Dove with Lamp

Spirit of truth and love, 

life-giving, holy dove, 

speed forth your flight;

move on the water's face 

bearing the lamp of grace, 

and in earth's darkest place 

let there be light!

This is the third stanza of the hymn "God, Whose Almighty Word," written in 1813 by John Marriott, an English minister. According to the author's page at Hymnary.org, it was first published in The Friendly Visitor under the title "Missionary Hymn." Reading the words from a 19th century British perspective, "earth's darkest place" might be -- well, probably not anywhere in England or Europe. But while a 21st century Christian might notice the imperialist layer to the text, its metaphors and images -- spirit moving on the water from Genesis 1, light brought to darkness from John 1 -- give it depth and meaning beyond a prayer for missionaries sent to "civilize" distant lands. It's good hymn writing. The rhymes are tidy, the syntax straightforward, the meter simple but interesting. 

What caught me up when we sang this in church last Sunday was the imagery. A mixed-metaphor alarm went off in my mind: first a dove, then a lamp, and then an image of a bird flying above the waters carrying a lantern in its beak. It seemed improbable. Wouldn't the lamp be far too heavy for the bird to manage, for it even to get off the ground, much less soar over waters far from land?

The congregation and organist moved on to stanza four as I continued to think about stanza three and that lantern over the dark waters. And what came to mind was rescuers hurrying down to the shore in the dark of night to aid mariners run aground in a storm.  

Where did that come from? Twice in the last few weeks I was up on Washington Island, in Lake Michigan, off the tip of Door County, where the passage between the mainland and the Island is known as Death's Door. It's an old name, originating with Native Americans and early French  navigators who dubbed it Port des Morts. The currents are tricky, as are the winds, a danger to which many a shipwreck below the surface can testify. (Read more here and here.) Nowadays sturdy car ferries travel back and forth from the mainland to the Island, so that "Crossing Death's Door" has become more t-shirt slogan than a reality.

But back in the day, there were shipwrecks. While on the Island we had the opportunity to tour a tall ship, the Schooner Madeline, a replica of a vessel that carried cargo through the Great Lakes in the 19th century, the sort of ship that might have run aground in Washington Harbor or anywhere along the coast of Door County. I've read stories of cargo washed ashore, of sailors in lifeboats, sailors brought to land, and rescue attempts, people with lanterns appearing in the dark coming down to the shore. People helping desperate people, bringing light and hope.

Back to that image in the hymn. (By now on Sunday, a lector was reading the Old Testament lesson.) That dove is not flying over distant waters or vast oceans on the other side of the world, I thought. And the dark and dangerous waters are not those of the sea or a Great Lake. The dark, dangerous waters are around us, among us, between us, in the turmoil of election season. Waves of fear and condescension, divisiveness, even cruelty, buoy us up and pull us down. 

We need light and vision to see past this. But oh, that lantern of grace wavers? It's a heavy load for the Spirit of truth and love. It needs a place to land — a big ship, or in the hands and hearts of those who come to help.  

Grant grace, O Lord. Let it land and shine steady in us, your people.

Bow of Louisiana, ashore. Sank in Washington Harbor (north end of Washington Island, Wisconsin,  in 1913. 

More photos and information at https://wisconsinshipwrecks.org/Vessel/Details/384?region=Featured

A walk

A walk in nature, they say, will lower your anxiety and reset your ability to pay attention. Also, it's exercise. Two days into a five-day stay on Washington Island, after rather a lot of eating and drinking yesterday, I needed to get off my butt. 

One problem I have with going for a walk is listening to what plays in my head. A song, an ear worm, a story I tell myself or pretend I'm telling someone else. The stories are, perhaps, helpful, processing and reprocessing the past, repackaging what happened and why, rehearsing, revisiting the details in the storage lockers of the brain. Those well-worn tales are farther and farther in the past. And on a beautiful morning like today, it's best to let them go. All those details, all those explanations can summon emotions, a dark mood that could be hard to shake. And today is a day that inspires -- literally, with breath and breeze -- the sense of the world creating itself anew.

