Songs of Life

Ok, I admit it . . .  the technology has advanced beyond my capabilities, and I don't know how to make a playlist.  But maybe Marie's Friday Five will motivate me to learn

A while ago I noticed that people in a small cyber group of which I’m a part seemed to have playlists for all kinds of situations, so I started finding songs to fit my moods. And I’ll be at the Wild Goose Festival this weekend, so music is on my mind. For today’s Friday Five, tell us about your favorite songs for different situations.

1. What song do you listen to or sing to deal with times when you are sad?

River (Joni)

2. What’s a song that inspires you?

Girl on Fire (Alicia Keys)

3. What’s a song that reminds you of a happy time in your childhood?

We Come From the Mountains (a summer camp song)

4. What’s a song that makes you want to dance?

I hope someone will have some ideas here . . .

5. What’s a song that you share with someone you love?

Up On The Roof (JT and Carole King)

Bonus question: What’s a hymn or spiritual song you love to sing?

Bring Many Names

Cinnamon and Panic (Friday Five)

"From today's RevGals Friday Five:   As we prepare in our churches and our homes for Christmas to arrive, it is a time of waiting, expectation, and preparation,  However, it is also a time of stress and worry.

For this Friday Five, share how you are in this transition of Advent to Christmas.  As the Savage Chickens show us, we alternate between cinnamon and panic.  Write about five aspects of cinnamon and panic you are experiencing or whatever is in between; maybe mention how you are reminded to stay in the present holy moment."

 

I think I'm about 100% in between.

 

1.  With a new church, I am surrounded by people I don't know, some of whom are delighted or relieved that I've arrived, and some of who are filled with anxiety by my presence, and acting out strongly in response.

 

2.  With a former church, I find myself looking back with some longing as Christmas cards arrive with little notes and bits of news. 

 

3. With a cat in transition herself, I'm a bit frazzled.  She appeared in the church parking lot last night, bones jutting out all over the place, and practically leapt into my arms.  The Lovely Daughter says that she'll give her a try, which means an introduction to her well-established cat, but the kitty first needs a visit to the vet, so she'll be here for at least awhile.

4. With my children in holiday-mode transition with first jobs and little time off (and myself also with little time off), I'm frustrated and irritated.  Their increased winter time on the road for quick trips home plus a flying trip down to southern Ohio to see some of my family mean another dose of stress.

 

5.  Oh, and the big one:  my college students finish up their final exam ~ a take-home essay and a short objective section today ~  this afternoon, and grades are due Monday.  I'm about to finish this Sunday's sermon so that I can turn to those 24 tests and start thinking about Tuesday night's sermon.  The students have been driving me crazy with emails and requests to read drafts; I will be grateful when we are down to one last stack of papers.

 

So . . .  I'm not panicked, but I can't say that I smell cinnamon either.  (Not that I would anyway, because I have no sense of smell! ~ and so, even from a metaphorical standpoint, the concept of smell doesn't do anything for me.)  I have experienced little of the holiness of the season; despite what I had to say in my last post, it's a hard, hard time of year.

 

But here is my speck of cinnamon (whatever that may mean):  Last week we went to a concert sung by the Clare College, Cambridge Choir.  (The link is to a review of their evening here.) They are spectacular and, if you want some O Antiphons music for these last of Advent, their new CD, Veni Emmanuel, is the one you're looking for.  As they sang the "O Adonai" piece, with the singers spaced throughout the sanctuary and the sopranos up in the choir loft, I thought: If there were angels on the first Christmas night, this is exactly what they sounded like.

 

I can't find a video of this particular concert, but here's their recording of a familiar piece.

Hymn to the Eternal Flame

My friend Rosa is making a 30-day retreat and somehow found the time to send me this amazing gift.



Josh ~ Chicago Graduation
Family ~ Arizona
Memorial Service for a Young Woman
My Mother and I
Igantius the Pilgrim  ~ Guelph Retreat Centre
Boats in Poulsbo WA
Family ~ Adirondacks
My Birthday
Marissa and Ursuline Sister Agatha
Matt ~ Law School Graduation
Heart Glass ~ Ordination Gift from Rosa
Chapel of the Martyrs ~ Montmartre
Tanner's Annunciation
Wernersville Jesuit Center
My Mother and Brother
Josh ~ Lake Michigan

42-48/60

All three kids are actually in this photo, along with my last stepmother.  Josh is in the foreground ~ canoe trip in the backcountry of Algonquin (Ontario).  (I had told my dad after a couple of trips that we needed to schedule in days off for relaxation!)

