Meditation: High and Dangerous Waters

Another two-posted-sermon day. This was from Saturday, July 9, a meditation given at the closing worship service of a new-student program at my seminary alma mater. I was dumb enough to volunteer. Wasn't going to post, but decided, why not? But do remember the context.


Union Presbyterian Seminary

July 9, 2016, Communities of Learning Face-to-Face Worship

Genesis 7:11-12, 17-20; Psalm 69; Mark 1:4-12

High and Dangerous Waters

Have you ever been caught in an undertow? Out in the ocean, finding yourself suddenly a lot farther from the beach than you expected? I know some of you are beach people, so maybe you know what I'm talking about. An undertow or a rip current is a pretty frightening thing for an eight-year-old, which is how old I was when I had my first experience of one. Fortunately I was with an older sibling and a cousin who knew enough to paddle our little float sideways until we escaped the rip current and get back to dry land.

As much as water is a frequent metaphor in the church, I wonder if at times we lose some of the power of that metaphor in the way we use it. We’re all Psalm 23 and the Lord our shepherd leading us by the still waters. It’s a pretty image, one that has been reproduced in countless examples of artistic kitsch with Anglo Jesus cuddling an adorable baby lamb or something similar (paintings that will never get into the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). On the other hand, though, the psalmist who gave us the psalm we just sang looked at waters just a bit differently, in 69:1-2:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

That psalmist is hardly the only biblical writer who saw the waters as source of wildness and peril. The tale of Job features none other than God boasting of the untamed torrents of water, fathomless deeps, and the fantastic Leviathan that sported in the deeps beyond human comprehension. The story of Jonah also evokes the terrors of the sea, as Jonah is beset by storm, gulped up by a great fish, and finally spat up on the shore.

These are high and dangerous waters.

Perhaps the most dramatic such story of water and its terrors is the account of the great flood in Genesis. The outlines of the story itself I would imagine you know well enough; but let the description of the rising waters sink in. “The fountains of the great deep burst forth…the windows of the heavens were opened…” Waters so great and so deep that the mountains were covered – and not just covered, but overtopped and submerged. It is a terrifying picture. These are high and dangerous waters.

It’s not hard to imagine that later descendents of those Hebrew peoples had such stories in their heads as they made their way down to the Jordan to be baptized by this crazy wilderness preacher John, called the Baptizer. The Jordan was neither small nor still. Maybe it was just enough to convey the sense of danger that tradition had ascribed to waters in various ways in Hebrew scripture.

John himself was also a pretty good picture of wildness and danger. Mark, who is not normally given to great detail, slows down his account long enough to give us the “runway description” of John’s wardrobe and diet. Just imagine the fashion show: And the Baptizer is commanding the path down into the river today in an inverted camel-hair ensemble that just oozes unpredictability and danger, with a striking leather accessory around his waist…amazing how John keeps in fighting trim with his patented honey-and-locust diet… . In short, there’s no reason to think anybody saw this passage, this event, this baptism as normal or “safe” or “tame.” Even in the Jordan, these are high and dangerous waters.

Jesus is among these crowds, to be baptized by the eccentric wilderness prophet with the eccentric wardrobe and diet. At this point in Mark’s story, Jesus is just this guy, you know? Oh, except for Mark calling him “the Son of God” back in verse one of this chapter. He himself only shows up from Nazareth in verse 9, and like all of the other pilgrims to John’s baptism spot, he steps into the water and is baptized.

Then things get crazy, at least for Jesus. The heavens “torn apart” – don’t miss that! No mere “opening” or parting like those other wimpy gospels. “Torn apart”! The Spirit shrieking down like a dove, the voice from heaven … the waters of the Jordan turn out to be high and dangerous waters indeed. Oh, and then there’s a wilderness ahead, too.

Y’all are not doing a safe thing. You are starting an experience that, despite our best efforts to give you a sneak peek, will challenge you in ways you’ve can’t imagine. Your faith will be bounced around and challenged and bruised and even broken in some places. You will wonder what you are doing here, and why, why, why you put yourself through this. You will question your calling, your ability, and even your sanity.

And it won’t stop when you graduate and move into your vocation. You’ll be heading into a place where you won’t be able to leave town without wondering if the parishioner who has been battling cancer longer than you’ve even been in the church will succumb to it before you get home. You will go into a calling where you will see poverty you couldn’t imagine existing in the most impoverished places on the planet, and it will be in your own town. You may see literal high waters ravage your community, as one of my classmates has in West Virginia of late. You will see hatred and bigotry and cruelty to turn your stomach, and love and grace and mercy and joy beyond your imagination.

This font may not look like it, but it contains high and dangerous waters indeed. You have no idea where the currents will take you, what the skies will tear open and show you, what wilderness you’ll be driven into.

And Jesus calls you to dive in. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal)

#164                  Down Galilee’s Slow Roadways

#602                  Holy Lamb of God

#478                  Save Me, O God, I Sink In Floods

#482                  Baptized in Water

The Future Of The Church

Update, May 31: Well, graduation day was today, and the intensity of feeling is only stronger.  Our class is pretty freakin' awesome.  They're going to do serious good if you folk don't get in their way.  My respect for these future ministers has only grown in the last three weeks.  To all of you; thanks for letting me ride along.


One of the inevitable things about getting into this particular vocational track, and especially noticeable as I reach the end of the educational process and make ready to jump off the cliff into whatever comes next, is that one hears a great deal of fretting and hand-wringing about The Future Of The Church.  You have to capitalize it that way to get the full effect of the fretting.  Armloads of statistics are deployed to point out that congregations are shrinking, if not disappearing altogether, and aging remarkably as they shrink/disappear.  Other capitalizable claims, all documentable with more of those statistics, are that Young People Are Leaving The Church, The Church Is Losing Its Relevance, The Church Is Losing Its Credibility, The Church Is No Longer Respected...it goes on.
All of these things feed into the fretting about The Future Of The Church. It's not exactly false, by any means.  Certainly the church (and this is fairly across-the-board, with the possible exception of Catholicism) is losing adherents in the US, and the general hair color of the church is getting whiter.  When you ask people about what institutions or individuals they respect, the church and its ministers don't necessarily do all that well (though at least they do better than Congress, low bar that such may be).  Things look bad, no denying that.
So, fretting about The Future Of The Church.  It happens a lot.
I suppose my perspective is a bit different these days, though.  You see, while I've been slogging through this seminary education, I've been hanging out a lot with the future of the church.
I've been in classes with them.  I've shared meals with them.  I've been around the communion table with them.  I've been grinding my way through the library with them.  I've occasionally been to parties and ballgames and other entertainments with them (although I'm an old man and can't handle too much of that).  I've had my butt bailed out by them, particularly while going through cancer treatment.  I've laughed with them, and I'm fairly certain I've been laughed with (or occasionally at) by them, hopefully when I meant to be funny (or perhaps when I attempted to play ultimate frisbee -- yeah, that was a mistake).  I've heard their startling revelations, and made a few myself.  I've been angry alongside them (as opposed to being angry with them, which I never really had occasion to be), been frustrated alongside them, occasionally grieved with them.  I've wondered over grades and assignments, celebrated achievements, regretted setbacks, and generally shared a lot of different emotions.

