It's Saturday morning, the first day of November, All Saints' Day.
The maple tree in front of my house is bright red. Not a rusty fall sort of red, but scarlet--a red that fills the bay window and turns the air in the living room pink. Parents of trick or treaters stopped to admire the color yesterday. The tree and the blue sky curving above it smiled benignly on the witches, superheroes, and firemen climbing my front stairs for Tootsie Rolls and Mary Janes.
In our family that tree is called The Birthday Tree, specifically, Kris's Birthday Tree. Kris, the first baby in our family, was born on a grey and rainy All Saints' Saturday twenty-two years ago. He was born at home, with a midwife, in a house that we had purchased and moved into just a month earlier. On the day of his birth, the house sheltered us, a cocoon around this new mother, new father, vulnerable infant. The next day dawned brilliant, clear and cold, and we saw for the first time the splendor of this maple tree, displayed, it seemed, just for us, a celebration of our little Kristoffer.
The tree's boughs are close enough to the ground to inspire climbing. During the summer, a couple of neighbor kids dragged a box found in an alley somewhere to the parkway in front of our house and used it to get themselves up to those first branches, so they could sit there, superior, surveying the stop sign, the intersection, the sidewalks. When our kids were small, Lon would lift them onto that low bough and stand beneath, ready to catch them if they fell, ready to help them down when they got bored.
Ten years ago, when construction trucks tore up our street, laid new sewers, and then repaved it, the tree took a bad hit. Carelessly, when no one seemed to be looking, some random piece of equipment chunked away an eighteen-inch circle on the street side of the tree trunk. I called the town forestry department. I don't know if they came out with emergency medicine for the wound. The leaves seemed thinner the next couple of summers, but the tree came back. The scar is ugly. The bark that thickened around the exposed vascular tissue of the tree is crude and gnarly. But the tree's canopy is full, deep green in the summer and celebration red on the last days of October and the first days of November.
The birthday boy called earlier this morning--earlier than I expected to hear from him today. Halloween on a Friday night means great parties for twenty-somethings. But he had awakened to an emergency: his computer wouldn't turn on. With two weeks to go on the one-year warranty, this is a good time to have this problem. I went to the internet to find customer support and turned Kris over to his sister for a happy birthday conversation. By the time I had information, Kris had figured otu what was wrong. The laptop's battery needed charging. Connected to a power source, it was fine--ready to play music so that its owner could go back to sleep.
A boy still needs his mother, I guess. We all need each other. The maple's leaves nourish the tree, and even after the leaves are shed, the tree will live on through the winter and bud again in the spring. Our lives nourish each other's and make each other's lives possible. Riches and complexity of thought and feeling come from those who have gone before and from lives all around us.
I read two nourishing stories in this morning's New York Times. After weeks and weeks of reading mostly election news--some blatantly partisan, some flatly balanced and blind to objective truth, the vivid human emotion in these stories was a relief. One was about medics and an Army doctor fighting to keep a bleeding man alive after a shrapnel attack on their post in the wilds of Afghanistan. The other told about opera-going Supreme Court justices, liberal and conservative, awed at meeting Leontyne Price at a National Endowment for the Arts luncheon in her honor. Very different settings. Life, death and violence in the first, the recollection of artistry subtly portraying these things in the other.
Dare I quote Studs Terkel who died yesterday? Or my sainted husband who loved to satirize the checkered-shirt Chicago icon: "Oh, the humanity . . . the humanity!"
Saints, a procession through the ages, of people sanctified and made holy, growing up and growing old, bleeding and dying for each other, giving life to new generations on God's good and fragrant earth.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sending Song
The congregation stood for the final hymn. There was a long, lush, legato orchestral introduction using motives from the hymn tune, followed by the tune, then the motives again. I stood in the chancel with the choir, looking out at the congregation. People's bodies moved slightly with the music. They looked up from their programs, glanced around, anticipating their cue. Their faces said, we're going to sing soon, we're going to sing this beautiful tune.
It was a vesper service on Reformation Day, and the church was packed with Lutherans. But we'd already sung the big German Lutheran hymns for the day. In the morning we had sung "Salvation Unto Us Has Come," theological statements set to a Renaissance dance tune. In this vesper service we'd sung "Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word" with ritornellos from Dietrich Buxtehude, and we had Luther by way of Bach in the cantata "Ein feste burg."
