Consolation

Before this afternoon's St. Matthew Passion rehearsal began, my friend Laura, the orchestra I organist, said "I have something to show you." She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a small green book with "J. S. Bach/St. Matthew Passion" on the cover. She opened it and showed me my father's name, Herbert Gotsch, on the flyleaf, in the unmistakeable large-and-small cap style he used to write his name on books and music. My brand-new blue Bärenreiter Urtext has my name, G. Gotsch, on the cover in a similar large-and-small-caps style. It is a conscious imitation.

The small green book is a miniature score, with a German introduction dated 1929. There are no notes in the score, nothing that tells me how he came to have this or what he may have done with it. Laura found it at Concordia where she works; when Daddy died in 1984, we gave much of his library to the music department there, where he had taught organ for 35 years and had conducted Bach's St. John Passion on a Palm Sunday long ago, when I was in second grade. I remember discovering as I sat through the performance that recitatives were short but arias went on forever. I also remember the fun of sitting on my parents' bed watching Daddy put on tails and all the studs and buttons and suspenders that went with them.

Laura said she would give me the book after tomorrow's performance. She treasured it because my dad was her organ teacher and dear to her, but as she said, he was even more dear to me. As things turned out, she gave it to me after today's rehearsal. She had thought she would use it to follow along on the movements where she wasn't playing, but she decided instead to just listen--and rest.

Somewhere on the shelf in my living room, or perhaps in the sheet music cabinet that was my Grandma Gotsch's and then my father's, is a choral score for the St. Matthew Passion, with my grandfather's name, also Herbert Gotsch, written on the cover. It is a distinctive signature, with a consistent slant and carefully spaced letters. My father's signature looks much like it. The application of the same handwriting method taught in Lutheran parochial schools from one generation to the next? Or another conscious imitation?

Grandpa Gotsch would have sung the St. Matthew Passion with "the old Chicago Bach choir," as my dad always called it. I am singing it with it the Bach Cantata Vespers choir at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest tomorrow afternoon at 4:00. Laura is the orchestra I continuo organ. Steve Wente, another  student of my father's is at the part II organ. Up in the balcony, playing organ with the soprano choir singing "O Lamm Gottes," the chorale tune in the first movement, is Dennis Zimmer, yet another former student of my dad's.

I'm sure there are many other interwoven stories that could be told about the singers and orchestral musicians in this performance, as we take our place in a tradition extending back through the centuries to Mendelssohn and ultimately to Leipzig.

The Matthew Passion is a very emotional piece of music. This became especially clear to me when I watched a DVD of the Berlin Philharmonic performing the St. Matthew Passion "ritualized" by Peter Sellars. Sellars is an opera stage director and the video recording of the performance is deeply moving. The physical movement of the chorus and the soloists reveals much about Bach's poetic structure. Their faces reveal the emotion.

There is lots of suffering in this Passion. Jesus' suffering, yes, of course--but the words of Jesus are limited to the actual gospel text. It's the arias that intensify the sense of suffering--the expressions of the believer's grief at Jesus' suffering. And the arias go on forever, just as they did when I was a child. They are, however, tender; Jesus suffering invokes compassion as much or more than guilt in believers.

For a while at this afternoon's rehearsal, I was thinking about why this piece seems to be so focused on suffering--not on theologies of redemption or justification related to the cross, not on heaven or life eternal. Duples and appoggiaturas, oboes d'amore, violins, and especially the alto solosist say over and over again, "my beloved Jesus, it's unfair that you suffer," and "I will care for you and suffer with you." And to what end: ultimately in the last bass aria, "Make my soul pure in you."

Suffering was surely a more obvious, unavoidable part of life in the 18th century. People were much more likely to die before reaching old age. Women died in childbirth. Children died. Death happened in homes, not hospitals. People died or were horribly injured in accidents and in war. So many things that science and medicine fix now could not be alleviated then. So people needed a Jesus who suffered with them, and people accepted a Jesus who suffered and lost his life.