And from where I sit, the future of the church, at least this sliver of it in this denomination, looks pretty good.  Real good, actually.
This future of the church is deeply intelligent.  Don't get the idea you're going to outsmart these folks when they arrive in your church.  Let's get this straight, church folk: you do not know more about the Bible than they do.  You may have more life experience, to be sure, but don't dismiss or scoff at their intellect.  It is powerful, God-given and seminary-refined, and it is a glorious thing to behold at work.
This future of the church is passionate.  Don't be fooled by all that talk about the indifference or apathy of the young adult generation.  These folks care passionately about the faith, about the church, and about doing Christ's work in God's world.  And they're not inclined to let anyone get in their way, not even you, church folk.

This future of the church, despite what others may tell you, does not seek to change the church merely for the sake of change, and in fact are suspicious of those who advocate change without good reason.  They are passionately for changing what doesn't work, what gets in the way, what deceives us into thinking we're doing what God wants from us when we're really just doing what's comfortable.  They've got vision, and are ready to go after it.  Please don't be obstacles.

I will note that a lot of this future of the church is made up of women.  This probably bothers some people.  There are probably some folks who think that the future of the church is hopeless or lessened for that very reason.  Sorry to hurt your feelings if that's you, but that line of thinking is total b.s.  The church has been waiting for, nay, crying out for these women and their talents and passions and energies for decades now.  The degree to which this church actually does grow into and serve as a genuine and faithful witness for Christ (notice I didn't say anything about "prosper" or other such twentieth-century buzzwords) is largely contingent on these women and the degree to which the church responds to that leadership.  The guys are pretty impressive, but these women rock.  (I feel like I'm echoing that West Wing episode, early in the show's run, where Jed Bartlett and Leo McGarry marvel over the women working in that fictional White House.  Fine.  So be it.  They're good.)

This future of the church isn't perfect.  They have their blind spots, to be sure.  Don't judge, older generations: look where your hangups about money and big buildings and prestige have gotten us.  These people are going to be passionate, vital, profoundly needed leaders in the church.  The very least you can do, the absolute minimum, is to get out of the way.  Better yet, follow them.  Help them out.  Provide that wisdom of experience where needed.  But don't be obstacles.
And really, don't be jerks about how much better things were when five thousand people in your town of two thousand crowded into your sanctuary (that holds about two hundred) every Sunday to hear the strong, powerful sermons of Dr. Noble Whiteguy.

I find myself with all sorts of feelings to sort out about my experiences here.  I find myself already missing these people intensely, and graduation is still three weeks off.  Three years ago I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me how deeply I'd come to care about these folks, these (let's go ahead and say it) kids (I mean, I am old enough to be their father in many cases).  And yet I care about them not as "kids," but as treasured brothers and sisters in the faith.  They are my peers, and I could not ask for better (again, three-years-ago me is freaking out to read that).  They've been there for me, and I hope I've been so for them.  They make me laugh, think, get indignant, get excited to go change the world (three-years-ago me just passed out in consternation).  I love them dearly and will miss them dearly.
There have been "older" classmates, a more obvious age cohort, and they have enriched and challenged my life in so many ways.  But these young ministers coming at you out there in the church are something special.  Welcome them.  Embrace them.  Help them out.  And every now and then, maybe even more often than not, shut up and listen to them.

One Triduum down, who knows how many to go

Despite being a mere unordained seminary student, I ended up with a Thursday-Sunday schedule this past weekend not unlike that of a number of the fully-ordained and pastorally employed.  Not fully so, mind you.  But closer than I expected.

Thursday: a service in chapel on campus, working with a team of four (including myself) but ending up with the "meditation," which task I complicated by attempting to deliver it from memory.

Friday: not a sermon or any speaking task, but singing Samuel Barber's "The Crucifixion" for a Good Friday service.

Saturday: no actual services but a drive up north to...

Sunday: preach two services at Culpeper Presbyterian Church.

A few observations and clarifications:

I was not required to "go from memory" on Thursday.  But, having taken a class back in January in which this was one of the larger points of emphasis, the idea snuck into my head subconsciously, leading to many moments when I wished I had not taken that class.  Nonetheless it happened.  I make no claims for any effectiveness on the part of that "meditation" (or sermonette or devotion or mini-sermon or whatever you call it, something under five minutes).  The service as a whole (incorporating both communion and washing, hands rather than feet) ended up being quite effective, so I will go with the notion that at worst I preached Hippocratically (I did no harm).

Friday was also something I did to myself.  Though I give off airs of not being a sentimental type, I cannot deny that coming to the end of seminary feels like coming to the end of a lot of things other than seminary.  Samuel Barber was never a composer I spent much time with in my research (other than late in my academic career, when I got obsessed with his choral cantata Prayers of Kierkegaard; partly influenced by that I'm taking a directed study on Kierkegaard in May to finish my studies here).  Nonetheless I've enjoyed the vast majority of his music that I've heard.  A course on Celtic Christianity back in January 2012 brought his Hermit Songs back to mind (since the texts he set for that derived from the same Celtic traditions we studied in that class), particularly "The Crucifixion," which I always regretted not getting to sing (and my voice professors were probably right to refrain from it, I will admit).  Somewhere in the two years since that course my interest hardened into a determination to sing "The Crucifixion" publicly at some point, preferably for a Good Friday service. Fortunately the chief musician at the church I've attended this year was willing, and it happened.  I'll even say it went pretty well, which I'm not usually willing to say about my singing.  And I'll admit to no small amount of personal satisfaction at being able to put it together enough to sing without embarrassment.  As much as I'd like to keep that kind of thing as a viable outlet for my musical impulses, I have my doubts.  But at least that happened.

Saturday, nominally the day off, was marked by sleeping late, finishing the sermon for Sunday, and visiting a local botanical garden with friends for some much-needed relaxation.  Then the drive north to Culpeper (yes, not a double "p"), which was nice except for getting caught behind campers and horse trailers on occasion, an overnight stay with a very gracious couple in the church, and two Easter Sunday services worth of preaching.  (The pastor of that church was painfully unable to postpone back surgery, and the classmate they called who could preach Palm Sunday but not Easter Sunday was kind enough to think of me for the latter.) As always, I'd have liked one more day to work on the sermon (maybe two days in this case), but in the end it seemed to go out to good effect, as far as I could tell from reaction and feedback (limited, obviously).  The church proved very gracious and generous hosts, and I now have both a supply preaching engagement and an Easter sermon under my belt.

Then I got home Sunday afternoon and an intended fifteen-minute sit-down turned into a two-hour nap.  

Now it' s back to more routine seminary tasks this week; last bits of work for my internship, one more chapel in which to participate, a reception to attend, and a paper looming out there to be written, all with my wife away this week.  It's not that big a deal, I'm aware; a "real pastor" has a lot more to do in such a week.  Still I find it somewhat useful to know I have accomplished at least that brief imitation of a Holy Week once in my life, and won't be totally at sea when it comes time to lead one "for real" (hopefully in 2015, obviously).