We arrived at the final hymn, "The Church of Christ in Every Age." The tune is Wareham, in long meter, from eighteenth-century Englishman William Knapp. The text is from Fred Pratt Green, twentieth-century Englishman, copyright 1971.
The Church of Christ in ev'ry age/Beset by change, but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage/And keep on rising from the dead.
It definitely seemed suitable for Reformation. Wareham is a sublimely singable tune. One easy skip, everything else in stepwise movement. This afternoon's congregation of enthusiastic Lutheran chorale singers felt at home here, moving smoothly from one pitch to the next, downward, turning around and rising again. The movement goes with the text, a church always testing and searching, prodded and led by the Spirit. Yes, we can be a part of that church.
But in stanza two, the challenge appeared:
Across the world, across the street/The victims of injustice cry
For shelter and for bread to eat/And never live before they die.
Whoa. This is not a Bob Dylan protest song. There were no scratchy voices and guitars to go with these lyrics. We were still in long meter, still singing Knapp's Wareham, though inverted and given to the choir by Paul Weber, the composer of this setting. But even upside down, it's a firm, smooth and singable tune. What kind of subterfuge brought these elements together?
Lyrics more typical of a hymn appeared in the third stanza:
Then let the servant Church arise/A caring Church that longs to be
A partner in Christ's sacrifice/And clothed in Christ's humanity.
The text appeals to our longing to be like Christ. We long to be like him because he was human and bled and died for us. It is the old Christian story, and that traditional melody, with its slurs of longing, feels more at home here. A fourth stanza is about Christ healing us and showing us how to "feed the starving multitude."
At this point the setting of the hymn moved into a long 30-bar interlude, strings and trumpets all preparing the congregation to make this remarkable statement of faith:
We have no mission but to serve/In full obedience to our Lord;
To care for all, without reserve/And spread his liberating Word.
What does this mean? (An appropriate question for Reformation Day.) Those first two lines do not equivocate. God has commanded us to serve one another. That is why we were saved-not to make music, not to preach, not to hang out with out people just like us who make us feel good. Was anyone in this church full of committed singing Christians caught by surprise? Did anyone rush out and sign up to work at a soup kitchen? If we have no mission but to serve, there must also be tasks and temptations that distract us, that are unrelated to "full obedience to our Lord," stuff we just should not do. Did we somehow end a Reformation Service with Law rather than Gospel, with a command to get our priorities in order?
Or are we too easily shamed? Too quick to think we can never do enough, and therefore too quick to give up entirely?
Fred Pratt Green used up four syllables in the last line of the hymn with the word "liberating." Fitting that big and awkward a word into a meter of simple pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables is not an easy task, and this word is very obvious at the end of the hymn. He's making a point, and it's one that goes beyond the liberation of oppressed peoples. God's command to serve others is liberating for the servant as well as the served, and Christ sets us all free to praise God--in acts of love toward one another and in singing praise.
Weber's setting of "The Church of Christ in Every Age" winds up with the doxology. May praise in music inspire praise in every dimension of our life as Christians!
Go in peace. Serve the Lord.
Take that into Monday morning.
It was a vesper service on Reformation Day, and the church was packed with Lutherans. But we'd already sung the big German Lutheran hymns for the day. In the morning we had sung "Salvation Unto Us Has Come," theological statements set to a Renaissance dance tune. In this vesper service we'd sung "Lord Keep Us Steadfast in Your Word" with ritornellos from Dietrich Buxtehude, and we had Luther by way of Bach in the cantata "Ein feste burg."
We arrived at the final hymn, "The Church of Christ in Every Age." The tune is Wareham, in long meter, from eighteenth-century Englishman William Knapp. The text is from Fred Pratt Green, twentieth-century Englishman, copyright 1971.
The Church of Christ in ev'ry age/Beset by change, but Spirit led,
Must claim and test its heritage/And keep on rising from the dead.
It definitely seemed suitable for Reformation. Wareham is a sublimely singable tune. One easy skip, everything else in stepwise movement. This afternoon's congregation of enthusiastic Lutheran chorale singers felt at home here, moving smoothly from one pitch to the next, downward, turning around and rising again. The movement goes with the text, a church always testing and searching, prodded and led by the Spirit. Yes, we can be a part of that church.
But in stanza two, the challenge appeared:
Across the world, across the street/The victims of injustice cry
For shelter and for bread to eat/And never live before they die.
Whoa. This is not a Bob Dylan protest song. There were no scratchy voices and guitars to go with these lyrics. We were still in long meter, still singing Knapp's Wareham, though inverted and given to the choir by Paul Weber, the composer of this setting. But even upside down, it's a firm, smooth and singable tune. What kind of subterfuge brought these elements together?