In our time, we hide suffering, and we hide from it. There's a chorus setting of Matthew's report that people mocked Jesus by saying "If he's the king, why doesn't he come down from the cross? And then we'd believe in him." I think there's a modern version of this false belief. It's the one that goes "I can't believe in a God who allows children to suffer. If God is so powerful, why doesn't he do something about that?"

Bach shows us a God who suffers, and who suffers and dies with us, and in whom our sin and suffering is transformed into faith and righteousness. As I sang the stanza of "O Sacred Head" this afternoon whose text prays for Christ's presence at our death, I thought of people I know who are facing suffering in the weeks and months ahead, and painfully, of my own children and the hard times inevitable in their futures. Tomorrow I'll carry my dad's miniature score with me and think of how cancer weakened him and robbed him of his life. I'll think of my grandfather's dementia, and my husband's. And maybe even of my own death--sure to come someday.

And I'll bless a God who in Jesus is present in all of that anguish, and who transforms it to peace.

Three things

For today, three things I know to be true:

A bright blue sky on a winter day makes even concrete buildings look beautiful.

A dad can be more delighted and fascinated by his son than by his business.

People are not alike, not at all.

And one more for tomorrow, Transfiguration:

Even down from the mountaintop the veil can be lifted
if human breath, human hearts pause to let in the divine.

Call this chapter "The Perverse Lutheran Goes to the ALDE Conference."

ALDE stands for Association of Lutheran Development Executives, and there are a lot of them here. I spent the last hour and half reading through the program booklet, browsing speakers' bios, and flipping through the list of conference attendees, and there are Concordias and Luthers and Lutheran acronyms aplenty. It's another world of Lutheranism, beyond pastors, teachers and church musicians. Given the way institutions are shifting and small congregations are closing, this development world is a big part of the future of ministry.

We're in Indianapolis, so the conference has a Speedway theme--harmless for the most part, except for the session descriptions written in a speedway metaphor. Who knows what those speakers will talk about after the smoke clears from the starting gun.

A conference is what you learn, but it's also the experience of going away. Staying in a hotel room where the hot water in the shower is endless. Walking fast through skywalks and convention halls. Getting a little lost. Going to a Welcome Event in an old and pretty nifty ballroom. Staying up late alone in a quiet room but hearing voices outside.

On the ride down here I listened to all kinds of music--Sinatra, Bach, Van Morrison, Dawn Upshaw. Practiced breathing in silently, lowering the larynx, raising the palate, the air moving along the roof of my mouth and falling to the bottom of my lungs. This is my singing project--trying to become a better singer, with a voice that will subtly do all that I want it to do, and raising the palate is the specific assignment  that followed me out of a voice lesson earlier this week.

But how shall I sing my high C's this weekend? In the hotel room early in the morning? Everywhere I look there are things that absorb sound rather than amplify it. Upholstered chairs, carpet, acoustical ceiling tile, bedspreads, drapes. No singing in "Speedway" sessions on direct mail and graphic design. Not even in sessions on getting your message out there.

So there's a challenge here--something about being an artist and having a day job. I plug away at web sites and press releases and newsletter, at the best and most concise way to say something, at the hook that will get readers' attention, but God for me is in the high C's and the writing that is trying to communicate something deeper than a meeting time or even the mission of a ministry.

Here's another c-word: cardinal. I saw two males sitting side by side on the bare branches of the forsythia bush as I went out the back door this morning. Bright red, feathers puffed out, so much color in a mere bird.

I try to end posts with some kind of connection. I'm a Lutheran, therefore I ask, catechetically, "What does this mean?' I dunno, but I think I'll wear the red turtleneck tomorrow.

Monday morning hits

Up early on a Monday morning and frittered away the time online. Which leaves me starting the week already convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, to use a phrase I once explored in this blog. (And yes, a good blogger would link to it, but I'd have to find it. Didn't put keyword: handbasket in the info on the post.)