And yes, I am also aware that I am the rare seminary student who got to preach on Easter Sunday. ;-)

Ash

I am a bit depleted today.  Nothing major, but the cough I keep thinking is gone keeps coming back.  It's almost spring break here, which means the last mad push to get stuff done before then.  We had a seventy-degree day Sunday, followed by a couple of inches of snow on Monday with temperatures getting down around eleven degrees that night, and now warming somewhat again.  I had an eye exam yesterday morning, which involved having my eyes dilated, and I always forget how debilitating that is to me until it happens.  It's only a three-hour drive home but I couldn't do it with the bright sun reflecting off all that snow.  Chapel this morning involved singing Allegri's Miserere, not that difficult a work but rather long and involved.  So yeah, "depleted" is a good word for today.

It's probably just as well I got "ashed" twice today -- at chapel on campus this morning and at church this evening.  I don't know if the psalmist of Psalm 51 had any concept of being "depleted" among all the talk about a "broken" and "contrite" spirit, but I'm going to go with it as fitting.

But my mind wandered, as it often does.  Ashes are an interesting symbol to have smeared cross-like upon one's forehead.  The saying about "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" is typically invoked to point to the ashes as a reminder of our finiteness and mortality, and theologically that's all fine and good.

I can't help but think of ashes in other contexts, though, contexts that have more to do with our need to repent.

Lac-Megantic, Quebec, July 2013

Ashes, of course, come from fire.  Something is consumed, and ashes are what remain.  In many traditions historically, and even today, ashes are the final condition of the human body.  Hence the reminder of our mortality.

Other things, of course, are burned to leave ashes.  For the Ash Wednesday observance, tradition dictates that the palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday observance provide the ashes for this year's Ash Wednesday.  

Ashes are also sometimes the product of burning for other purposes -- a log in a fireplace, for example, to warm all those around.  

Or sometimes ashes are the result of human folly.  Because of our all-consuming need to consume, we go to greater and more destructive extremes to find fuel for our consumption.  We fail, though, to see how destructive that fuel can be, and assume we need no greater caution with stuff that turns out to be even more flammable.  And so, a train derails and explodes (so powerfully that it was visible from space), and destroys most of a town in Quebec.  

Then it happened in Alabama.

Near Aliceville, Alabama, November 2013

And North Dakota.

Casselton, North Dakota, December 2013

And in New Brunswick (that's in Canada, for those geographically deprived about Canada.)

Near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, January 2014

For a change, here's one that didn't explode or burn.  That's the good news.  The bad news is this was smack in the middle of Philadelphia.  Too close for comfort to millions of people.  Potentially an awful lot of ashes.

Over the Schuylkill River, January 2014

It doesn't have to come from an oil train, or even a pipeline (they've been blowing up too).  Maybe it's acres upon acres of Amazon rainforest, burned off to clear land for cattle grazing.  Maybe its a Salem witch trial.  Maybe it's acres of wildfires destroying homes that had no business being built in a wildfire zone.  Maybe it's Auschwitz.  

So much destruction, intended or carelessly encouraged.  Ashes.  Signs of our fallibility.  

Ashes remind us of our mortality, that we are dust and to dust we shall return.  Maybe ashes should also remind us of our own need to repent.  Not merely confess, but repent.  Change.  Stop doing what we're doing.  

Our fires don't seem to purify, do they?  All too often they do seem to hasten our mortality, instead of merely reminding us of it.

Off-stride

One of my most recent Facebook statuses was along the lines of "did you ever feel the need to march, but the band is playing in 7/8 time?"
Despite a few musically-minded literalists getting in the way, I wasn't actually speaking of marching to a Brubeck-esque meter.  Do you ever have that feeling of something or everything not being bad, not by a long stretch (it would take a lot, after the cancer treatment, for me to say things were going badly), not really anything being wrong, but somehow everything just ... feels off.
I can't really point to any one thing.  Classes are going o.k.  The internship has slowed down a good bit, but nothing really unpleasant is going on there.  My health, aside from a nagging cough that seems finally to be easing off a bit, is about as good as it's ever going to be.  It feels like opportunities are shutting off or falling through rather than opening up, though (again) it's not as if I can point to any specific example of such a thing.
And yet, whether waking in the morning or going to bed at night, or in the middle of studying or socializing or whatever, everything feels ... just a bit off.

Swinnnnngggggg...and a miss.  So seems life.

It's the kind of thing that only shows up in odd, out-of-the-way things, like the fact that is, on the last day of February, the first time I've blogged since the last day of January.  I've started two or three, but they don't get finished.
I can't shut up when I have nothing to say, and I can't utter a peep when there is stuff demanding to be said.  I feel like a stranger to myself.
I can only guess that it's my middle-aged self's way of dealing with the kind of uncertainty that was (I thought) in the past.  Let's see, there's March and April left in this term, then the May term, and then, provided I don't screw up, I should graduate on May 31.
And then...?

Quit grinning at me, you hateful little thing!

You see what I mean.
I can put my Pastor Information Form (hereafter PIF) out there.  I can scour the opportunity listings daily.  I can try to get on the supply-preaching lists around here (there's no real benefit to moving anywhere without a call at this point).
And...?  The uncertainty is still there.
I jumped into this fool's errand without a real net, so to speak, and now starts the free fall.
There are certain things I know I can do.  I can preach.  Your mileage may vary, but I can write and deliver a sermon, and it can be good.  I can lead liturgy.  I would not necessarily say I'm real smooth and seamless at this point, and I'll still be terrified the first time a real baptism comes along, but I can do it.  I can teach.  I knew that coming in.  Those are all good things for a preacher to be able to do.  Other of the daily tasks of the preacher I can learn quickly enough.  A little brushing up on Robert's Rules of Order may be needed, to be sure.
I'm nobody's idea of an associate pastor for youth, or children, or "families" (wouldn't that be called, you know, an associate pastor?).  I don't think anybody who knows me well would expect that.  That does eliminate a lot of the first-call opportunities out there.  What it leaves behind is a lot of small churches.
I am o.k. with that, as long as it's not a go-broke-for-God expectation (I'm not asking to get rich, but a living wage needs to happen) and as long as there is decent access to health care (that cancer is going to be hanging over me for a few years yet).  I can be bi-vocational if need be, particularly if there's a small college or juco around that could use someone to teach music appreciation or a similar course (that would actually be kind of appealing).  I'm not setting any geographical limits on where I'm willing to go (my wife may have other ideas), even though I can already hear God cackling and plotting to put me under ten feet of snow in Montana.
There are certain things I won't do (aside from those ill fits noted above), but not that many.
Intellectually I knew this was coming, of course.  While I have my benefits, I'm not the kind of candidate who's going to stride right off the graduation platform on Saturday and into a pulpit on Sunday (unlike some of my classmates).  I'm kind of an acquired taste, and finding the right fit won't be an instantaneous thing.
Still, entering the Stage of Unknowing is no fun, and no more bearable now than upon graduation with that Ph.D.  And, as far as I can tell, it's leaving me feeling just a little bit ... off.

The (fill in the blank) is dying!

If you slide down the front page of this blog to the mini-biography it displays, you'll discover (or be reminded) that I'm a musicologist by training, who walked away from a perfectly happy career in academia to set off on this fool's errand.  I have no regrets about doing so, even as I also assert the seemingly contradictory assertion that I loved that particular vocation.  To be clear, there's plenty about academia that any academic could happily do without, much as there is plenty about the church vocations that any pastor or any other staff member would just as soon skip.  Still, I freely acknowledge that but for this swerve I'd have been quite content to live out my days in Lawrence, Kansas, getting fat and happy teaching and writing and hopefully lasting long enough to be able to afford tickets to Kansas Jayhawks basketball games.