 

 

Getting closer to that birthday . . .

Like all families, we had our difficulties.  During my forties, as my kids moved through elementary and middle school and into high school, there were some bumps in the road.  OK, more like craters and mountains.  We had some triumphs with our careers and our children's lives ~ Josh was able to live in France for a year, for instance ~ and we also experienced some real disasters.

I have no idea why some kids glide into adulthood and others careen forward and backward and sideways.  No idea at all.  I do know that the latter path is  hard on parents and siblings.

 

A friend of mine spoke to me in desperation one day.  One of her children was in serious trouble; a colleague's son had just been admitted to an Ivy League University.  Another colleague, congratulating the other mother, had exclaimed, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"

"What kind of tree does that make me?" my friend queried sadly.

"A gorgeous one,"  I said.  "There is no telling or predicting this s--t."

Here's what I finally concluded.  Some parents are luckier than others.

So profound.

Some parents get to engage in what on the surface seems to be a nonstop sequence of applause for prizes captured, championships won, scholarships granted.  (Even for those parents, the surface is often merely just that ~ a glimmering sheen concealing family traumas and dramas.)  Others are dealt the early morning calls from the police station, the unexpected pregnancies, the new jangle of acronymns ~  AA, NA, etc. ~ the afternoons in trauma centers or the mornings in chemo rooms, the string of failing grades, the endless sequence of 504 meetings.

We got a hefty dose of both sorts of categories.

Eventually I came to believe that sometimes we are offered opportunities to learn more ways of loving deeply than are usually available. 

I think my song for those years might be Hotel California ~ "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave."

Northfield Addendum

I was doing a little research after yesterday's post, talking with someone at Northfield Mount Hermon on FB and trying to find a video from a short time ago.  First the someone came up with this one:

 

Lift Thine Eyes.

 

It's a promotional piece for a book, and it gives you a great sense of the campus and of the importance of music to our lives.  In fact, if you make it to about 3:32, there are our 1970 voices singing Once to Every Man and Nation!  Who knew?

 

The next video was produced last Thanksgiving, and is the one I was seeking.  Our "school song" is Jerusalem, and this much shorter piece includes campus scenes set to another Sacred Concert rendition of the music.  As I recall, it was sent to the NMH community as a holiday gift.  I hope it's ok to link to it

 

here.

 

The last time I heard Jerusalem sung "live" was at Josh's graduation from NMH in 2003, in the same D.L. Moody-era auditorium in which I had graduated 38 years previous ~ with the seniors enthusiastically stomping their feet and shouting, "Bring! Me! My! Arrows! of! Desire!" When the video popped up last fall, I thought that I would not be able to bear it.  I have found that it is not so impossible, however, to recollect bits and pieces of the lives we shared there all those decades apart when those memories come in the form of music and New England fall colors.

 

 

So . . . take ten minutes and watch and listen to New England boarding school life!

12-18/60

Eight days to go . . .

The basics: These were the girls' boarding school years.  Grades 7-9 with the Ursuline nuns in Ohio and grades 10-12 at Northfield, one of the schools founded by evangelist D.L. Moody in Massachusetts.  No stereotyping allowed! Those were the places in which I gained a grounding in religion that was open-minded, progressive, and scholarly.  The Catholics were just blossoming forth from Vatican II and the Protestants were heavily influenced by Tillich and the social justice movement.  Once I got to Northfield, I seldom went home anymore; I spent my spring breaks in Florida with my grandparents and my summers doing a mother's helper gig for a family on Cape Cod.  Those were influential but impressively unproductive years; I was a terrible student and my extra-curricular activities were unbloggable.

Key phrase: "You are wasting your potential."

Best memories:  Oh, most of those are unbloggable, too.  But there was the music at Northfield, which had an incredible choral program.  Even those of us who otherwise did little more than tunelessly hum Beatles' and Joni Mitchell songs had to participate. 

 

Spring 1970 Sacred Concert, dedicated to Kent State.  Many of us would probably agree that singing the David Stanley York arrangement of "Once to Every Man and Nation" was one of the defining moments of our lives.  It's completely different from the jaunty version found in most hymnals and was powerfully appropriate to that period in our national history.

