Silence, Music, and Deep Prayer 9

Last night's class focused on some important English-speaking and Anglican spiritual masters including Julian of Norwich, Thomas Cranmer, Lancelot Andrewes, and Evelyn Underhill. Dr. Cotton suggested that "Morning Has Broken" might fit nicely with that emphasis, so our musical activities were centered around the tune BUNESSAN (most strongly associated with the text "Morning Has Broken") and texts that have been published with that tune.

This study of BUNESSAN was in keeping with our overall theme of meditation and prayerful music in that we returned again and again to the tune over the course of the evening. We know repetition changes things. The relentless movement of water over a stone carves a new shape. Repetition of information alters our brains. And it is my theory that truths traveling over a familiar pathway might gain an easier welcome to our hearts and more readily redirect us. Perhaps a well-known tune like BUNESSAN could function as such a pathway.

Following up on Dr. Cotton's discussion of the riches of the Book of Common Prayer and its placement of prayer in community (as opposed to primarily in the individual's prayer closet), we briefly considered the fact that most hymns are also envisioned by their authors as expressions of a community and not just of individuals. As a congregation, we direct the words of hymn-writers to God and we exhort one another. Some texts such as "St. Patrick's Breastplate" are more obviously prayers for individuals to pray, however, but that text doesn't seem likely to have been conceived as a congregational song to begin with.

We also noted that the evening's selection of hymn texts demonstrates a bit of parity in that the first three texts are by women and the last three are by men. It has been through the writing of hymns that women have sometimes been allowed to preach over the centuries. 

Bunessan

Bunessan is a tune and a town, and might also be a tone. This post discusses the town and the origin of the tune. It also includes a link to my own arrangement of the tune which was used as a prelude for this session at All Saints'.

A sense of musical space and movement through it is an aspect of experiencing a tune. This involves the range of the pitches in the tune, the tessitura of the tune (that is, which part of that range is utilized the most), and the tune's way of moving (steps, leaps, etc.).

We started our study by humming BUNESSAN and tracing its shape in the air to raise our consciousness about the details of its topography. In doing so, we found that the tune has some steep rises as well as some gently rolling passages, just like the scenery around Bunessan. Over the course of the evening, we explored how the interplay of text and tune might alter our perception of the meaning of this hilliness. 

"Morning Has Broken" 
Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

This is the text most often associated with the tune BUNESSAN. It reminds us of Eden and of echoes of Eden in the freshness of each new day. It highlights sunlight which can be considered literally or as a reference to spiritual warmth and illumination. It engages times that are liminal: beginnings and transitions during which great possibilities open to us, times understood to have particular power in Celtic spirituality.

If "Morning is Broken" is the primary text we associate with BUNESSAN, then this Edenic sensibility will be in at least the back of minds as we sing other texts to the tune.

"Child in the Manger"
Mary MacDonald of Mull (1789-1872)

"A devout Baptist, MacDonald wrote hymns and poems in Gaelic which she sang at her spinning wheel." - Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology

This was the first text to be published with the tune. It starts as a lullaby suited to the rocking nature of the music but Jesus reaches adulthood by the second half of the third verse.

To me, the most moving part of the text is the reference to the baby Jesus who was already an "outcast and stranger." I imagine that phrase was MacDonald's starting point and might have come to her while rocking her own little one. Jesus remains an outcast and stranger, perhaps sometimes even among Christians.

We might also note that each verse of this hymn leads to the next. Neither the second nor the third verse can be omitted and the text still make sense. "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is another such hymn which really won't allow for verses to be skipped. And the skipping of verses is an odd practice, or at least it needs to be engaged in with careful thought. It is unlikely that we would, on a whim, skip a verse of a poem we are reading, but that's done constantly to the poems we call hymns!

"Love is the Sunlight"
Borghild Jacobson (1932-1994)

This is a beautiful text about marriage and about going through the good and the bad together. It seems to be for husbands and wives to sing but could also be something for the Church, as the bride of Christ, to express.