The ear worm that it stuck in my head lately is a little syncopated Carl Schalk melody for the scripture verse "The Lord is my light and my salvation," something published long ago in a collection of brief settings of offertories, or something. It's may be the stickiest tune I know (darn it, Carl), and when it's on repeat in my head to the rhythm of my walking feet, the text loses all meaning. 

The  Lord is my light and my salvation;
    whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Psalm 27:1

I thought about this as I walked this morning. Does this image work for me? Does it point to God at work in my life? Defending me, pulling me out of trouble, setting me on a high rock, a place where you'd build a castle or a fortress?

No, not really. 

But the ever-moving breath of God, creating and recreating and redeeming the earth and its people from day to day, year to year, era to era? Refreshing my spirit with a forty-minute walk in nature. That works. 

I'm listening to the wind and banishing the ear worm. Works for me.

Fireworks

Photo by Eliza Grahnke

It is a beautiful summer morning where I am today -- in my backyard. And so softly quiet, so gently alive after last night's fireworks gone crazy. 

I love fireworks -- the pretty kind, in the sky, not the random booms in the street. My daughter and I went to watch last night at the park and the sound of the firing, the shooting upward, the exploding into colors and sparkles echoed the thrill of fireworks past: at the ball park, at the lake front, at the local high school stadium, one year from the Hilton and Towers in Washington, DC. When I was a preteen my family and I watched the annual Independence Day fireworks sitting on the curb at the end of our block, looking over the well of the Eisenhower Expressway and up into the sky above us and the village park on the other side. 

The noisy stuff last night was stuff on the ground. At the park it was the crowd. So many kids chasing around, yelling and screaming, in the near-dark. Adults closing in on the edges of the crowd. My daughter in her lawn chair next to me entertaining herself with YouTube on her phone while complaining about the wait. And after we arrived back home and parked the car in the garage, we stepped out into the almost continuous explosions, near and far, the roar of Fourth of July in the city. 

The upside of all this is the quiet this morning. Bees in the thyme and lavender, cardinals in the elm tree, even the soft hum of the AC unit kicking in by the corner of the house. We are peacefully on the other side. There will be firecracker noise again by late afternoon today. This year's celebration of our nation's birth reaches into the weekend -- four full days of yee-ha! summer! 

Four days, maybe, of a slightly tamped-down news cycle. Oh, wait, not -- a presidential interview to be televised tonight. Lots more to worry about. Does Biden stay in or step out? Which way do our fears run? 

Last night I went to bed early, pulled the covers over my head and read a story from a distant land and time. Today, in the quiet, I sent some prayers heavenward for the country we celebrated so noisily last night. 

We Are Family -- Leipzig 2024

I've been chasing down loose ends lately -- loose ends of family history -- hours of Googling inspired by an upcoming trip to Germany and the opportunity to see the church and parsonage my great-great-great grandfather left behind in Ziegelheim, Saxony, when he emigrated to America in 1852. 

Why he left is a long story. There is a family chronicle, put down on paper by one of the next generation. I'm not sure when I first encountered this story -- it was shared with me by my dad. But it began to come alive for me when I was a college freshman in an honors history seminar called "Reform and Revolution," where I learned about the revolutionary movements that swept through Germany in 1848-50.

The class was basically what was known as "Western Civilization," a traditional part of a liberal arts education, though by the early 1970s it was on its way out of the requirements for a degree. Yes, it was entirely Euro-centric, and yes, a well-educated person should also know about Asia, Africa, and pre-Columbian American civilizations. But still, my thorough grounding in European and English history served me well in the years of undergrad and graduate education that followed. I had historical context for the trends and artists and masterworks I encountered in music history classes and especially, in theatre history. I could see that many students around me did not have the same sense of all this stuff that I did.

And now? It's been a long time since I've had to answer essay questions on finals. But all that I learned then (and since, because I keep reading) gives me context, a place where my imagination can roam as I think about what was it like at other times in history. What was it like for Georg Moritz Gotsch to watch the emigration of German Lutherans from Saxony to America, even as he stayed put and continued to serve his rural parish? What was it like to send his 25-year-old son, Georg Theodore, to America, to prepare for ministry at a seminary in Indiana? What was it like when conflicts across Europe came home to his parish? And to yield to inevitability and prepare for his own trip across the ocean? And then adapt to a new life in rural Indiana and eventually in Civil War-era Memphis? And -- dear God! -- what was it like for the women?

