It's a well-known fact that we southerners live with a great weight on our backs known as "the past." I'm acutely aware of that seemingly inescapable burden as I sort through pictures and artifacts preparing for our move. I don't even know who some of the people are in the pictures. Perhaps I keep their pictures thinking that somehow we'll figure it out. I can't quite envision a future, however, in which I sit with all these documents and actually do figure it out.
Keeping these things has something to do with an imagined future in which these items define me and add more to my life than they do now. But I don't think that keeping all of this will bring that about in any significant way. The mystery is part of the heritage, anyhow.
I am starting to think it would be a great relief to live lighter and to only keep that which is necessary for telling our story.
Also, much of this material stuff is really about someone else's life. I think of the phrase "let the dead bury their dead." Maybe we haul the dead around for too long and don't get around to living our lives fully. Maybe we do that in music, too. I'm not totally sure what that means.
Maybe I'm just tired of packing!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Hymn Society - Birmingham 2010
We had a great week at Samford with old and new Hymn Society friends. This week, I was most impressed by the good ecumenical experience that these meetings provide. Every time, I come home more aware and more interested in other believers and their heritage.
I put together my own little American music conference by choosing particular small sessions to attend. Several dealt with African-American hymn traditions including the work of Tindley (a composing pastor who served a mega-church in the early 20th century), research into the second oldest African-American hymnal (presented by a distant cousin of mine, Dick Hulan!), and a session on several female African-American hymn writers. In this last session, I learned Margaret Douroux's beaatifully moving "Give Me a Clean Heart." We also enjoyed an evening of shaped-note singing, a hymn festival led by James Abbington and dedicated to the music of "the unknown bards" who wrote the spirituals (the quoted phrase comes from James Weldon Johnson's poem about those spiritual composers), and evening prayer led joyfully by our friends Stefan Waligur and Kaaren Lynn Ray. These evening prayer times featured bagpipes and took place in Hodges Chapel, which is by far the most ornate worship space I have seen in a Baptist community. Click here for a virtual tour.
The personal lessons of the week for me highlighted two of my on-going themes: the deep meaning and significance of community and the importance of thinking for one's self.
The most emotional moment of the meeting was singing "We Shall Overcome" hand-in-hand with my fellow musicians and realizing the endurance, peace-mindedness, and heroism of the many great civil rights workers whose names and deeds I need to celebrate more.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Nearing the End in Ahoskie
Sunday was a meaningful day for me in worship in Ahoskie. Kathy and I have two more Sundays with First Baptist, I believe, so I'm reflecting more and more on the meaning of our three years in this community and on the culmination of our work and learning here.
The service started with "God of Our Fathers" utilizing the recently expanded capabilities of our pipe organ. As I was pushing buttons and making enormous sounds, it occurred to me that I was operating one of the most powerful machines that an individual can operate in our vicinity - at least a very big musical machine. Normally, power like that doesn't mean much to me, but the freshness of the sound on this occasion invited me to think of God's power in a way that moved and instructed me.
When I first started playing for worship in Ahoskie, I was feeling the importance of imaging contemplation and gentleness through the way I played in most of our services. I was also trying to make sure the voices of the congregation were supported but not overwhelmed and that the people never felt oppressed by the sounds of the organ. These ideas are still at the core of my approach and personality, but on Sunday, I also felt comfortable with the way power was expressed through the musical rendering.
Why? The text of "God of Our Fathers" eventually focuses on Heaven and the resolution of our earthly conflicts. It lends itself to what I like to picture: the slain lamb returning in such glory that all our attempts at having power are simply irrelevant. I wonder if God's laughing at us, as is sometimes described in the Psalms, is not so much that we are in derision but that we're just funny in our self-importance.
It seems to me that it is not enough to stress God's power, because power alone is not what we believe to be God's essence. God's power is coupled with a willingness to become infinitesimal and totally vulnerable, and to sacrifice self. I can see more of the unique quality of the God of Christianity in this combination of unimaginable power and willingness to become tiny. The Trinity helps me hold all these aspects together in a single deity.
In addition, God's power must transcend all earthly power to an astronomical proportion. An earthly expression of power must be like a cut-out paper doll compared to the reality of the universal God. At the same time, I wonder if the true lowliness of Jesus also dramatically transcends all our human efforts at humility and service.
During Sunday's service, I played "Jesu, Jesu" as offertory, and I played it as expression of tenderness and intimacy. I sensed that I needed to do so to connect back to the grandeur of "God of Our Fathers" so that, all added up, we provided a fuller, truer picture of God's way with us.
The approach to playing for worship services that I have been developing in Ahoskie became crystal clear to me at that time: there need to be a variety of expressions in worship that are combined meaningfully to best convey a sense of the unique character of God. Transcendence is a profoundly stirring part of that unique character to my way of thinking. After considering God's utter transcendence in both powerfulness and powerlessness, I felt as though I had worshiped more thoroughly in spirit and truth than I usually do.
The service started with "God of Our Fathers" utilizing the recently expanded capabilities of our pipe organ. As I was pushing buttons and making enormous sounds, it occurred to me that I was operating one of the most powerful machines that an individual can operate in our vicinity - at least a very big musical machine. Normally, power like that doesn't mean much to me, but the freshness of the sound on this occasion invited me to think of God's power in a way that moved and instructed me.
When I first started playing for worship in Ahoskie, I was feeling the importance of imaging contemplation and gentleness through the way I played in most of our services. I was also trying to make sure the voices of the congregation were supported but not overwhelmed and that the people never felt oppressed by the sounds of the organ. These ideas are still at the core of my approach and personality, but on Sunday, I also felt comfortable with the way power was expressed through the musical rendering.
Why? The text of "God of Our Fathers" eventually focuses on Heaven and the resolution of our earthly conflicts. It lends itself to what I like to picture: the slain lamb returning in such glory that all our attempts at having power are simply irrelevant. I wonder if God's laughing at us, as is sometimes described in the Psalms, is not so much that we are in derision but that we're just funny in our self-importance.
It seems to me that it is not enough to stress God's power, because power alone is not what we believe to be God's essence. God's power is coupled with a willingness to become infinitesimal and totally vulnerable, and to sacrifice self. I can see more of the unique quality of the God of Christianity in this combination of unimaginable power and willingness to become tiny. The Trinity helps me hold all these aspects together in a single deity.
In addition, God's power must transcend all earthly power to an astronomical proportion. An earthly expression of power must be like a cut-out paper doll compared to the reality of the universal God. At the same time, I wonder if the true lowliness of Jesus also dramatically transcends all our human efforts at humility and service.
During Sunday's service, I played "Jesu, Jesu" as offertory, and I played it as expression of tenderness and intimacy. I sensed that I needed to do so to connect back to the grandeur of "God of Our Fathers" so that, all added up, we provided a fuller, truer picture of God's way with us.
The approach to playing for worship services that I have been developing in Ahoskie became crystal clear to me at that time: there need to be a variety of expressions in worship that are combined meaningfully to best convey a sense of the unique character of God. Transcendence is a profoundly stirring part of that unique character to my way of thinking. After considering God's utter transcendence in both powerfulness and powerlessness, I felt as though I had worshiped more thoroughly in spirit and truth than I usually do.
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