Lyrics more typical of a hymn appeared in the third stanza:
Then let the servant Church arise/A caring Church that longs to be
A partner in Christ's sacrifice/And clothed in Christ's humanity.
The text appeals to our longing to be like Christ. We long to be like him because he was human and bled and died for us. It is the old Christian story, and that traditional melody, with its slurs of longing, feels more at home here. A fourth stanza is about Christ healing us and showing us how to "feed the starving multitude."
At this point the setting of the hymn moved into a long 30-bar interlude, strings and trumpets all preparing the congregation to make this remarkable statement of faith:
We have no mission but to serve/In full obedience to our Lord;
To care for all, without reserve/And spread his liberating Word.
What does this mean? (An appropriate question for Reformation Day.) Those first two lines do not equivocate. God has commanded us to serve one another. That is why we were saved-not to make music, not to preach, not to hang out with out people just like us who make us feel good. Was anyone in this church full of committed singing Christians caught by surprise? Did anyone rush out and sign up to work at a soup kitchen? If we have no mission but to serve, there must also be tasks and temptations that distract us, that are unrelated to "full obedience to our Lord," stuff we just should not do. Did we somehow end a Reformation Service with Law rather than Gospel, with a command to get our priorities in order?
Or are we too easily shamed? Too quick to think we can never do enough, and therefore too quick to give up entirely?
Fred Pratt Green used up four syllables in the last line of the hymn with the word "liberating." Fitting that big and awkward a word into a meter of simple pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables is not an easy task, and this word is very obvious at the end of the hymn. He's making a point, and it's one that goes beyond the liberation of oppressed peoples. God's command to serve others is liberating for the servant as well as the served, and Christ sets us all free to praise God--in acts of love toward one another and in singing praise.
Weber's setting of "The Church of Christ in Every Age" winds up with the doxology. May praise in music inspire praise in every dimension of our life as Christians!
Go in peace. Serve the Lord.
Take that into Monday morning.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Rest
Now rest beneath night's shadow the woodland, field and meadow.
The world in slumber lies.
But you, my heart, awaking, and prayer and music making
Let praise to your Creator rise.
The text is from Paul Gerhardt, prolific Lutheran hymn-writer of the 17th century. It is (obviously) a hymn for the evening. You could also call it, perhaps, a hymn for night owls, for people who cannot sleep. Though nature and the world of humans are fading into rest and quiet, the singer stays awake--not to toss and turn, but to pray and sing.
Lord Jesus, since you love me, now spread your wings above me
And shield me from alarm.
Though evil would assail me, your mercy will not fail me;
I rest in your protecting arm.
This hymn has many memories attached to it for me. This second stanza I learned as a bedtime prayer when I was a child. My father taught it to me, as his mother, I believe, taught it to him. Back any further in the generations and my ancestors would have prayed and taught these words in Gerhardt's original German. By the time I sang them to my own children, I was singing them in the slightly altered English translation of the Lutheran Book of Worship, published in 1978. The rhymes are the same, but the antiquated phrase "Lord Jesus, who dost love me" becomes the more direct "since you love me." I like the change.
My loved ones, rest securely, for God this night will surely
From peril guard your heads.
Sweet slumbers may he send you and bid his hosts attend you
And through the night watch o'er your beds.
Because this was a song heard often in our house, I asked that it be sung at my husband's funeral two years ago. It had been sung at my dad's funeral twenty-two years earlier. I sang it, by myself, as I had sung it to the kids at night, when my mother-in-law, my younger son, and our pastor went to see Lon's body and to pray there shortly after his death. It's appropriate, I think, to use sleep as a metaphor for death, since we will all wake again in some way unimaginable to us now, when God's kingdom comes at last.
As I sang that stanza at the close of the Bach Cantata vesper service this afternoon, I remembered that morning--the coldness of Lon's body, our wonder at his death. My eyes filled with tears--at the choir's rehearsal before the service and during the actual performance. The tears were a moment of indulgence, of stopping to acknowledge grief that has faded, that rests in shadows of the past. I didn't stay long in that place. There were some unfamiliar fancy notes on the last phrase of the stanza that needed my full musical attention. And the whole hymn was sung in a lovely, lush new setting for orchestra and choir by Paul Bouman, who recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday.