One of the oddly amusing aspects of this swerve (except when it's no longer amusing) is the degree to which I seem to have traded one dying field for another.

*Note: though plenty of musicologists work in other musics besides classical, for this post I'm placing  myself within the framework of the classical music tradition.  It was where my research resided, it was most of what I taught, and put most simply, it was my first love.  

See, Mozart still lives!

It is something of a sport among cultural critics to proclaim the death, either present or imminent, of classical music.  Whether in the New York Times or The New Yorker or The New Republic, somebody desperately seeking a way to fill column inches decides to whip out the latest round of ugly-looking statistics and proclaim in tut-tutting tones The Death Of Classical Music.  The latest round, possibly set off by declining attendance numbers at the Metropolitan Opera (or perhaps predating those stats? I'm not entirely sure), appeared in the online magazine Slate, authored by someone named Mark Vanhoenacker, frankly added nothing new to the argument.  Stats were cited with due reverence, anecdotal evidence was elevated to the level of holy writ, blah blah blah.  This of course touched off the predictable volley of rebuttals to the presumed thesis; one of the more interesting appeared in The New Yorker, posted by one William Robin, which if nothing else appropriated the clever quote from Charles Rosen ("The death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition") and a fun visual aid, depicting various examples of classical music's presumed death throes through the ages, all the way back to 1324, before classical music, technically, existed.  It was dying before it was born!

The volley of articles of course is in turn filled out by panicked Facebook statuses and tweets, which provoke rebuttal Facebook comments and tweets, which in turn provoke oh-so-self-righteous defenses of the classical-is-dying claim, and so on and so on.  Eventually you're better off just popping in a CD or calling up iTunes and listening to some actual music.

I kid because I care.  This is perhaps not quite perennial, but pretty routine in the classical music field, and it is necessarily (and properly) part of the warning anyone who wants to study classical music, whether with ambitions to be a performer or teacher or researcher, needs to hear before making that commitment.  Indeed, one could argue that my departure from the field was in its own way a favor to some young rising musicologist who could make the move to a tenurable post at one of the better music schools in the country.  (You're welcome.)

I also kid because, as it turns out, I didn't really escape the narrative by pursuing this fool's errand; the terms merely changed.

In case you haven't heard, the church is dying.  You can hear it from the likes of neo-Calvinist (why don't we just call these people fundamentalists and be done with it?) Mark Driscoll; a former Archbishop of Canterbury, who foresees Christianity eradicated in Britain within a generation; by others who claim to welcome its demise (of course, if you follow that link you'll see that the author is really about something else with his claim); and if you flip the Google search to "Christianity is dying" you'll quickly get to the likes of Richard (A Little Pedophilia Never Hurt Anybody) Dawkins, who would be truly pleased to see it go.  The point being, you don't have to look very hard at all to find a lot of talk on the subject of the church's demise.

Having lived with it for many years in the classical realm and now settling in for a lifetime of dying in the church, it has become obvious to me that there are some definite similarities in the x-is-dying narratives:

1. Both the church and classical music are perceived as having been "dominant" institutions in the United States for a time.  In both cases, the extent of that dominance is probably overstated.  The church might have been able to build itself big buildings with tall pointy steeples and pass a lot of Sunday blue laws at its peak, but looking at the shape and trajectory of American history it's fairly questionable to what extent the church actually had any influence; far more, it seems, that the church in these here United States was shaped, prodded, and to some degree absorbed by the culture it thought it was redeeming.  Classical music, similarly, was never quite so dominant as its would-be undertakers like to claim.  To the degree that one thinks of the widespread availability of, say, live orchestral music, it's hard to argue that there's been a better time than now, when one can find orchestras -- and good ones at that -- in places like Richmond, Tallahassee, and other small to mid-sized cities where such a thought would have been laughable a hundred years ago.  They may not be full-time orchestras, but they are there.  Also, one can suggest that whatever cultural clout classical music may have had at it peak was squandered much as the church's was.  When classical music actually had "mainstream" radio access with the likes of Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra or other such broadcast outlets, did the establishment seek out brilliant young composers writing daring new stuff, exploiting modern orchestral capacity in vivid and thrilling ways?  Ehh, no. Toscanini and his ilk (and yes, even Leonard Bernstein in his TV shows and other broadcasts) whacked the country over the head repeatedly with the (European) (male) canon, and even when some (male) Americans did break through they turned out to be susceptible to the same cultural clotting as Beethoven and Brahms and the lot.  Opportunity squandered?  Check and check.

My man George Chadwick wasn't canonical enough for those snobs.

2. In both cases the substance of the thing is too easily confused with the institutions that have maintained it over the years.  Is classical music dying?  No.  Are certain classical music institutions -- orchestras, opera houses, recording companies -- dying?  Yep.  While this is tragic for those whose livelihood and security depends on those institutions, propping up the large, unwieldy apparatus of the Grandiose Philharmonic isn't necessarily the answer for sustaining classical music in the twenty-first century any more than bringing back steel mills and blowing up more mountains for coal mining is the best way to sustain the American economy in the twenty-first century.  Likewise, the model of the First (Insert Denomination Here) Church with a program for every party and every party its own program, might just not be the best way to be about the business of doing Christ's work in God's world these days.

2a. Furthermore, maybe a bit of forced adjustment might just unleash a bit of creativity on the part of both institutions.  Maybe an orchestra using Google Glass might just be one way to provoke interest in yet another round of Beethoven's Fifth (if that's such a desirable aim; it is, after all, a pretty strong piece of music despite its massive overplay), if an orchestra is game for it.  Maybe sermons as starting points for extended dialogue via Facebook or Twitter or whatever comes next (even face-to-face!  gasp!) can be a lifeline for the people, if a preacher can get over the presumption that cell phone = distraction.  Maybe the increasing prominence of empty chairs in the concert hall or empty pews in the church prompts both institutions to think outside the walls, going where people are?  Maybe instead of singing "Silent Night" in a darkened sanctuary with candles on Christmas Eve, we throw open the doors and hit the sidewalks to sing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"?  Or maybe we find ways to invite the world into our burdensome buildings so that all people are being served by them, not just us select few?

3. Both get accused of being old and gray, predominated by the elderly pining for the Good Old Days. This is often true.  So what?  You got something against old people?  You age-bigot, you.

At any rate, the confusion factor above is worth repeating.  Classical music is ... well, music.  It isn't the Metropolitan Opera or the New York Philharmonic or the Emerson String Quartet.  Neither is the church the big building with the tall pointy steeple on the corner of First and Main.  It is people, even if the people themselves forget that sometimes.

Hey, I've got nothing against the Emerson String Quartet.  They're really good.

All that having been said, I am no futurist.  Here I cop C.S. Lewis's line about the future being something we all get to at the rate of twenty-four hours a day, not a place reserved for favored heroes.  Futurists in both classical music and church will no doubt go about making grand pronouncements about What Must Be Done To Save The Church/Classical Music.  They'll generally be wrong.  No one will hold them to account.  And the cycle will repeat itself.  Some churches will go towards a different kind of service, and after an initial boost they'll start sinking even faster than the fussy old "traditional" churches.  Some orchestras will go heavily into "pops" performances, and after an initial boost they'll lose their novelty and keep right on sagging.

