I like very much. Deo gratias.

That's my bishop

Who was a calm and compassionate voice, reminding us that we meet "not in our agreements or in our differences, but at the foot of the cross."

I'll be praying for him in the coming weeks, and invite you to do the same. Continuing the dialogue and keeping the family together isn't going to be easy!

Proud to be Lutheran today

It's after midnight. For the last three nights, Beloved and I have gone to Churchwide Assembly-peripheral worship services after our regular workdays. We're tired and a bit punchy.

Today, almost everything we hoped for, worked for, and wept for came to pass. The ELCA resolved to "bear one another's burdens and respect one another's bound consciences," to allow for blessing of same-sex unions, to make space for partnered GLBT folks on the leadership roster, and to agree to move forward together in good faith, though we do not all agree about any of this.

I'm overwhelmed. This will have very real consequences for me, my congregation, and so, so many people I care about.

I'm proud of my church. It was an impassioned debate, but conducted with general grace, space for opposing opinions, and a great deal of prayer.

It will be deeply sad to me if the people who voted in the other direction, and who are feeling sad/angry/shocked by this vote choose to leave the ELCA. This issue will never really get better until we sit side-by-side in the pews together for a long time, in an open and honest atmosphere. I heard one vociferous local pastor today suggest that the church has strayed from "obvious Scriptural teaching" (?!) and "capitulated to the popular culture" by choosing to make this circle a bit bigger.

I think that he's wrong.
I think that the Church has taken a brave step deeper into Scriptural teaching this week.

I think that the real capitulation to popular culture would be to act as if there is only one "correct" point of view, and to claim that the "losers" need to sit on the bench until their "turn" comes up again, while the "winners" get the mandate. That's not how a real community acts.

I think, as one bishop so eloquently prayed at the end of the last plenary today, that God has called us servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,

by paths as yet untrodden,

through perils unknown.

I think that God will give us the strength to go out with good courage,

not knowing where we go,

but only that God's hand is leading us

and God's love supporting us.

And I think that this pastor with whom I disagree so vehemently must remain my brother in Christ. I hope with all the power of my heart that he and all who are upset by today will hang in with the ELCA. GLBT folks have done so for decades, and have borne a patient and loving witness to the church from outside its structures. I hope that we may do as well from inside the building, and remember to go the extra mile to welcome the stranger, whoever that may be.

As the incandescent Barbara Lundblad reminded us earlier this week, we are many parts, but one Body. Amen and amen.

Deo gratias.

Ceiling Cat iz displeezed wif church's stance on sowshul justiss

href="http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/07/21/funny-pictures-here-is-da-church/">
see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Choice vs. gift

Sometimes, in my more lucid moments, I recognize that the technology I enjoy is changing not just the culture around me, but also my perceptions about my place in the world.

The opening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, so long anticipated, has got me thinking. This sense of group expectation and shared experience used to be a lot more frequent. Remember when we had to all wait together to find out who shot J.R.? And for a while, NBC had must-see-TV on Thursday nights...and people talked about it together on Friday mornings.

Like so many other people I know, I have a TiVo and an iPod...not to mention Pandora and Hulu and iTunes. I get to choose what media I watch/hear, and when, with much more control than ever before. Generally, I like this very much; I get to fast-forward through commercials, and I never have to waste my time with a song I don't like.

But...

Remember what it was like to be driving along, listening to the radio, and the EXACT, PERFECT SONG came on, seemingly just for you? Remember having a moment like this?



That doesn't happen to me any more. Most of "my" music feels like a choice, not a gift.

Maybe sometimes, in order to be surprised by joy, you've got to be "free fallin'" and just see what comes your way. :-)

What kind of reader are you?

Newsweek has published their Top 100 Books: the Meta-List, derived via “number crunching” from various top-10 books lists. The purpose of this note is to gather a bit more information about your experience with the books on their list. I’ve started the process using the following key. If you’re interested in participating, please copy the list and replace my numbers with your own, and tag me. Please note that more than one number may be used per book. More information available on each book by clicking the link at the beginning of the post.