And, amazingly, I've finally found a recording online ~ from a Presbyterian church in Dayton, of all places.  You have to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page to 9.5.10 and then click on the title.  I would suggest turning the volume way up and imagining the young voices of 1200 idealistic high school students accompanied by an orchestra on a sunny spring day in western Massachusetts at the height of the Vietnam War.

A little reflection: One of the things one asks at 60 is how on earth she got to be who and where she is.  I did not, at the age of sixteen that afternoon at Northfield, believe for one minute that there was a God standing within the shadow keeping watch above anyone at all. 

 

But everything was in place, wasn't it?  Immersion in the beauty of creation, from rural Ohio to the Atlantic coastline to the foothills of the Berkshires;  a family's terrible suffering; a demanding religious and musical education ~ and a relentlessly skeptical but still hopeful mind and heart. 

 

No WONDER.

 

One could possibly even believe that God engineered all of this.

Here are the James Russell Lowell lyrics as adapted if you want to listen and read what you're hearing:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
 

By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus' bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
 

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Truth forever on the scaffold, and forever on the throne;

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

 

 

 

 

 

0-6/60

My mom and me.

I've realized this morning that it's ten days until the big 6-0.  I had hoped to host a big bash in our newly restored back yard but, alas, the promised six-week garage-deck-patio project is now at 14 weeks  and counting.  I'm guessing at least six to go, so maybe we'll party next year instead.   Therefore, in a burst of total narcissism, I'm going to celebrate here, six years at a time.  Don't apologize if you get bored!  Actually, just don't read.

Years 0 ~ 6

The basics:  Ohio country life with my parents, my two brothers (the second was born the year I turned six), and my extended family all nearby.  The second half of kindergarten and first grade in Florida, where my parents were planning to move.

 

One word:  Idyllic.

 

Best memories:  The ocean and the palm trees in Florida, and in Ohio the fields, the trees, the creek, the butterflies, my cat Tomasina and her kitten Butterball ~ whose designated role in life was to became My Cat ~ our great dane Jody, and my paternal grandmother next door, who would drop everything for us at any time of the day or night.

 

Biggest fears:  Snakes.  Big ole' long blacksnakes stretched across the road at home, and coral snakes in Florida.  Honestly, I am so scared of snakes (which my brothers and I later spent years catching), you'd think they were every last one of them cobras prepared to leap out of nowhere and kill me instantly.

 

Music:  Perry Como and also  the Lawrence Welk show, which we watched on Sunday evenings after dinner at my maternal grandparents' house in town.  My plan was to become a blond, curly-haired singer named Peggy on Lawrence Welk.  My hair is neither blond nor curly, I can't sing a note, and obviously I have the wrong name  ~ but that was nevertheless my fondest dream.   

 

Quote (This is kind of like a yearbook!): "My work is to love the world" ~ Mary Oliver.

The White Album

Blackbird

Yesterday I heard a song from Abbey Road on the radio, which got me thinking . . . .

 

Fall 1969.  I was a junior in boarding school, where a couple of friends and I had created a considerable amount of trouble for ourselves the preceding spring by taking a midnight walk to the campus of the boys' school, five miles away, across the Connecticut River.  Our arrival behind the science building unfortunately coincided with the late night (early morning?) departure of one of the physics teachers. 

 

We weren't expelled, but we were "campused" (boarding school-ese for "grounded) until the next Thanksgiving vacation.  A couple of us spent the summer working on Cape Cod and roaming between Falmouth and Provincetown on our days off, but when September rolled around, we were stuck.

 

Nearly everyone else departed for a long week-end in October.  The aforementioned physics teacher felt so bad about his timing that he invited to us dinner with his family one night.  The administration  also took pity on us and let us go out one night with the rest of the small group remaining on campus, to a Sly and the Family Stone concert at U Mass-Amherst.   And we spent a lot of time at the pool.  We took a record player (!) with us, plopped the White Album on the turntable,  turned the volume up as loud as it could go, and went swimming.

 

I was doing other things that fall.  I was taking English with Miss Palmer, who is responsible for my ability to write a literate paragraph and to quote Chaucer, T.S. Eliot, and Lady Macbeth in the same sentence.  I was failing Algebra II. 

 

But when I hear old Beatles' albums, I always think of those lonely afternoons, swimming to the White Album while everyone else in our known world was in Boston.

There Shall a Star Come Out of Jacob ~ Merry Christmas

is.

Those boarding school years were rough ones.  

But among the compensations: singing this.