Here's Ezra Klein in the Washington Post summing up the NFL's dilemma and wholly inadequate response to the issue of hard hits in football and how the head trauma sets up the slow destruction of player's brains via CTE (chronic traumatice encephalopathy). I have come to believe that CTE was the source of my husband, Lon's Alzheimer's-like dementia, which took away his life and left him depressed and messed-up long before it caused his death in 2006. The manly violence of football and professional wrestling were very much involved.

Needless to say, I didn't watch the Super Bowl yesterday.

More craziness: my daughter, Eliza, announced on Facebook last night that she is making plans to move out. It's a little surprising to me--usually these kinds of declarations are symptomatic of a good fight with her mom, part of the none-too-subtle negotiating process we're going through as she, a 22-year-old young woman with Down syndrome, becomes an independent young adult--but one who still needs daily guidance, and a home provided for her. Given that we spent much of yesterday at home together, in separate rooms, each on her own in odd worlds of solitude, I do wonder if we're both going to end up completely demented in another decade or so.

But probably not. Monday is here, with routines, lists, tasks, activities. A couple ibuprofen to clear the headache I have because of forgetting to refill my allergy medicine and I'm good for a new week.

Love endures all things. Love endures. Something like that was the take-with from yesterday's worship. And "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you," says God. And loved you. Tenderly, knowing what craziness life held--even modern life.

Peace!

Trust

The cantata at today's Bach Cantata Vespers was "Herr, wie du willt, so schicks mit mir (Lord, as you will, so let it be done with me, BWV 73)." The cantata text was heavy on acceptance. The homilist talked about trust. I didn't hear it all; at these services, the middle of the choir is not the best place for hearing what is said in the pulpit. But the sermon opening had a lot about the importance of trust in human relationships at a macro level (politicians and voters) and the micro (families, spouses).

I listened to the preacher's list of examples and my thoughts wandered off into my own life. I thought of the many ways in which people have broken trust with me, and I with them. And I looked at the people around me wondering how many had been unfaithful to a spouse--in a Lutheran church choir, maybe not so many. But how many had broken a confidence, had responded with rage when someone needed mercy? How many hurts have I inflicted on others without knowing, or knowing and not caring?

These are not happy thoughts. Trust breaking all around you is like a jackhammer breaking up the ground beneath your feet.

Infants come out of the womb ready to trust the arms that hold them and don't let them fall. We respond to their needs and teach them to trust us so they learn what it feels like to be safe and calm. Can we trust God this way? My spirit, sorely sagging on this icy Sunday, longs for infantile comfort. But my many pictures of who God is get in the way. Omnipotent, the one who wills all things. The one who controls what happens to me. The one who chides and chastens and challenges. The one I seem to fight and wrestle with, who won't let me have I want. Why would I trust this God, the God of everything is "for your own good"?

I think I've given God too many jobs. I think I've also confused God with notions of fate or fatalism, confused "Whatever God ordains" (from the Lutheran chorale title) with whatever--whatever happens.

I didn't hear the homilist well enough this afternoon--well, I'll be honest, didn't listen hard enough to know exactly where he ended up, but I think I remember hearing the words "God is faithful." And faith is trust, and I don't know, maybe there's some kind of complete circle there. The God I trust in is the one who holds me like an infant, who, unlike an unfaithful spouse or a fair weather friend, does not break trust with my need to be loved, whose love for me is a light that brightens all things.

Perfect? Free?

This may turn out to be a self-pitying, whining blog post. That's actually what I'm going for, on this cranky Friday evening, though every parent voice in my brain will try to turn me away from that goal, because it's bad to whine and complain.

By parent voice, I mean the voice of parental authority--not the one I try to use on my kids from time to time, but the parent voices that were used on me and that live on inside my head. The ones that said try hard, do your best, things come easy to you so you have a responsibility to be even better. And don't complain. Mundane, boring tasks are part of life. You're no better than anyone else, just do them. In fact, doing them (without complaining) is ennobling.

All of that--that is so ingrained in me that it's a credo, the creed of where and how I am supposed to live in the world.