1 = read it

2 = saw the movie

3 = in my “to read” stack at home

4 = someday I’ll read it

5 = have made at least one attempt to read it, but didn’t finish

6 = no interest in reading it

(4/5) War and Peace—Tolstoy

(1) 1984—Orwell

(4) Ulysses—Joyce

(6) Lolita—Nabokov

(4) The Sound and the Fury—Faulkner

(3) Invisible Man—Ellison

(4) To the Lighthouse—Woolf

(3) The Iliad and The Odyssey—Homer

(2/4) Pride and Prejudice—Austen

(4) Divine Comedy—Alighieri

(5) Canterbury Tales—Chaucer

(5) Gulliver’s Travels—Swift

(6) Middlemarch—Eliot

(4) Things Fall Apart—Achebe

(1) The Catcher in the Rye—Salinger

(5/6) Gone with the Wind—Mitchell

(3/5) One Hundred Years of Solitude—Marquez

(5/6) The Great Gatsby—Fitzgerald

(3) Catch-22—Heller

(2/3) Beloved—Morrison

(1/2) The Grapes of Wrath—Steinbeck

(4) Midnight’s Children—Rushdie

(1) Brave New World—Huxley

(2/4/5) Mrs. Dalloway—Woolf

(1) Native Son—Wright

(4) Democracy in America—de Tocqueville

(4) On the Origin of Species—Darwin

(6) The Histories—Herodotus

(4) The Social Contract—Rousseau

(6) Das Kapital—Marx

(6) The Prince—Machiavelli

(4) Confessions—St. Augustine

(4) Leviathan—Hobbes

(6) The History of the Peloponnesian War—Thucydides

(2/5) The Lord of the Rings—Tolkien

(1/2) Winnie-the-Pooh—Milne

(1/2) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—Lewis

(2) A Passage to India—Forster

(4) On the Road—Kerouac

(1/2) To Kill a Mockingbird—Lee

(1/2) The Holy Bible (RSV)

(4) A Clockwork Orange—Burgess

(1) Light in August—Faulkner

(4) The Souls of Black Folk—Du Bois

(4) Wide Sargasso Sea—Rhys

(4) Madame Bovary—Flaubert

(6) Paradise Lost—Milton

(4) Anna Karenina—Tolstoy

(1/2) Hamlet—Shakespeare

(1) King Lear—Shakespeare

(1/2) Othello—Shakespeare

(4) Sonnets—Shakespeare

(1) Leaves of Grass—Whitman

(4) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Twain

(4) Kim—Kipling

(2/5) Frankenstein—Shelley

(3/5) Song of Solomon—Morrison

(2/4/5) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Kesey

(4) For Whom the Bell Tolls—Hemingway

(4/5) Slaughterhouse-Five—Vonnegut

(6) Animal Farm—Orwell

(1/2) Lord of the Flies—Golding

(2) In Cold Blood—Capote

(4) The Golden Notebook—Lessing

(4) Remembrance of Things Past—Proust

(6) The Big Sleep—Chandler

(4) As I Lay Dying—Faulkner

(1) The Sun Also Rises—Hemingway

(2) I, Claudius—Graves

(2/3) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter—McCullers

(4) Sons and Lovers—Lawrence

(6) All the King’s Men—Warren

(4/5) Go Tell It on the Mountain—Baldwin

(1/2) Charlotte’s Web—White

(6) Heart of Darkness—Conrad

(1) Night—Wiesel

(3) Rabbit, Run—Updike

(2/6) The Age of Innocence—Wharton

(4) Portnoy’s Complaint—Roth

(4) An American Tragedy—Dreiser

(4) The Day of the Locust—West

(4) Tropic of Cancer—Miller

(6) The Maltese Falcon—Hammett

(1/2) His Dark Materials—Pullman

(1) Death Comes for the Archbishop—Cather

(1) The Interpretation of Dreams—Freud

(4) The Education of Henry Adams—Adams

(6) Quotations from Chairman Mao—Mao

(4) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature—James

(2/4) Brideshead Revisited—Waugh

(6) Silent Spring—Carson

(6) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—Keynes

(4) Lord Jim—Conrad

(6) Goodbye to All That—Graves

(4) The Affluent Society—Galbraith

(1) The Wind in the Willows—Grahame

(1/2) The Autobiography of Malcolm X—Haley/Malcolm X

(6) Eminent Victorians—Strachey

(1/2) The Color Purple—Walker

(4) The Second World War (6-volume set)—Churchill

Total read: 24

Additional questions:

What would you cut from the list?

HATED “The Great Gatsby.”

What would you add?

• Little Women—hello? :-)
  
• Where’s the Dickens?
• Though it was a terribly grim read, I’d also suggest Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” It was POWERFUL, and written with an economy of words exactly suited to its barren landscape.
• East of Eden—Steinbeck. Gorgeous.

When you look back at the list as a whole, do you draw any conclusions about yourself as a reader?

• My liberal arts education hasn’t demanded enough of me, from a literary perspective… though I’ve read a number of books that didn’t make the list, that were written by these same authors. (That's me...I chose "Chicago Hope" over "ER" when they came out; Betamax over VHS...)
  
• I have still read some great, mind-changing books; my book club has stretched me in several directions.
  
• I strongly prefer fiction to non-fiction; gimme a metaphor over a directive any day.
• At this point in my life, I read mostly for pleasure, with a “this is a work I should know” book every few months—a different kind of pleasure, I guess.
• I'm happiest if there's a sympathetic character or two, but that's not necessarily prohibitive; for example, I love Wally Lamb, and most of his characters are...unappealing to me.
• The fact that I've written this post at all suggests that I should think about a Lit course sometime, just for fun!
  

These friends of mine...

...yes, for those of you who were paying attention, that was the original title of Ellen.

It also refers to the exciting premiere of a brand-new show starring two church friends who sing in my choir. I'm thinking, after seeing this, every choir director in the world is going to wish they had such creative souls to work with!

Thanks, guys. :-) Fantastic!

Quasi-Niebuhrian moment

There's some intersection of Christ and culture here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. :-)




Hat tip to my friend Erik!

Edited to add: having trouble with the embedding? Try this link instead.