Even as I let go of the sadness, I thought of my children, who I had prayed for and reassured with this hymn. Back in the days when I sang my children to sleep, we all crowded together under the covers for books and songs at bedtime. First there was only my oldest, Kristoffer, and me. Seven or eight years later, Kris went to bed in an upper bunk, still within reach of my voice, and his two preschool-aged siblings, Eliza and Kurt, cuddled up on either side of me on the double-bed-sized mattress below. Sometimes Lon listened from the the hallway.
This afternoon I thought, who will sing this blessing about me? As a mother, I sang even the second stanza ("Lord Jesus, since you love me") for my children, not really for me. It was their faith, their peaceful sleep that I prayed for. After they had fallen asleep, I crawled out of the bed and went off to fight my own late-night battles with the world, ducking out from under those divine wings spread above me.
This afternoon I realized that it's time to put the memories away and start singing this hymn for me. The music this afternoon helped with that. Paul's setting of this beautiful five-hundred-year-old tune has those heavenly wings beating in eighth notes in the orchestra accompaniment and also in the unaccompanied four-part choral setting of stanza two. Singers can relax and sing easily with the support of that rhythm, carried by the reassurance of God's unfailing mercy.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Love on a lake
They don’t call ‘em Great Lakes for nothing.
A little less than twenty-four hours ago I got up out of my chair, got in the car, and with the kids, drove away from the Sunset Resort, a small, family-owned hotel where my family has vacationed for the last twenty-two summers. We had a week of perfectly beautiful days—clear blue skies, temperatures in the seventies, light breezes, welcoming water, and we left on a perfectly beautiful day, after breakfast, after an hour of sitting and gazing across tiny Figenschau Bay at the vast waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan beyond.
That view makes me feel larger somehow, makes me feel that more things are possible than I have imagined. Everything I see reaches up to the heavens and outward to the horizon and I feel certain that I can make something out of all that. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even finish the quilt whose colors come from this stretch of water, light, and sky.
Years ago, during a troubled family vacation at this place, words from the Psalms leapt to life in the sky and clouds around me. “Your steadfast love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens.” The Creator’s love extended from earth to heaven and wrapped around all I could see, comfortably, carefully holding me and mine though the future looked frightening and uncertain.
This year, the comfort and security of that view was addictive. I sat there in my wooden chair in the sun. I sat there while little bugs (no-see-ums) bit my arms. I sat there with books, with pen and paper, with knitting, and on that last day, yesterday, I sat there with my two sons, soaking up the peace, talking quietly. We talked of our future in that place, of returning next year and years after that. We talked a little of the immediate future here at home—the start of school, the demands, the plans, the progress to be made. Mostly we breathed in the view—the sand, the pines, the rocks, the water.
Today I can still feel it, even more than I can see it, stretching within me from shoulder to shoulder, deep in my lungs. But I may not be able to a week from now. Today I’m scraching those bug bites, doing the laundry, and putting off the details of replying to emails, of getting ready for Monday, of making a list of things to be accomplished between now and the start of school. It’s hard to reconcile the coming hours of meetings and nagging, petty details with the vision of life on a Great Lake. Hard to trade that landscape of lake and sky for offices and classrooms and people. Hard to imagine that somehow, that steadfast, reaching love of God that resides in the heavens, in God’s realm, can reach me back here at home and can reach through me to a troubled earth. Yet this will be my prayer—God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done.
A little less than twenty-four hours ago I got up out of my chair, got in the car, and with the kids, drove away from the Sunset Resort, a small, family-owned hotel where my family has vacationed for the last twenty-two summers. We had a week of perfectly beautiful days—clear blue skies, temperatures in the seventies, light breezes, welcoming water, and we left on a perfectly beautiful day, after breakfast, after an hour of sitting and gazing across tiny Figenschau Bay at the vast waters of Green Bay and Lake Michigan beyond.
That view makes me feel larger somehow, makes me feel that more things are possible than I have imagined. Everything I see reaches up to the heavens and outward to the horizon and I feel certain that I can make something out of all that. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even finish the quilt whose colors come from this stretch of water, light, and sky.
Years ago, during a troubled family vacation at this place, words from the Psalms leapt to life in the sky and clouds around me. “Your steadfast love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens.” The Creator’s love extended from earth to heaven and wrapped around all I could see, comfortably, carefully holding me and mine though the future looked frightening and uncertain.