Tomorrow I will be attending something called NEXT Church.  A regional gathering, to be precise, mostly because it happens to have landed more or less in my front yard.  I am going mostly to be skeptical, for reasons hinted in the paragraph above.  I will be watching intently for any signs of ageism, urgency to pronounce last rites on the church, panacea prescriptions to Save The Church, or anything that smacks of the above.  Don't go there with me.  I've worked in a dying institution before, and lived to tell about it.


UPDATE, Feb. 4: So I went.  I can wish it well, but I don't see the fit for me there.  Just to clear that up.  As I think I snarked in some past post, my particular talents and interests probably render me more of a PAST Church type.

One year

One year ago today I posted a blog entry that began with the following: "No point in beating around the bush.  That colonoscopy yesterday led to a diagnosis of cancer of the rectum."

In the intervening year I have been bombarded with radiation, cut open and mutilated, and poisoned.  I don't really know yet whether the cancer is still there or not.  I have a PET-CT scan scheduled for September 3 in aid of answering that question.  I'm supposed to have a colonoscopy as well, but that hasn't been scheduled yet because of the infection referenced in the last blog post. In fits and starts, the effects of that infection seem to be fading at last, though I still have to be extra-cautious about what I eat, apparently.

In the intervening year I have ranted and screamed and pouted; made strange jokes and indulged in bits of gallows humor; suppressed even more humor that would inevitably, given the nature and location of the cancer and treatment, descended to "bathroom humor" level; been surprised not to wake up with a bag attached to a hole in my side; taken enough Imodium that I should own stock in the company by now; had legs that would not let me rest at all; been unable to leave the house and gone anyway; preached a sermon while totally hopped up on painkillers; and gone through all manner of other health traumas and indignities that I have not described in this blog, and probably will not.  You can't handle the truth.

In the intervening year I have staggered through Old Testament as one wandering in the wilderness; practice-baptized a baby; broken bread; been on the giving and receiving end of pastoral care; attended my first classes via video hookup; made the rookie mistake I always warned students against, biting off more subject than I could possibly chew in the given paper assignment; led a worship ritual in a park; gotten to know A Brief Statement of Faith well enough to hack my way through teaching a class on it; preached five times and chanted a psalm in worship, for internship credit; tried and failed to be a polity wonk; become a candidate for ordination; completed three of my four senior ordination exams and have the fourth in progress (results not to be known for a few weeks); and somehow managed not to wash out of seminary.

In the intervening year I have gone to Disney World and walked, very slowly and with lots of stops, "around the world" at Epcot; gone to spring training for the first time since moving out of Florida; gone back to Lawrence for the first time since moving and, to be honest, kinda wished I could've stayed; stood on the edge of the Konza Prairie and let the wind nudge me about like tallgrass; finally taken a bite of the Little Apple; been to the Vietnam memorial in D.C. for the first time in years; been to George Washington's birthplace, James Monroe's birthplace (or the empty spot on the ground where scholars think it is), Thomas Jefferson's famous house, and James Madison's not-so-famous house (but no Civil War sites); been to Flying Squirrels baseball games and Spiders basketball games in Richmond and Nationals baseball games in D.C.; spent a tremendous summer working in the soon-to-be-trendy town of Ashland, VA; gone to three of four weddings in a summer of more-weddings-than-I've-been-to-in-my-married-life-so-far-combined, all for outstanding people, classmates, and friends half my age or less; and somehow managed to stay awake for some of it.

I've been alive, wondered if I was dead, sorta wished I was dead, was glad to be alive, didn't want to get out of bed, couldn't go to sleep, gotten up a dozen times in the middle of the night, and am still here for whatever reason.  And here comes another year of it.

So August 24 is going to be one of those days.  Diagnosis Day?  Your Life Is Now Hell Day?  Your Body Is Against You Day?  Whatever.  I guess I'm still here.  And that exegesis exam doesn't give a rip about any of this.  So, hopefully some sleep, and hopefully fresh for a new day of whatever the heck this life is.

Damned, beautiful things

This May I have been taking a course on Ecology and Worship.  The primary thrust of the class has been to consider and act upon the challenge of creating liturgy that is more mindful of God's creation, in such a way as to discourage the kind of separation of one's faith from how one treats the planet.  That is a hugely oversimplified description, but hopefully it will do for now.

I came into the class for a few different reasons: I really, really find joy in creating liturgy; I do believe the church has not been very good at calling humanity to its right role in relation to God's creation; I have this strange idea that what happens in a church's liturgy sticks more than pastors may realize, including the corollary that if nothing happens, that sticks too; and did I mention that I really like creating liturgy?  I've written a bunch of it, for sure, and maybe if I'm not too much of a sluggard I'll be writing more.

Another, back-of-the-mind issue that was at play was a level of concern about the condition of creation itself.  We've not been particularly good stewards of it, and we may well be to the point of reaping the whirlwind where we have sown the wind.  I'm not the type inclined to dismiss what 98% of experts say on a given subject, so the possibilities of what this planet and everything living on it might be looking at in the not-distant-enough future are of concern.  I'd also say that even if one decides that one can't make up one's mind either way on the subject, why in the world would one not err on the side of caution?

Note: if you are the type who prefers to dismiss what 98% of experts say on a given subject, you probably don't want to stick your nose in here.  You won't change my mind on the subject, but you may very well change my mind about you, and not necessarily for the better.  And if you go the Mark Driscoll route and contend that we might as well crank up the SUVs because God's gonna burn it all anyway, I will take note of your hideously bad theology and particularly unloving nature for all the world (or at least the four people who read this) to see.  

End of rant.  For now.

At any rate, there was one other latent challenge in this class.  Despite how goosebumpy and sentimental it is to get together and sing "Circle of Life," nature is not always a pretty place.  Predation exists.  Animals prey on other animals.  Heck, even some plants prey on other animals.  Climatologically, storms get destructive even when the planet is in the best of shape.  How do we balance such concepts with the notion that creation is good, it is created of God, and our worship ought to include praise and honor to God for that good creation?

Then, of course, just as the end of the term is arriving and I'm feeling pretty good about it, those tornadoes happened out in Oklahoma.

Damn, damn, damn.

With a town looking like a war zone, children trapped in destroyed schools, and a death toll that may approach the Joplin tornado, this big one was a silence-inducer, at least for folks with souls.  (Of course there were those ready to proclaim the tornado as God's punishment for insert person's bete noire here because, well, hatred.  I'm not going to give them the pleasure of publicizing their names because I don't believe in feeding trolls.)  What could one say?  Aside from repeated kyrie eleisons, what could one say?

How then does one speak of the glories of creation in the wake of nature at its most destructive?  Theologians far better than I have struggled with this and not, as far as I can see, come up with a lot of useful stuff to say.  There is a tension at work that we, in our finite experience and wisdom, cannot resolve.  We want a binary world: unequivocally good or unequivocally evil, no gray space in between.  Nature refuses to play along with this.  The same climate that gives you that beautiful weather for your Memorial Day picnic also gives you Hurricane Sandy.  The body that carries you and makes you and allows you to have any kind of interaction with the world turns out to be generating cancer just for the hell of it.  That gorgeous lion you saw on your Kenyan safari went on to maul and devour that antelope you had just seen earlier.  The circle of life has plenty of death about it.