Have You Seen a Child the Color of Wheat, the Color of Dawn?

From Amahl and the Night Visitors:


The mother remarks on the packages the kings have been carrying, "Oh these beautiful things, and all that gold!"
Melchior tells her, "These are the gifts to the child."
the Mother: "Hmmm the child... which child?"
Melchior: "We don't know . But the star will guide us to him."
the Mother: "But perhaps I know him... what does he look like?"
Melchior:

Have you seen a child the color of wheat... the color of dawn?
His eyes are mild; his hands are those of a king - as king he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side; and the eastern star is our guide.

the Mother:

Yes, I know a child the color of wheat.... the color of dawn.
His eyes are mild; his hands are those of a king as king he was born.
But no one will bring him incense or good... though sick and poor and hungry and cold.
He is my child my son, my darling my own.

Melchior:

Have you seen a child the color of earth... the color of thorn?
His eyes are sad; his hands are those of the poor as poor he was born.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side, and the eastern star is our guide.

the Mother:

Yes, I know a child the color of earth... the color of thorn.
His eyes are sad; his hands are those of the poor, as poor he was born.
But no one will bring him incense or gold... though sick and poor and and hungry and cold.
He is my child, my son, my darling... my own.

Melchior:

The child we seek holds the seas and the winds on his palm.
The child we seek has the moon and the stars at his feed.
Before him, the eagle is gentle the lion is meek.

All the kings join in a chorus:

Choirs of angels hover over his roof and sing him to sleep.
He's warmed by breath.
He's fed by mother who is both virgin and queen.
Incense, myrrh, and gold we bring to his side, and the eastern star is our guide.

And at the same time, the mother sings about her own son:

The child I know on his palm holds my heart.
The child I know at his feet has my life.
He is my child, my son, my darling, my own...
And his name is Amahl.

Sermon Conundrums

I'll be damned if I know what to do about these things.

We had a famous preacher at our Presybtery worship service this afternoon.  He preached what was, I think, an outstanding sermon on the Beatitudes.  I'm not entirely sure, because I missed a lot of it.

Because . . . 

He started out with an illustration involving a young man who had come to see him after a lecture one day, ostensibly to ask a question about the material.  A young man whose real question he didn't see or hear.  A young man who a few minutes later went up to the top of the building and jumped off.  He was the last person to talk with that young man.

I am the mother of that young man, or one like him; the mother who didn't hear or see. 

I can't say that I feel that I am one of those who mourn who are blessed, although I am certainly one of those who mourn.

I can't say that I feel that I am one of those who are the blessed poor in spirit as a consequence of reaching out to save other lives which might easily have been lost because of the one that was, although I have poured my spirit out and all over the place to care for those others.

I can tell you that when I ponder these things, I feel as if God inhabits some other galaxy, long ago and far away, and not this one.

I don't know what you do about these sermons.  I mean, I do know: Nothing.  I've heard at least one that was somewhat similar and, as today, I was stuck in a visible locale in the church, so there was nothing to do but grip the armrest and hope it would end quick.

It makes me really afraid to preach, as I wonder when I am the unwitting spear thrower.

Let Nothing Disturb You . . . God is Unchanging

Don't you think it's kind of intriguing that after I posted here a few days ago about St. Teresa's prayer and my own reluctance to affirm that God is unchanging, the following should be today's music on Pray As You Go?

The singing/lyrics begin at about 1:20.

I was out for an early morning walk in the midst of the changing colors of fall as I listened to PAYG this morning.  And no, I don't make the mistake of believing that the God who is in all thing is all things.  But the paradox of an ever-changing universe ~ - nature, human, and everything else ~ and the possibility of an unchanging God did not escape my prayer.

At any rate, regardless of your orthodoxy or lack thereof, prayer or lack thereof, faith or other structure for life: it's a beautiful prayer and a beautiful piece of music.  Give it the full 6:23.

What It Comes Down To: With the Dying

I spent some time this afternoon sitting with a 103-year-old woman who is dying.  Which is to say that I spent some time praying, some time remembering, and some time observing.

I don't know this woman at all.  I've often visited with her son, one of my parishoners, who is recovering from a massive stroke, and his wife and their two daughters, and I have listened to humorous stories about "Grandma" and her efforts to conceal some of her misadventures in her apartment, falls and injuries that would have cost her her independence had the wrong people gotten wind of them.  I met her when she was moved into hospice care some weeks ago.  At that time, even from her prone position in bed, she was still a boisterous, no-nonsense kind of gal.  I kind of wondered whether she had ever been a rodeo rider.