I guess it's useful. Keep pushing to do better. Rewrite. Tinker. Keep learning. Work hard. Vocalize. Exercise. Plan. Proofread.

But it's all such hard work. (Whine, feel sorry for self here--but who wants to read that?)

Last weekend I ripped the finished front band from my purple-sweater-in-process so I could fix the way it puckered. This meant picking up 375 evenly spaced stitches from the front edge all over again. Respacing buttonholes. And reknitting six rows times 375 stitches in a 1x1 twisted rib. The result, after about six hours of knitting, will be a front band that will lie flat, plain, and unremarkable across my upper chest. I hope.

So many things to try to do perfectly. I heard someone pronounce something "perfect" today, something I thought was not at all perfect. I don't believe in using that word lightly. I'd rather pound myself with it. I've torn up and rewritten things many times over, though still not to my satisfaction. I've grown frustrated and unhappy with my singing. I've been short and snappish, insincerely outgoing and charming, and spittingly angry, toxic to others--or at least I think so. I've beaten myself up in the late hours of the afternoon and the early hours of the evening and before I even get out of bed in the morning. You'll not hear a chirpy, irony-free pronouncement of "perfect" from me.

The problem is, this is all very tiring. Doing stuff isn't much fun. And the word freedom keeps popping up in my mind.

In my Bible study group we are reading Galatians these days: Paul and the freedom of the gospel, based in faith, not works. Before Christmas we read James: "faith without works is dead." I think the way to reconcile the two is by trying to imagine the faith experience of both writers, or of Paul and of the Christian community led by James. In James it's a faith experience that makes suffering and hardship a joy, since God can be trusted. In Paul it's an experience of Christ that completely changes his life. But in both places a life of faith goes well beyond what you do and how well you do it. It's living by inner light that has its source in God's redeeming love. And letting go of that nagging, shaming parent voice.

Parent voice, lighten up. Heart center, light up. Have a little compassion on the whiner. And let there be peace and joy in the weekend and in the reknitting.

Humiliating

Yesterday I read about a journalism teacher whose "signature assignment" is the "humiliation essay": write three pages about your most humiliating secret. "It encourages students to shed vanity and pretension and relive an embarrassing moment that makes them look silly, fearful, fragile or naked."

I won't be doing that here.

I am considering possibilities though. Here's one: the college-era performance of Beethoven's Ninth during which I could not stop crying because the choral director had made fun of my name. I don't remember what he said, but I know the room was lemon yellow and it was April and it was hot. We in the chorus were smashed together on the stage and had to stand through the whole damn symphony, including the first three movements when we didn't sing. I couldn't see. If there were risers I wasn't anywhere near them. I was claustrophobic. I had cramps and a headache, an uncomfortable dress and a desire to be anywhere but there. The notes were high. And I cried and cried. The director, with some compassion, appeared at my elbow to apologize, which didn't stop the tears. It only made them more embarrassing.

This choir director bullied and teased all the time. He was a smart-ass who picked out easy targets--the really odd people on campus. A smart, handsome man, making fun of the lowly, for cheap laughs. And all those adoring singers in his choirs laughed. It made me angry, but apparently it was funny to make fun of the notorious psych student for example who was six-fee-somethingt tall, had pink eyes and scars on his forearms and wore a white wool overcoat that reached to his ankles and made him look like the Easter bunny.

I did not want to be counted in the same group as him. The flash I felt of that is what started the crying. The humiliation kept it going.

I don't have three heads or three breasts or three of anything that I should have two or ten of. But all my life I've just wanted to be normal. Telling humiliating stories does not seem to be the way to get there.

When I started this blog and named it "The Perverse Lutheran," I hoped to be witty and clever, to charm, to turn beliefs over in the light to discover little-seen facets. I planned to be the Perverse Lutheran by being one-up on much of what has been handed down to me.

And yet the path into a story is always through the heart, through the heart's humiliation.

There's something about incarnation there . . .