This year, the comfort and security of that view was addictive. I sat there in my wooden chair in the sun. I sat there while little bugs (no-see-ums) bit my arms. I sat there with books, with pen and paper, with knitting, and on that last day, yesterday, I sat there with my two sons, soaking up the peace, talking quietly. We talked of our future in that place, of returning next year and years after that. We talked a little of the immediate future here at home—the start of school, the demands, the plans, the progress to be made. Mostly we breathed in the view—the sand, the pines, the rocks, the water.
Today I can still feel it, even more than I can see it, stretching within me from shoulder to shoulder, deep in my lungs. But I may not be able to a week from now. Today I’m scraching those bug bites, doing the laundry, and putting off the details of replying to emails, of getting ready for Monday, of making a list of things to be accomplished between now and the start of school. It’s hard to reconcile the coming hours of meetings and nagging, petty details with the vision of life on a Great Lake. Hard to trade that landscape of lake and sky for offices and classrooms and people. Hard to imagine that somehow, that steadfast, reaching love of God that resides in the heavens, in God’s realm, can reach me back here at home and can reach through me to a troubled earth. Yet this will be my prayer—God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
At last
At Morning Prayer today, the final hymn was "Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart." The worshippers were the participants in a regional conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians. The occasion was the commemoration of Catherine Winkworth and John Mason Neale, English hymn translators of the 19th century.
As the service neared its closing, I geared up for singing this great, dense, and rather long German chorale, rendered into English by Catherine Winkworth, a woman I imagine to be a lot like me. Well-educated, adept with words, respectful of the spiritual power of language, of which there are many examples in "Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart." The first stanza:
Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart;
With tender mercy cheer me.
Earth has no pleasure I would share,
Yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
If thou, Lord, wert not near me.
And should my heart for sorrow break,
My trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
Thy precious blood my soul has bought.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!
The hymn speaks passionately of love for God so intense that you want to crawl inside to get close enough. I think that feeling comes in part from the melody being so tightly centered on the tonic. All but one phrase starts or ends there--like the soul always wanting to return to the Lord--despite a broken heart, great sorrow, or feelings of being forsaken.
I thought this morning, how many times have I sung this hymn in the last six months? Two or three times in worship services. Sang the last stanza on Good Friday in the Hassler double-choir setting that we do at the end of Tenebrae at my church. And I've sung it at several funerals, one just last week. I have sung from my place in the adult choir. I've sung it leading my children's choir.
With them, I took the time to explain why organists open up and let it rip when they get to the final half-stanza:
And then from death awaken me,
That these my eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face,
My Savior and my fount of grace.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!
I wanted the kids to pay attention to this hymn as they sang, and I figured anticipation would keep them sharp and focused on the thrill of the mighty crescendo of eternity.
It is a wonderful hymn. Besides the account of an all-consuming love for the Lord, it contains a straightforward, unsentimental theology of death, burial, and the resurrection of the dead, of the body, when "these my eyes"--my own eyes--will see Jesus's own face.
This morning, however, I was wondering if singing this hymn so many times put the thrill at the end at risk of seeming old. The prelude to the service, on this tune, covered the crescendo thing, pouring forth lots of sound at that part of the tune. We'd have to do it again when we sang it, and stanzas one and two, long ones, had to be gotten through first. Just the week before, singing at that funeral, despite closing the hymn book and singing that last stanza from memory, loud and hearty at the end, I wasn't feeling it so much. My thoughts were more like, yeah, another Lutheran funeral. Do we have to sing this every time?
Surprising then, that this morning, thinking about the many times I've sung this hymn lately became the key to singing it in faith and hope. The repetition made the text and tune more powerful, made the resurrection seem almost imminent. Doggone it, I thought, we keep singing about this thing--upstairs, downstairs, morning, noon and night. With children's voices, with the feeble voices of a congregation of mourners gathered for a funeral, or sometimes with a hundred or so full-throated church musicians who glory in singing out. And this isn't the only church building where this happens. What if the resurrection of the dead came right now? Right here in the sanctuary.
Nobody knows exactly when, much less how God's kingdom will come to complete fruition. I don't think--quite--that an almost-perfect unison can sing it into being. But that great love of God for his creatures--for us. the love that inspired the tender passion of the first stanza of this hymn, has great things in store for us.
As the service neared its closing, I geared up for singing this great, dense, and rather long German chorale, rendered into English by Catherine Winkworth, a woman I imagine to be a lot like me. Well-educated, adept with words, respectful of the spiritual power of language, of which there are many examples in "Lord, Thee I Love with All My Heart." The first stanza:
Lord, thee I love with all my heart;
I pray thee, ne'er from me depart;
With tender mercy cheer me.