Its immediate reference to sunlight and radiance, as well as the fact that God's love has made the marriage of this text, connect us back to the tune's tone as revealed by "Morning has Broken."

In terms of movement through musical space, this combination of text and tune directs us to the space above us. The highest sounding words like "sunlight," "star bright," "heaven," and "glory" are lifted on the highest notes. The ebbs and flows of the text are further aligned with the tune in that the less grand words at the ends of phrases are sung on long notes in a slightly lower register.

"God the Creator"
John Bell (b.1939)

John Bell is a member of the Iona Community and is "primarily concerned with the renewal of congregational worship at the grassroots level." - Hymnary.org

Bell's text shows the Trinity opening into human community. In a new act of creating something out of nothing, the fullness of the Trinity carries us from nothing-ness, nobody-ness, and nowhere-ness, to loving action in community that reflects the Trinity itself.

This profoundly orthodox idea of just human action proceeding from the relational nature of God is also found in a famous prayer by the founder of the modern Iona Community, George MacLeod. Its jarring language drives home the point that our sense of personal piety might not amount to true service to God in the world.

"Christ, you are within each one of us.

Nearer are you than breathing,

closer than hands and feet.

Ours are the eyes with which you, in the mystery, 

look out with compassion on the world.

Take us outside, O Christ, outside holiness,

out to where soldiers curse and nations clash

at the crossroads of the world.

We ask it for your name's sake.

Amen."

   
"O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus"
Samuel Trevor Francis (1834-1925)

Francis was a Plymouth Brethren evangelist and worked as an assistant to Ira Sankey.

The watery words of this text transform the hills of the tune into waves orienting us toward a great space below us. Due to the meter of this text, some syllables are spread over more than one note of the tune. The result is a feeling of rolling as over waves as we sing.

"Christ Beside Me"
adapted by James Quinn

This text, St Patrick's Breastplate, is about Christ permeating, and Christ permeates this text. Christ is the starting point of each of its phrases and instigates every significant movement of the tune. Those movements consist of short notes leading to long notes. The text and tune align in such way that the short notes point to each place we are saying Christ is located.

This text is a circle prayer. Things circular and cyclical are a Celtic focus. Circular prayers are about God's fully surrounding and penetrating presence, and they often invite God's protection. They also suggest the unbroken completeness of God's love. The famous Celtic cross, which probably first appeared on Iona, consists of a cross superimposed on a circle. This represents the cross of Christ fully embracing our world as well as the entire universe beyond it.

This text calls us to explore the space around us and to find God there. We can add another meaningful layer to our prayer by physically exploring the spaces around us as we reference them while singing.

A high cross on Iona

  

Silence, Music, and Deep Prayer 8

This evening, we surveyed our Celtic ancestors. We entered into silent meditation following the singing of Henry Baker's paraphrase of Psalm 23 to the tune ST. COLUMBA. Then, Dr. Cotton provided a very helpful framework highlighting the lives of Saints Patrick, Brigid, and David.

The following passage from the opening chapter of Our Anglican Heritage by John Howe and Sam Pascoe might be helpful in developing a sense of the historic Celtic Church.

"The enduring interest in Celtic culture and spirituality both highlights and side-steps the vibrant and vital contribution these early Christians made to the life of the Church. The faith and courage of St. Patrick's missionary efforts to what was then a heathen country still serves as a model for the entire Church. The stirring hymn known to us as 'St. Patrick's Breastplate' reminds us of the spiritual vitality it took to be a missionary in those dangerous days.

"Many historians believe that the Celtic church developed in relative isolation from European and Roman influences. If this is true, it may account for its distinctly rigorous temperament. It was much more egalitarian than the hierarchical church that developed on the continent under the shadow of the hierarchical Roman Empire. The European church took its form from the Empire's elegant but complex governmental structure. Celtic Christianity was more 'earthy,' more conscious of humanity's place as part of creation and less focused on the role of humans as temporal lords over it. It was also focused on the authority of local monks and monasteries as compared to the European model which focused authority in a more rigid 'chain of command' and which often looked to distant rulers who occupied ecclesiastical offices."