On the other hand, terrible blizzards in January and February help ward off drought in July and August.  Or the next tropical storm or hurricane turns out to be a desperately needed drought-breaker.  The raging forest fire clears away clutter and undergrowth that chokes off new life, allowing new trees to grow.  The cycle of death has plenty of life about it.

I don't know quite what redeeming quality tornadoes might have.  They can be beautiful things, when they keep themselves to remote Kansas wheat fields where only storm chasers and shutterbugs are around to be threatened by them.  That's no consolation this week, when a populous city was in the way instead.  Satellite pictures of hurricanes, the kind of thing we've only been able to see for the last few decades, sometimes reveal amazingly beautiful energy, near-perfect symmetry, stuff that can be gorgeous to contemplate when it churns away harmlessly at sea but becomes The Enemy when it threatens an island or a coast.

On the other hand, most other kinds of natural disasters have some avoidable factor.  If you don't want to get destroyed by a hurricane, don't build your house right on the beach.  If you do, don't whine when it gets washed away.  Fear earthquakes?  Don't live on the San Andreas fault.  If you're going to live right on the river, you run the risk of being flooded.  Tornadoes, though?  What do you say?  Don't live in Oklahoma?  I'm not quite sure that's workable.  So how, in all honesty, do we praise God for the goodness of creation in the face of monsters like that?

Oddly, I am reminded of the doctrine of the Trinity, to be commemorated in this Sunday's liturgy.  This was far from a settled thing for many decades or even centuries in the early church.  Positions that smell of heresy today were widely accepted and taught as sound doctrine.  Pitched battles of rhetoric were waged over the issue.

In the end, the church decided (as one might see reflected in the Nicene Creed) not to decide to some degree.  The upshot is that there is one God.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  One God.  Three in One.  One in Three.  How?  You'll not find that answered in there.  We can theologize about it all we want until the angels dancing on the pinhead get tired and go for a beer.  We're not really going to solve it.  But we will say, in our most basic theology, that it is.

So too with the goodness of creation even in the face of its destructiveness?  That tornado striking Moore, Oklahoma was a horrible tragedy.  We are called to live in harmony and right relationship with God's good created world.  Resolve at all costs, or live in the tension?  Three in One.  One in Three.  Resolve at all costs, one or the other, Three or One?  Or live in the mystery?

"Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid."  With all due respect to Frederick Buechner, that is a difficult thing to do or not do in a moment like this.

Grubbing around in the dirt

I am not typically a person inclined to gardening, farming, or other such earthy pursuits.  My wife is the gardener in the family.  Today was an exception.  A group from the seminary spent the morning planting peppers at Shalom Farms, a faith-based farm operation outside Richmond that works with groups or neighborhoods in Richmond that otherwise will not necessarily have access to much food at all, much less the freshly-grown type.
Despite the fatigue/stamina issues that plagued me earlier this week, the morning passed without incident.  It helped that much of the work could be done from a sitting position, even if that meant dirty jeans from scooting around by the seat of my pants (literally).  Good fellowship helped to pass the time and to be less bothered by the gradually-encroaching heat of the day.
There are far more eloquent and informed authors on such subjects as food security, the benefits of local food, and other issues that a group like Shalom Farms addresses.  There are also far more eloquent and informed authors on the relationship between being aware of the Earth and its condition and Christian faith.  This is not a space in which I'm going to go into those topics, not tonight at least.  I got through the morning just fine, but I'm not that energetic at the moment.  I merely raise them to indicate, between today's activity and my May term class, that these are things on my mind at the moment.
It's hard not to think of such things, when my compadres back in Lawrence were posting pictures of snow on Facebook on May 2, or when one reads of the wacky drought/flood cycles of Australia's Murray-Darling river system, not helped by dam building and development.  When the earth's weather puts one in mind of a pendulum gradually swinging out to greater and greater extremes (more drought-y droughts, more destructive floods, Category 1 hurricanes that flood like Category 3 hurricanes, winter that lasts until May (and at least in this area, didn't really seem to get going until March)...it is hard to feel like the world is well.  One begins to wonder if the word "normal" applies any more in any meaningful sense.
My planting a few peppers this morning will not make much of a dent in that, nor in the degree to which folks living in housing projects will actually be able to eat much of anything healthy (though, combined with the labor of others, it does make some dent there).  This kind of realization leads some to decide that, since their contribution is small and not necessarily difference-making, they might as well not bother.  One might see this as a matter of too much humility, or perhaps of despair.  I suppose one could, if not feeling charitable, spin it as a kind of arrogance -- "if I'm not that important in the scheme of things, I'm not going to bother with it... ."  As I said, that would be a non-charitable interpretation.  That doesn't necessarily make it untrue, in some cases, I suppose.
So, I went grubbing around in the dirt this morning.  It make me tired.  It didn't make me holy.  It made me happy, sort of.  And it made me think.  That can't hurt.

Homily for a "practice baptism"

In one of my classes this term our job has been, partly, to get experience in the various practical aspects of the sacrament of baptism, from the prayers around the event to the actual moment of baptism itself.  The culmination of this practice comes now, as the semester ends, with each of us charged to carry out a full-fledged baptismal service, from prayer for illumination and sermon to the baptismal act itself.
Normally the subject of these baptismal practice runs is Eva, who's a real doll.  I mean that literally; "Eva" is a doll.  Fortunately, however, a friend of ours (associate pastor at the church we've been attending) was incredibly kind/gracious/brave/crazy to allow me to "baptize" her four-month-year-old son.  The nature of the exercise required a very short sermon (hence the term "homily"), five to seven minutes only.
Here's what I came up with, on Romans 6:1-11.  Having real people to include seemed to me to be very helpful, though you might disagree.  Make of it what you will.

Homily

John Howell McGuire wouldn’t stand a chance.

I know, I know.  That’s a horrible thing to say.  After all, look at him.  He’s soooo cute.  Especially when he gets that happy little gurgling smile going that he does…how could you think anything like that, pastor? 

Well, it’s true.  He is cute. 

But still, he wouldn’t stand a chance.  Not any more than any of us ever would have stood a chance.

Somehow or another, whether we know it or not, we would all fall into it.  We wouldn’t be able to escape it.  No matter if, like Paul later in Romans, we found ourselves doing wrong at the very time we most want to do right, or if we slipped into it unawares, we’d all fall into that condition called sin.  We’d be caught in its snare, entangled in its web, and we wouldn’t stand a chance.  John Howell, as cute as he is, is no different from any of us in this regard.  One of these days, he too would be caught up in that snare and be imprisoned in that condition of sin.  He wouldn’t stand a chance.

Except…

A beautiful word, in this case, “except.”  Except for the love of God, for the unrelenting persistence of Jesus, except for that beautiful and mystifying and totally undeserved and unexpected thing called grace.  Grace, that beautiful and lovely thing that took that terrible turn through a cross into a grave, where it was sealed up and shut away and supposed to be dead forever, only to burst out of that tomb and obliterate any bond that death and sin ever could claim on us. 

Because of that grace we don’t live in sin.  It’s true, we do fall, at times.  John Howell will fall, too, at times, just like we all do.  But just as for us, that fall will not be John Howell’s doom.  It won’t condemn him forever to bondage to sin and death, just as it does not do so for us. 