Today she is unconscious, heavily medicated, and breathing laboriously.  I had ample opportunity to take in her surroundings and ponder the results of 103 years of living:

Half of a double room, a curtain pulled carelessly between the two sides as a pointless divider;

A twin bed, a couple of machines that apparently do something, a bedside table, a lamp inexplicably turned on;

A sippy cup with a straw, no doubt unused for several days;

Tousled gray hair strew across the pillow, thick and curly;  paper-thin eyelids closed in the sunken sockets of an angular face.  She must have been a beautiful woman.

There is no art.  There is no music.  There are no photographs.  There are no books.

I have told my children many times that should I approach this condition, their task to to get me to the beach.  I would like to die within the sight and sound of the ocean and the seabirds.

I see now that I need to mention a few other things.  If I should land in similarly spartan surroundings, they are expected to show up with some artwork, whatever future i-invention produces the best music, and a stack of books.  If I can't die with my feet in the sand, perhaps I could at least be surrounded by remnants of my life.

And if I am unaware of all of it, if I am already elsewhere despite my body's resistance to its departure, I would like for the sounds to be other than my own ragged breaths.  The second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 would be my preference, followed by the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony.

Those pieces constitute the soundtrack that I am sliding into the images with which I am left this afternoon.

Holy Week Friday Five

From today's Friday Five, brought to us by Mary Beth:

Holy Week is upon us.

Realizing that most of our readers are clergy, and that clergy don't necessarily have the opportunity to fully worship when they are responsible for leading (creating, writing, facilitating) worship:

I invite you to share five favorite Holy Week things, five things that are truly worshipful for you.  It may be that it's the way they are done in your congregation (or were done in a previous one).  It may be your personal preparation for certain services or observances.  

Breathe.  Be still.  Look to the week ahead, and Holy Weeks past, and imagine the worship.

Bonus:  a piece of music that "is" Holy Week for you.

I'm not sure that I have five.   Holy Week has been precarious ground for me the last few years and, not having really grown up in the church, I don't have longstanding memories to which I can return.  But let's see how far I get:

1.  The Tenebrae Service (at my "home church" which is no longer my home church) ~ deeply moving.

2.  The Easter Vigil, to which I was introduced by Catholic friends and which I am now introducing, in a much abbreviated version, to my new home church, the one I pastor.  I am particularly fond of the fire outdoors with which we begin.  Many of the men in my rural church are members of the volunteer fire department, and I think they're afraid that this practice might catch on.  No pun intended.

3. The Easter Sunrise service, co-celebrated by four local Methodist churches, in the cemetery where I walk.  A large cross stands above a gravesite on the edge of a ravine, and as we gaze at it we look east and the sun rises behind it.

4.  The couple of blocks walk to the sunrise service, with the full moon above.  This short journey, like all of this week, is a tough one, as Josh always  accompanied me.  He was with me this year, maybe 2006:

5.  Something new, and I have no idea whether this will be worshipful or not.  My congregation wanted to host a Maundy Thursday service with a meal, a celebration of communion, and a concluding drama of the Garden of Gethsemane.  I have written the drama and distributed the scripts, and now I have the task of convincing actors and audience alike that we want to approach this minute production from a contemplative, prayerful stance.  I have invited the actors, in particular, to spend some time imagining themselves into their roles, praying their way into the evening and what it means, whether as Jesus, as followers or traitor, as soldiers, as curious or accusatory bystanders.  It's been worshipful for me to plan it all, but whether I can convey that to others remains a matter of speculation.

Well, I guess I do have five!  And the music bonus is an obvious one, although it's taken me four years to be able to listen to it again since, sadly, it now reflects personal experience.  Herewith,as sung by King's College Choir, of course:

Brahms

Bleak midwinter outside.  Temperature in the teens and pale gray skies.  Our rug samples arrived ten days ago and are supposed to be returned in four more.  We haven't yet been able to see how the colors look in sunlight.  The furnace guy is here for what must be our 27th annual inspection ~ of the TWO furnaces we now run in our updated system.

We moved into this house 28 years ago this week-end.  It was 16 degrees out that day as well; by the time we finished, having opened and closed the front door all day, the thermostat in the front hall had settled in at 55.  I was pregnant and, although I did not yet know that we would be having twins, I was already suffering from the all-day-all-night morning (?) sickness that would mark most of that pregnancy and all of the next one.  My husband set up the bed, and I crawled into it, pulled some sleeping bags over my head, and got up again in about March.