A view of Iona Abbey from the slope of Dun I

Columba and Iona

The musical portion of our evening focused on stories of St. Columba and short piano pieces I composed for a piano curriculum based on those stories.

A scholar friend of mine recently told me that a scholar friend of hers was looking for a St. Columba puppet. It occurred to me that Columba has become a bit of a puppet for whatever one wants to assert as being a Celtic manifestation of Christianity. The stories of Columba are many, rich, and varied which makes them well-suited for anyone wanting to promote their own idea of a Celtic Christian way. And so I acknowledge that the picture of Columba that I present is my version based on the stories I find helpful. 

My goal for the evening was to introduce Columba and his environment with an eye to concluding our time together with a special prayer experience shared imaginatively with him, as it were.

A capital in Iona's cloister

Dove

Columba's name means "dove" and according to his primary biographer, Adomnan, (the ninth abbot of Iona) it was fitting that Columba should have such a name as "through his dove-like life he offered in himself a dwelling for the Holy Spirit."

We listened to the piece "His Name Was Dove" which consists of simple drifting gestures suggestive of a bird gliding on currents of air. I believe it is in keeping with the Celtic spirit to take that gliding to heart. The effortless action of that trusting bird is not a naturalistic phenomenon to be objectively observed but it describes and invites a mode of being which is waiting to be engaged within us. 

This simple prayer is emblematic of the Celtic embrace of the permeation and imbeddedness of God's address to humanity within and without what we tend to understand as our selves:

"Creator God
Three in One
Fill my mind
Fill my heart
Fill this place"


Kathy and I filmed this video in Iona Abbey. It includes several of the pieces shared this evening. "His Name Was Dove" is first. 



Getting There

These days, no one goes to Iona by accident. Our journey involved two plane rides, a long train ride, a big ferry, a bus across the island of Mull, and a little ferry out to Iona. It's about as far out as one can go that way, but in Columba's day it was a center of activity and the water around it was essentially a major highway.

The intentionality required to get there today contributes to the feeling that Iona is a "thin place," a place, according to Celtic tradition, where the partition between this world and the spirit world is thinner than in other places. Virtually everyone traveling to Iona is on a pilgrimage and is seeking revival and deeper connection with God which creates expectancy and synergy - and no one seems disappointed by the outcome. At the very least, a steady stream of such visitors makes it a thin place.

I shared two pieces/stories about Columba, the brothers, and the water which, in  addition to being their highway, was also a character and a colleague in their lives.

On one occasion, Columba and the men (many of whom were his relatives) were caught in the swelling waves of a storm at sea. Columba calmed the storm and the boat was suddenly at the shore. This reminds us of a similar miracle of Jesus and that is a typical means for underscoring the intense holiness of a saint. "Swelling Waves" begins around 1:40 in the video above.

On another occasion, a friend of the men was trapped in the notorious Whirlpool of Corrywrecken. Columba alerted the men to this fact and they wanted to intercede in prayer. Columba informed them that God was holding their friend in the whirlpool to deepen his prayer. While I'm not enthused about the idea of God holding a person in a whirlpool, this story does acknowledge that God is with us in and through our struggles and that our path is not always one of being delivered in the ways we might envision.

As we listen to these and other pieces we might wonder how best to listen. I am fond of this quotation from Henry Nouwen found in a reworking of notes from his lectures in the book Spiritual Direction. I think it provides a perspective for listening to, practicing, and playing music as a spiritual discipline.

"Almost anything that regularly asks us to slow down and order our time, desires, and thoughts to counteract selfishness, impulsiveness, or hurried fogginess of mind can be a spiritual discipline."