Because of that grace we live in Christ.  Living in Christ means that we live through that awful cross-death and tomb and burst out of that tomb and live into new life, resurrection-tested and resurrection-approved life.  It may not stand that sin is completely dead to us, but living in Christ means being dead to sin, no longer bossed about by its power over us, no longer enslaved to the passions and miseries of that old self that Paul reminds us was crucified with Christ in that awful cross-death.  That self is destroyed; we live new selves now. 

It gets a little twisty as Paul explains it in our text.  Talk of being united with Christ in a death like Christ’s and united with Christ in a resurrection like Christ’s, dying and rising and being dead to sin and living to God, in Christ; it can begin to feel like a theological tongue-twister.

Fortunately, the tongue-twister comes to us in a package we can perhaps begin to understand a little better, with a little more clarity.  That thorny business about dying and rising is imparted to us, displayed to us in the act of grace called baptism.  When an adult stands before us at this font, or a parent like Elizabeth brings a child like John Howell before this congregation, we are taught again, reminded again of the unbelievable act of grace that Christ enacted for us, dying for us so that we could die with him, rising for us so that we could rise with him into that new resurrected life, bondage to sin no longer included.  We are graced by being reminded of God’s grace to all of us in the act of baptizing John Howell here.

It’s not a magic act.  The water came from the tap.  There isn’t a magic spell that turns it into anything else but ordinary water.  And yet in that ordinary water, and words that are very human words even as they speak of thoroughly superhuman grace, God shows to us yet again how God has loved us beyond our capacity to measure or comprehend. 

This act of baptizing also seals John Howell into this little corner of the body of Christ.  It seals us, this congregation, to the task of nurturing and supporting this little man as he grows up into someone who will understand these things, even the ones that are thorny at times, because he sees them demonstrated not just in the waters of baptism but also in the bread and cup of the Eucharist, in the Sunday school lessons we teach him, in Sunday night pizza and choir and youth group, in the grace and goodwill and forbearance we show to each other, in the ways we minister to those inside and outside the walls of this chapel. 

One of these days, God willing, John Howell will come before us as a young man taking these things onto himself, being confirmed in his faith.  For now we seal to ourselves the task of nurturing him in this grace, of upholding Elizabeth in her task of raising him in this grace, this beautiful and strange and mysterious and undeserved and maybe even a little frightening thing, this thing that means that he, like all of us, stands a chance.

The obstacle course

I'm not the kind of hyper-popular blogger who is missed by thousands when I go missing for more than a week.  I know that and I'm o.k. with that.  Still, for the faithful few who do keep up with this blog, I do try not to let too much time lag between entries.

So it's been a couple of weeks since last I blogged.  I got to enjoy our vacation with my wife's folks, including a couple of spring training games.  I even got to operate the radar gun used to measure pitch speeds by one scout.  Need proof?  Look here.

I only hope I didn't ruin some pitcher's prospects by screwing up the gun's reading.  Baseball careers are fragile things, especially for pitchers.

I had and have to remind myself that I needed that break.  It's hard especially to remember that right now, as the end-of-semester crunch becomes more and more present, with papers to write, projects to prepare, trips for non-vacation purposes (including my first trip back to Kansas since moving) including the ordination process and its next step for me, and of course the continuing fact of being treated for that pesky cancer.  Whichever poet penned that line about April being the cruelest month is starting to sound prophetic.

Chemo is still a draining thing, but a day or two of fatigue and some tingling fingers are hardly the kind of side effects I feel highly compelled to complain about, compared to what others have gone through.  It isn't how I planned to spend my middle year, mind you, but I do know I'm fortunate compared to many who have been far more wracked by their treatment than I.

I'm reminded again that I've been fortunate to be surrounded by an array of incredibly supportive and caring people.  Many of them are also pretty stunning ministers-to-be, like this one.  If your idea of the future of the church hinges on preserving existing institutions or maintaining social or cultural status, you're probably down and out about it; when I look at the people who are going to be part of helping shape and guide that future, I feel a lot better.

What role I play in that is still a part of the process unfolding.  I can't know which direction things will go; I still feel a strong pull towards the doing of worship and liturgy, but there are other things that start to make sense to me as well.  Too soon to talk about them here, but it might be a topic for future blogs.  We'll see.

In the meantime, the cruelest month awaits, the gauntlet is thrown down, the obstacle course demands that I run it.  And if it turns out to be a couple of weeks before the next entry I beg your indulgence.

Putting the "fool" in "fool's errand"

There are times when I, even amidst all the cancer stuff, look ahead and get absolutely giddy with anticipation of whatever pastoral vocation may lie ahead.  I'm never so naive as to think such a vocation won't have its perils and pitfalls, but the idea of being in the church, living out a ministry that begins with presence and patience and listening and reflecting and waiting for that little twinge that says "now, the Lord is doing that new thing -- watch!  pay attention!" gets a little thrilling, particularly for someone whose existence has been a bit peripatetic up to now.

Then there are the times that make me shake my head and say "You're kidding, right?  You?  What makes you think you're ever going to get there?"

Seldom is there any one thing that makes me go there.  And it's not so much that that's a sad or frustrated place, as much as it is a place that makes me take a deep breath (as every person, nay even ever sentient being, even those out there in the universe whose physiology doesn't even require breathing, must do on occasion) and see myself as the most oddly-shaped peg (nothing nearly so simple as "square," not me) possible in a world of varying sizes of round holes.

For example: for our section this past Thursday in my Sacraments independent study, the assignment was to prepare and deliver a prayer of Thanksgiving Over the Water, part of the baptismal liturgy.  It could have been one of the prayers from the Book of Common Worship, it could have been from some other liturgical source, from another denomination or none at all; it could have been an original prayer (and I had written one the previous week, so that was already available).  Monday during my chemo transfusion I took to the web, to make one last sweep, so to speak, and see if anything promising turned up before I went back to one of the above.  I did find a compelling responsorial prayer from an Australian prayer book, which looked like a strong possibility to use.

Then, to my surprise, turned up a version of such a prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, set for intonation.  Of course I had to go for it.  The issue was settled before I even knew what I was doing.

In a world where the church is constantly under pressure to adapt and change and morph boldly into the future, where a whole Presbyterian organization is devoted to figuring out what "NEXT Church" looks like (they just had a big meeting this past week), where the past is something to be treated as if it carried bubonic plague, I'm off in my little corner chanting prayers like an addict.  Who am I kidding?  They don't hold meetings devoted to "PAST Church," and I'm off chanting almost by reflex.  I'm not that far from fifty.  My middle year of seminary is getting whacked around by cancer treatment.  My car CD player is far more likely to be occupied by Coltrane or Mendelssohn than by whoever this Mumford & Sons outfit is.  I am not a polished or highly refined physical presence by anybody's standards.  I'm not what anyone would call a particularly inspiring dynamic or outgoing leader type (my style, such as it is, is rather more quiet with much question-asking).  I'm not particularly well-connected.  I don't have any grand visions for the future.  Who am I kidding?

And yet the fool's errand continues.  There is no turning back, not because I haven't thought very hard about it at times, but because the thing, whatever it is, is still out there.  I'm less certain what "the thing" is anymore; I still imagine some form of pastoral calling, but my life has been so whacked around of late that I have to be open to different avenues by which such a vocation may be lived out.  Whatever that might be, I'm still on the path towards it, wherever that is.