Knowing a little leads to more questions. Right in this moment, all those questions sent me off to the Internet to look up who exactly came with Georg Moritz to America. I know I've seen a copy of the ship's manifest with that includes the names of his second wife and children of assorted ages. Couldn't find it right away, but I will see it again someday. Other questions: the day before yesterday I was looking up websites for churches served by Georg Moritz and Georg Theodore (who is my great-great grandfather). 

But what does this all mean? Why does it matter to me? It's incredibly cool to know this stuff, and I am lucky that I do. I can't claim credit for having done the work; my reference for much of what I know is an inch-thick book titled "The Gotsch Family History" which was put together by a distant cousin 20 years ago. The Internet makes it possible to chase down more details without ever leaving my favorite chair. 

But do my roots really tell me who I am? The threads of an embattled 19th century German Lutheran, habits of theological thinking, right doctrine explain values I grew up with -- spoken and unspoken, in my family and my family's church communities. It's left to my imagination to fill in details -- daily life of these new residents of America, what their ministry to other German-American folks meant to them, the work, the burdens, the joys. What did they miss from their old life, how did they bury that grief in the new place, how did they find exhilaration and meaning in a new life? There are letters from G. M. Gotsch that I've read somewhere online (Concordia Historical Institute? I need to do a better job of saving stuff!) about his church in Memphis. No letters from the women of the family. 

The greater part of my upcoming trip is focused on Leipzig, the music of J. S. Bach, and a "We Are Family" themed Bachfest. I've been known to create some stories around what I know of Bach and his family (see, for example, BWV 197: The Movie), and I hope to store up more inspiration for more writing like that. I'll be thinking of my dad on this trip, who died before ever getting to visit Germany and play organs across Europe, something he was hoping to do once he was no longer putting daughters through college. 

When I first saw this photo (below) of Georg Theodore Gotsch, the guy who left Germany as a young man, I thought he looked a lot like my dad. Not very tall, and the same serious gaze that appears on my father's face in posed pictures. I have a photo of my father as a young man at his sister's wedding. I  scanned it into my computer, and one day, the face ID in my Mac's Photos application asked if that face was my son Kris. Wow. Kris did sometimes remind me of my dad. Not very tall, but jaunty, energetic, showing up. 

I have my place in all these generations. Perverse, over-animated, smart. And about to both experience and imagine more about where I and my family belong in history. 

Georg Theodore Gotsch and wife Catherine Kiefer

Herbert Maurice Gotsch, Jr., Hertha Gotsch Holstein, Esther Sieving Gotsch, Herbert Maurice Gotsch, Sr. 

Herb Gotsch at the organ

Me with sons Kurt (left) and Kris Grahnke

Herbert Gotsch Sr., cropped photo from a group portrait of the Chicago Bach Choir, c. 1930. "We Are Family."

Holy Week 2024

Castle Church at Weimar

 

Durch Lieben und Leiden.

These have long been my favorite words in Himmelskönig sei willkommen, BWV 182, Bach's cantata for Palm Sunday as seen through the lens of the Annunciation. 

There was no "concerted" music in churches during Lent in early 18th century Germany, but the churches did celebrated the Annunciation on March 25, nine months before Christmas, a festival existing outside of Lent, so there could be music. Occasionally Annunciation coincided with Palm Sunday, including in 1714 when this cantata was first performed in Weimar. The juxtaposition of the two -- a day that anticipates Christmas, another day that anticipates Good Friday, birth and death -- is a history of salvation story. It's also profoundly human.

Himmelskönig sei willkommen, the first words of the cantata's opening chorus are translated "King of Heaven, you are welcome." The text goes on to say "you have captured our hearts" -- as one might say of an adorable infant, or the Son of God come down to earth. Three arias about the Incarnation and believers' response follow; they're all lovely -- but whatever. Then there's a contemplative, imitative, and oh-so-lyrical setting of a stanza of a Lenten chorale familiar to Bach's congregations: "Jesus, your Passion is for me pure joy....My soul walks on roses when I think of this." Roses. In the grey days of March. 