As we relate to a work of music, we encounter something that is other than us, thus counteracting our self-orientation. As we follow the music's unfolding, we find a focus and a rhythm that stabilize us over against our impulsive tendencies. And as we listen to the logic of the sounds, our thinking can be calmed and clarified.

Comedy

One saintly friend of Columba's always seemed to add a little humor to the goings-on. St. Cainnech had a few clumsy incidents and was a little forgetful, but none of that mattered because of his earnest devotion and his undeniable in-sync-ness with the Spirit.

On one occasion, he forgot his staff before a journey requiring Columba to teleport it to his destination. At another time, Columba and the brothers were in a storm at sea and the brothers desperately wanted Columba to pray for them. Columba refused saying that it was for Cainnech to pray at this time. Meanwhile, many miles away, Cainnech heard Columba's words in his heart, leaped up from the dinner table, and ran to the chapel to pray with only one shoe on!

This story of Columba's refusal to pray speaks to me of his concern for community and for the spiritual experience and growth of all those around him. There is a beautiful mutuality about his choice to depend on the presence of God's power in others.

Gravestones at St. Oran's Chapel

God's Power

Columba's ministry was characterized by a tremendous power of God in his person and in his acts. Many were converted upon seeing such manifestations. Two stories emphatically convey that Godly power which was at work immeasurably over and above the intentions of the saint and his friends.

On one occasion, a monk stopped by Columba's hut so that he could bless a knife. It was a common custom for objects, as well as food, to be blessed by the Abbot and he did so this time without lifting his eyes from the work with which he was already involved. Later in the day, Columba asked the monk what it was that he had blessed. "A knife," the monk replied. Then Columba informed him that the knife would no longer be of any use. Upon further examination, it was found that God's power in this peaceable man had rendered the knife incapable of piercing skin. So they melted down the knife and use the blessed metal to coat all of the tools of the monastery so that they might not hurt anyone. "The Blessed Knife" begins around 3:00 in the video above.        

In another story, the son of a chieftain had forcibly taken a cow from a nun who had refused to trade the cow. The chieftain was displeased with his son's behavior and executed him, a choice he soon regretted. He went to Columba for help and Columba directed him to an old monk, Began of Ulster. The chieftain was afraid to go to Began alone, so Columba went with him. Began prayed three times and Hell relinquished fifty men each time by the same name of his son! His actual son was resurrected with the final group.

Once again we see Columba not solving problems on his own but in collaboration with his community and being a companion to the chieftain along the way.

Early morning sun on Iona

Light

Those around Columba reported a sense of light about him - perhaps a halo or an aura - a radiance suggesting God's hand on his life. A monk who raised him saw an orb above his crib, and one of the brothers who hid in the chapel while Columba prayed late one night witnessed the room fill with light. 

Another prayer invokes the way of Columba, as well as light and darkness, as a blessing for a home.

"God's peace and man's peace and Saint Columba's peace
be on each window and on each door,
every place where moonlight enters in,
on all four corners of your home
and on the place you lay your head
may God's peace be with you."

This can serve as a picturesque prayer for the bungalows, ranches, or condos in which we live. But it's also a prayer for the houses of our souls, our bodies. I encourage rereading those old, old words remembering that Celtic Christianity was "more earthy" and recognized that we are creatures of clay in and around which souls reside.

The Hermit's Hollow

The Hermit's Hollow

Musical tones were the catalyst for our final prayer time. My aleatoric piece, "The Hermit's Hollow," was inspired by experiences with solitude and silent prayer, reading about Elijah and his time in the cave, and a visit to the far side of the mountain Dun I where it is conjectured that Columba slipped away from time to time for some quiet union with God. The piece is in two parts, the first using active musical materials to suggest wind, earthquake, and fire such as Elijah might have experienced while waiting to meet with God. The second part consists of seven individual pitches chosen randomly. The performer and listeners are invited to follow each pitch into silence where they might encounter the "still small voice" of God.

"Loss Faith," an earlier blog-post, could be of interest for those wanting to know more about the background of "The Hermit's Hollow."