Now I sleep in the living room, since my present condition precludes lying down on a bed.  I woke up about 4:00 this morning and remained curled up in my recliner, wide awake, for a couple of hours.  A friend's husband died yesterday, and there will be a funeral mass next week.  Tomorrow is the church service for the young pastor who was killed earlier this week.  I prayed for both families and wondered, Do they know the love of God this morning?  My own experience of God during such times is consistently one of absence, but rumor has it that mine is not the universal one.

This living room was the site of such energy and joy during the years in which our children were small.  We struggled so to keep this old house warm, but they ran around gleefully in their bare feet, sipped hot chocolate in front of the fire, and curled up on the couch with the cat for hours of reading aloud.

Tonight my son and I are going to hear the Cleveland Orchestra; his ordination gift to me.  When we selected the concert weeks ago, we hoped that I would be physically healed enough to enjoy it, and I am.  The other things, the memories and the losses, all swirl around us.   We are, as Richard Rohr describes it, "falling upward."  And Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 is the exact right piece of music.

Christmas Morning Sermon

For Christmas morning, we gathered in our fellowship hall for a light breakfast, followed by a service of alternating readings from Luke and traditional carols.  Bits and pieces of the short message from the pastor went something like this:

As I put today’s bulletin together, I found myself thinking about my girlhood ~

Growing up in a household that was neither religious nor musical ~

But we did have a piano and a book of carols ~

And I used to play through them, every single verse, in an order of my own liking, making up a Christmas pageant in my head

What I didn’t realize was that ~ 

In learning those songs ~

I was learning Scripture ~

A week or so ago, several of us were engaged in a couple of discussions on the internet ~

About our favorite Christmas songs ~

And about seldom heard verses ~  

Which often contain the densest Scriptural and theological allusions ~

Look at some of this morning’s lines:

Not just O little town of Bethlehem ~

But God imparts to human hearts the blessings of God’s heaven ~

God delivers straight into the core of our beings the gift of God’s kingdom

               

Not just While shepherds watched their flocks ~

But Good will henceforth from heaven to us begin and never cease ~

History has been interrupted and has begun anew; God’s kingdom will never end

And my favorite from childhood:

Not just It came upon the midnight clear ~

But The new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace their King ~

I didn’t know it when I was ten, but those words are from the Book of Revelation and from the prophet Isaiah

These songs?

We sing them every year.  We hear bits and pieces of them on the radio and in the malls and stores. If we’re really lucky, we participate in choir concerts and get to rehearse them for weeks ~

But even then, do we know that in listening to them, and singing them,

               We are learning the story in the first words in which it was told.

               We are learning the Scriptural version of Jesus’ birth.

               And we are learning, perhaps without any awareness at all, of the great hope those words express.

I personally happen to think that music is the best part of worship. 

               In music we find our Scriptural texts

                              We find our sermons

                                             And we find our hearts and minds raised and filled

                                                            With the hope of a new heaven and a new earth

And most especially at Christmas, when that hope comes in the form of the baby whose birth became The First Noel. Which we are about to sing ~

And which, by the way, tells us that the star shone both day and night.  Imagine a star – other than the sun around which we orbit -- that you can see in broad daylight!

               That would be the other Son, the Son of God.  Amen!

O Wisdom! Teenage Christmases

Yesterday's O Antiphon hailed Christ as Wisdom.

As I was rummaging back through Christmases past, it occurred to me that the teenage years are not themselves generally viewed as a period of wisdom, at least not in contemporary western culture.  And yet, isn't much of the foundation for what will, one hopes, become a mature understanding laid in those chaotic years?

When I think of Advent seasons during those years, I discover that I was, indeed, becoming more aware of the world around me and of the reality that I was not ~ surprise! ~ at its center. 

The Ursuline nuns who ran the boarding school I attended during my middle school years endeavored to ensure that we understand we were responsible for more than our own little world in part by taking us deeper into the Appalachian countryside to deliver Christmas packages.  One house in particular still stands out in my memory: nestled into gentle hills, its interior walls were entirely covered in newspaper.  I was baffled at the time; now, I suppose it was a matter of insulation.