And then a little gigue for the choir, a dancing invitation to follow the Savior durch Lieben und Leiden, "though love and suffering."

So lasset uns gehen in Salem der Freuden,

So let us go in the Salem of joy,

Begleitet den König in Lieben und Leiden.

accompany the king in love and in sorrows.

(Lieben is pronounced with what would be a long-e sound in English, as in need; Leiden with a long i, as in slide.)

Credit goes to the (unknown)  poet for the l-sounds in lasset, Salem and begleitet which prepare the ear for the satisfying alliteration of Lieben and Leiden. 

But more credit, I think, belongs to Bach for the light-hearted elegance of the music. Yes, there's a little dissonance, a little darkness around those love and suffering words, as the various musical lines collide into one another, but at the cadence Lieben und Leiden are tossed off lightly, no great burden since Jesus bears them with us, for us. 

I'll take that into Holy Week 2024 -- the Salem of joy. 

There's so much to worry about, so much bad news, so much to stress about. Does it seem wrong to carry it lightly? 

Look to Jesus, who carried the world's sorrows with love -- and joy.

Listen to yesterday's performance at Grace Lutheran Church's Bach Cantata Vespers here.

Life. Toilet tanks. All of it.

Last Thursday I noticed that the toilet was running all the time. You could see the water moving in the toilet bowl day and night. I stopped at the hardware store and bought a new flapper -- the easiest of all possible things to change, but this didn't help. It got worse. Over the next few days I half-heartedly Googled how to fix a running toilet, clicked on a couple of links and stopped reading at "replace the filler valve."  Mostly I stayed far enough way from the bathroom (except when necessary) to not hear the water run, the water bill inching upward. 

And all the time I whined. Not out loud, but in my head to myself alone. Someone has to fix the toilet. Why does that someone have to be me? It's too piddling a job to pay a plumber to make a house call. Why me? 

Twenty years ago I'd have sailed right in and done the job, because, well, who else was going to do it? My sainted husband could fix a sentence, but did not have fix-it skills for concrete objects. Back in the day, more than once, I set out to fix something or install something and would get partway through and then have to call my brother-in-law for help. The instructions made sense to me, but there would be a screw I couldn't loosen or something inside the wall that didn't look the picture in the handy home repair book. I probably should not have even tried to set a new toilet in the wax ring on the bathroom floor all by myself. 

But I set my face toward that job this afternoon, because my own whining was getting on my nerves. I emptied the toilet tank of water, unscrewed the plastic nuts underneath that held the filler valve in place, and took the old one to the hardware store to get another one just like it. I came home and installed the new one in a matter of minutes, noting that the directions said to "hand-tighten only" those plastic nuts under the toilet tank. So I'll be able to unscrew them myself again next time. The toilet is now flushing properly, is refilling when it is supposed to, and remains silent the rest of the time.

Way too much time was spent complaining, procrastinating, whining, avoiding. 

Let me rephrase that: I spent way too much time ... etc. Self-inflicted irritation.

I had been thinking over the weekend about "Lucinda Matlock," from Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems in which characters from a small rural town in southern Illinois speak from beyond the grave about their lives. The poems make a nice readers' theater piece; I was in such a production at a time in my life when all the youngest women's voices were assigned to me. Lucinda is quite old and this poem was spoken beautifully by an actress who seemed old to me, maybe almost 40. Vocally she imbued it all with memory, recollections of both hardship and joy.

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed —
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you —
It takes life to love Life.

I'm pretty sure that if Lucinda were living my life she would have sucked it up and fixed the toilet days ago and then moved on to the next chore or the next neighborly act of service. She'd be rigging new parts for her loom instead of waiting for the fancy ready-made ones to come in the mail (as I am today). Surely the sick she nursed included those eight children she lost. I imagine her steely and resourceful at the bedside, though bent, perhaps, under the crushing grief at their graves. Were they infants, perhaps? A daughter lost in childbirth? A son who was suddenly, gravely injured in the field, or one who died of cancer far too young?