I'm still here because every now and then my mind explodes in class, or in chapel, or just sitting and reading or talking -- not a destructive, waste-laying explosion, more like the Big Bang, with pockets of life springing out where there was only chaos and void before, and I know that another piece of the puzzle, another building block, has fallen into place.

I'm still here because I cannot get free of that sense of vocation, acting much like a particularly strong undertow, pulling me in directions I would not have imagined before, drowning me in a hope and a passion from which I have no desire to be rescued.

I'm still here because I can't imagine being anywhere else.  Even if I don't see anyplace for the bizarrely-shaped peg that I am to fit into.

Tallahassee Church Music Conference: Day (or Night) One

Since the event began this evening with a hymn singing as its kickoff event this can be a fairly brief post.  The name "Big Sing" gave me pause, wondering if someone had gotten a wild hair and plugged in a shape-note sing a la the "Big Singing" held in Benton, KY every year from the Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.  But no, this was quite a different event.

Led by John Thornburg, pastor, musician, and now itinerant leader of singing and worship consultation, the event was themed around "important questions a song enlivener must face."  (Yes, that term is new to me.)  To keep on point I'll go straight to the songs, so you can think about them too.

1. How much work are we actually willing for the people to do?  Paired with a simple, energetic Cameroonian chorus, one which, if you trust your musical leaders and/or congregation, could actually be elaborated and enlivened by having new stanzas devised on the spot.  Are you that brave?

2. How does your community go about "making a song its own"?  Is the song sacrosanct as given, or is a musician/congregation willing to make some sort of adaptation to increase its recognizability or accessibility.

3. What are your bottom line principles for what constitutes a proper text/tune marriage?  There are occasionally composers of hymn tunes who quite deliberately create tunes for new texts specifically to create tension between that tune and the mood of the text.  The prime example: a text about children hungry, poor, in desperate need, paired to the tune of ... "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

4. What is the thing we really fear about what is ahead for the song of the church?  How willing are we to dig deep down to the roots of what ails us in the church, demonstrated by a bracing text on the man at the healing pool, paired with a tune described by Thornburg as bluesy or even depressed (to me, on the other hand, it sounded like a ballad that might have been cut from Godspell.)

5. To what extent is the balance between sequential and cyclical song forms (as Michael Hawn defines these categories) a spiritual necessity and not just an intellectual category?  The contrast of old familiar tunes known by heart and in heart, often fairly repetitive, versus tunes more strophic in nature which necessarily require intellectual pursuit to follow where the tune and text lead next.

6. Just because there are laments in the Psalms, does that mean we have to sing our lament?  Is the variety of song in the Bible descriptive of its time, or prescriptive for all generations?  The contrast here between American/European traditions of lament singing vs. the virtual absence of it in African practice, supposedly because the "pain is so close to the surface, there is no need to sing lament."  (My gut reflex here was straight out of pastoral care: the fact that the pain was so close to the surface is the very reason the lament needs to be drawn out, whether spoken or sung.

7. What are the true limits of subject matter in the songs and hymns we choose for public worship?  When you say, "We can't sing that," why do you say it?   The example being a Shirley Erena Murray text which includes the "abuser and abused" at the same Lord's table.

8. How do you 'weave people into the song' (Mairi Munro), i.e. give them a reason to appreciate why this song is being sung and why it is being sung now?  What is the role and what are the limits of song introductions in song enlivening?  Having already been warned against "cultural tourism" in our sing, it is natural to make sure why this South African tune is appropriate and even needful here.  Even a good hymn story, though, might be too long for the moment.  Here is a spot in the parish where pastor and musician probably need to work together.

The sing was followed by night prayer.

I doubt I'll have the strength or time to provide thorough breakdowns of the next two days, but I do hope to reflect on some of the highlights each day.  Just in case anyone's interested.

Timing

Here I am, wearily marking the advent of a new class term.  The January term wrapped up on Wednesday, so Thursday and Friday constituted a 'break' between terms.  Woo hoo.
Wearily, I must say, because sleep is still an elusive thing these days.  Things are better than they were a couple of weeks ago, but I still don't have a whole lot of success getting much sleep before the legs start going berserk and demanding to run a marathon immediately, while the rest of my body is asking if my legs would kindly shut up and quit causing such a disturbance so we can get to sleep like a normal human being.  Where Friday night was actually not too bad, last night was pretty horrible, albeit (I think) for a more mundane reason: too much caffiene, too late.  Fortunately, there wasn't a whole lot that need doing urgently today, so sleepwalking through it was not a big problem.

The timing of this is of course horrendous.  The one thing you want to be able to do in recovery from any kind of significant surgery, I'd think, is sleep.  And here I am fighting to get any sleep at all.  It is possible that the restless-leg problem is related to the surgery; one thing that can set it off is the process of coming off painkillers, and I certainly was on those immediately after the surgery and immediately after returning home (I don't remember Christmas much at all).  Still, what with my body still trying to get its act together and me trying to carry on with my studies as if nothing were amiss, I'd like to be able to sleep at night.  I'm old that way.

This unwanted detour on my fool's errand has caused me to think about the timing of things a lot lately. For example: had I not taken off on this fool's errand and were I still teaching, this was the year I'd have been up for tenure.  The mind boggles to think what that process would have been like if I were going through cancer treatment as I have been at the same time.  Throw in that one of my colleagues just went through cancer treatment last year, and I would guess that the whole climate would have been quite edgy.

Of course, there's no guarantee that the timing of my cancer diagnosis would have been the same.  It might have been diagnosed earlier, or (horrible thought, this) it might not even have been diagnosed yet.  Financially I'd have been better off, though this would have been a major hit no matter where I was in life.  I have to think that balancing teaching with all this treatment and surgery would have been a lot more difficult than balancing being a student with it has been.  But I don't know that for sure.

Stepping back from health issues, the whole issue of why I'm here now is always fertile ground for wondering.  Why did this jolt of a calling have to happen now?  Why did it have to wait until I'd finally settled in at a place (town, school, community of colleagues, the whole deal) where after a rather peripatetic life I was quite ready to settle down and get old and fat(ter) and generally make a life?  Why not sooner, before I had made that move, or even before I got into the teaching career at all?  Or even before I took off for that Ph.D.?  Or how about later, after I'd had a nice long satisfying career teaching and researching?

I've done one seminary degree before, a Master of Church Music degree, at a seminary in a denomination I no longer embrace.  Was I so broken and damaged by that experience that I was missing out on a call then?  (I certainly wasn't thinking fond thoughts about preachers at that point, I can admit that much.)  Did I have to make a transition into a new denominational home first?  I suppose that makes sense, but still, did it have to take this long?

Or was there something about the musicological career that was necessary to prepare me for this particular move?  And if so, for goodness' sake what?  Up till now I've tended to think this was the case, and at some point it would become clear.  I'm halfway through the degree, and clues aren't necessarily revealing themselves.

Let me be clear; this is not a complaining post.  I am still tremendously awed and overjoyed to be where I am and to be among the people I am among.  Still, the fog isn't lifting in some areas, and my nature is such that I can't help but wonder how all of this is going to fit together, or when.