We all (yes, even I) sang a Christmas concert each year just before our vacation began.  One year when several of us were behaving rather badly, the imposing Sister Miriam, who was in charge of our musical efforts, waved her finger magisterially in the air.  "For many in our audience, this is the one respite of music and cheer that they will experience all winter!  Now pull yourselves together!"

Music flowed through my life in those years, all of it an invitation to something far grandeur than anything I could imagine on my own.  My second boarding school boasted an impressive music program.  Possessing limited abilities, I participated only on the fringes, but two nights, both from December of my senior year, stand out in my memory even today.

The first was an all-school Messiah sing.  I had no idea what Handel's Messiah was, but a friend dragged me out to the event.  Despite my six boarding school years of religious classes and observances,  I had no interest in the God whom I perceived to be an imaginary figure.  The music that poured out of the old auditorium building that evening, into the dark and across the snow, was the first intimation that I might be wrong.

We, too, presented a Christmas concert the night before we all departed for our homes. That particular year, as the magnificent choruses were concluded and we all burst out of the chapel into a snowstorm, one of my best friends, a girl from Arizona, cried out, "I'm so glad that I go to boarding school in New England!"

Most of the time, neither of us were glad of any such thing.  But there is something about the music of the season, something in the generosity of those who share their traditions of service and song with a new generation, something transcendent that hints at the potential for wisdom to emerge . . . someday.

Online Images: 1983 Christmas Vespers at Northfield School's Sage Chapel

Ordination: Reflections

 I keep thinking that I must have something profound to say.  I guess that what I would say is this:  

My favorite professor preached something that we all needed to hear, and a couple of people actually did.  I welcomed everyone to communion, because in the stories of centuries of religious exclusion and inclusion there is not a doubt in my mind about where the sacrament fits.  Tears mingled as I served people whose losses have become mine as mine have become theirs, and those with whom I have worked to learn and minister for the past several years.

But really, one of my friends, who is always far more eloquent than almost anyone else I know, says it best.  I hope that it doesn't seem self-serving to post it (with her permission).

I attended the ordination of a friend today. Someone who has worked years and years to become a minister of word and sacrament.  There were so many beautiful moments throughout the worship service: the litany of ministers in their formal black robes and red stoles, the songs sweeping into descant, the promises we had to make to help Robin live into her calling.  I loved watching Clover's proud face. The pews filled with family.  I loved watching the stream of people come up to take the bread of life from Robin.  How some paused for a hug, how some leaned into Robin's cheek to deliver a kiss, how Chris Henry touched Robin's chest -- put a palm to her heart.  There was a moment when the western setting sun came through the window and lighted upon Robin's face -- just her face.  Like a kiss, or a distant blessing.  There was definitely a presence of something larger there in that moment. No, something larger was there most of the afternoon.

It made me want to start an ordination movement.  Ordaining my neighbors, especially Sheridan who cut her pumpkin naked today.  Ordain the teenagers walking past the library.  Ordain my colleagues tomorrow at work.  Ordain the crossing guards, the Starbucks baristas, the nursery school teachers, the public defenders.  Ordain the dying and those who care for them.  Ordain the nurses in the ER, the doctors telling the bad news.  I wanted to ordain everyone.  Let everyone know that they are filled with resurrecting power and light.  I wanted everyone to know that they are loved by many, that they are important people called to do important work. It was a beautiful day, one that made us all want to stretch out farther and more lovingly.  For that, and for Robin, I give great thanks. 

Communion Music:

Ordination Service ~ Musical Moments

Music During Communion 

               Hymn No. 521    congregation, please sing refrain             “You Satisfy the Hungry Heart”

               “These Alone are Enough”   choir

                Hymn No. 106    all sing                                                 “Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Give Thanks”

              

Prayer after Communion

God of grace, you have renewed us at our table with the bread of life. May this food strengthen us in love and help us to serve you in each other. We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord. Amen.

   Going Forth to Live as God’s People

*  Closing Hymn No. 220

“All People That on Earth Do Dwell”

*  Commission and Blessing

*  Choral Benediction                                                                      Northfield School Benediction

    Postlude                                                                                             J. S. Bach

“In Thee Is Gladness”

Musical Notes

The Choral Introit is being sung in loving memory of Josh Williams; the soloist is his sister, Marissa Williams.

The lyrics of “These Alone Are Enough” are based upon the Suscipe, a prayer at the end of The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.  The soloist is Beth Zych of the Forest Hill Chancel Choir.