She knew healing: the medicinal weeds she gathered, the singing that restores the soul. But what did she shout to the wooded hills? Maybe that's what she did with what she didn't understand, shouting questions beyond words, getting them out and not expecting an answer in return. 

"It takes life to love Life." I remind myself of these words when that lowercase life is not going well, when I am weary and angry or overwhelmed. That big mystery of Life is not full up, not fully lived without remembered happiness and the sweet sorrow that is sometimes our lot in the present. 

Also, in the middle of all of life's grandiosity, sometimes you have to get over yourself and do what's yours to do. Fix the toilet. 

An hour or two after fixing the toilet, I went on to extract the hair clog from the bathtub drain. 

I am Woman, watch me plumb.

A little faith

The cantata for last Sunday's Bach Cantata Vespers was BWV 81, Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? (Jesus sleeps, what can I hope for?). It's based on the gospel lesson for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany from Matthew 8 (from the lectionary of Bach's day). The disciples are in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with  Jesus asleep in the stern. A storm is brewing, they are frightened -- how can Jesus sleep through this? But then he wakes up to tell the storm to schweigt, hush, be still.  

Arias and recitatives dramatize a journey from despair and fear to eventual peace and reassurance. From Jesus' absent to Jesus present. There's a gorgeous lament at the beginning of the cantata and then a fast and furious storm in the orchestra, with the tenor hanging on by a thread. Then the bass stands up to sing the words of Jesus, heard over the storm. Peace is restored and the choir (possibly the congregation, too, in Bach's day) sings the second stanza of the chorale, "Jesus, Priceless Treasure," with "Jesus will protect me" as the final line, the melody firmly descending the five notes of a C minor scale, from dominant to tonic.

"Why are you afraid, you of little faith?" (Matthew 8:26) were Jesus' words to the disciples, and the homilist, speaking before the cantata performance, turned the words "a little faith" a bit sideways and explored whether "a little faith" was enough. In Matthew's gospel, it is. It is enough to clothe the lilies of the field (Matthew 6:28-29), enough to save Peter as he sank down under the waves after impetuously stepping out of the boat to walk on water in another storm on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 14:22-33). Even a little faith -- a diminutive one, which honestly, might be the best we can come up with -- will see you through the storms of life, the preacher said. An effective idea which gave structure to the sermon. I listened all the way through, which I must admit, is rare with sermons. 

But still, it begs the question: What is faith, this unseen thing that, whether large or small, is supposed to be there for us in the darker moments of life? Conviction that will carry us forward? Even when the swirls and anger of the storm are worse than frightening -- when they are meaningless, heartless?

The sermon like the cantata text came to rest on the words "Jesus will protect me." It works out that way in the Bible story. Jesus and his band of disciples arrive safely on the other side, surviving the storm to live another day. But there's trouble ahead for Jesus, and neither he nor his Father works a miracle to save him from trial and execution. Trouble ahead also for the disciples further down the road.

None of us are protected from the wounds of life. Not from petty hurts that conspire with our own worries and fears to distort our outlook. Not from blows so gutting that it's hard to imagine a life beyond them. And not from our own aging, deterioration and death. 

A strong faith is not an insurance policy against danger or suffering or struggle. I thought that way as a child -- that I could conquer all things with God by my side. Now, not so much. Great faith, small faith -- meh. 

"Life is suffering," said the Buddha (though in truth the concept of dukkha is more subtle than that). Awful things happen, whether you have faith or not, and faith won't erase the wounds. After Jesus' resurrection the disciple Thomas declared he would acknowledge the risen Christ only if he could touch the wounds in his hands and feet, put his hand on the place where the spear had slashed Jesus' side. 

It's the wounds that matter, scarred, healed over, but still vibrating with the wounds of the world. It's in the hurt, questioning places that even a "little" faith gasps, breathes, lives. Why? Because Jesus meets me here, wounded, suffering, compassionate. And it's where I meet others, in that boat that's never quite still in BWV 81.