Earth has no pleasure I would share,
Yea, heav'n itself were void and bare
If thou, Lord, wert not near me.
And should my heart for sorrow break,
My trust in thee can nothing shake.
Thou art the portion I have sought;
Thy precious blood my soul has bought.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!
The hymn speaks passionately of love for God so intense that you want to crawl inside to get close enough. I think that feeling comes in part from the melody being so tightly centered on the tonic. All but one phrase starts or ends there--like the soul always wanting to return to the Lord--despite a broken heart, great sorrow, or feelings of being forsaken.
I thought this morning, how many times have I sung this hymn in the last six months? Two or three times in worship services. Sang the last stanza on Good Friday in the Hassler double-choir setting that we do at the end of Tenebrae at my church. And I've sung it at several funerals, one just last week. I have sung from my place in the adult choir. I've sung it leading my children's choir.
With them, I took the time to explain why organists open up and let it rip when they get to the final half-stanza:
And then from death awaken me,
That these my eyes with joy may see,
O Son of God, thy glorious face,
My Savior and my fount of grace.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My prayer attend, my prayer attend,
And I will praise thee without end!
I wanted the kids to pay attention to this hymn as they sang, and I figured anticipation would keep them sharp and focused on the thrill of the mighty crescendo of eternity.
It is a wonderful hymn. Besides the account of an all-consuming love for the Lord, it contains a straightforward, unsentimental theology of death, burial, and the resurrection of the dead, of the body, when "these my eyes"--my own eyes--will see Jesus's own face.
This morning, however, I was wondering if singing this hymn so many times put the thrill at the end at risk of seeming old. The prelude to the service, on this tune, covered the crescendo thing, pouring forth lots of sound at that part of the tune. We'd have to do it again when we sang it, and stanzas one and two, long ones, had to be gotten through first. Just the week before, singing at that funeral, despite closing the hymn book and singing that last stanza from memory, loud and hearty at the end, I wasn't feeling it so much. My thoughts were more like, yeah, another Lutheran funeral. Do we have to sing this every time?
Surprising then, that this morning, thinking about the many times I've sung this hymn lately became the key to singing it in faith and hope. The repetition made the text and tune more powerful, made the resurrection seem almost imminent. Doggone it, I thought, we keep singing about this thing--upstairs, downstairs, morning, noon and night. With children's voices, with the feeble voices of a congregation of mourners gathered for a funeral, or sometimes with a hundred or so full-throated church musicians who glory in singing out. And this isn't the only church building where this happens. What if the resurrection of the dead came right now? Right here in the sanctuary.
Nobody knows exactly when, much less how God's kingdom will come to complete fruition. I don't think--quite--that an almost-perfect unison can sing it into being. But that great love of God for his creatures--for us. the love that inspired the tender passion of the first stanza of this hymn, has great things in store for us.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Dewfall
Yesterday afternoon, in the sunshine, my older son spread the camping canopy over the weeds in the backyard to dry.
The canopy is a large piece of plastic--a tarp that fits over a roof-like framework of aluminum poles. We use it on camping trips to shelter our cooking and eating area from the sun and the rain. Kris and his friends had set the thing up at a Saturday barbecue--an all-afternoon, all-evening party for a large group of friends. They got rained on, and the canopy was wet when it was packed up and returned to our house. So we spread it out to dry in the sunshine before putting it away in the attic.
Spreading it out is the easy part. Folding it to the right size and cramming it neatly into the zippered bag that also holds the poles is more difficult, which is why, I suppose, the canopy was still out there on the grass when it got dark. Fireflies were out, and mosquitos, too, when I decided I would bring the thing back indoors, even if I had to do it by myself.
I got some help from Kurt (the younger son), but as we folded the tarp in halves and then quarters, I could feel drops of water on the underside. Too late, I said, the dew came up. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to get it thoroughly dry in the sunshine.
The dew came up. I'm not sure I know what this means or why this happens. From childhood I remember that the toes of my canvas PF Flyers would get soaked as I walked through the grass to get my bicycle out of the garage early on a summer morning. As an adult, I learned while camping that dry towels left on the clothesline overnight would be damp in the morning. All this is related to dew, something about water condensing when surface temperatures drop. It's a natural condition, but unless I'm camping or dealing with camping equipment, the dew coming up is not a phenomenon that affects my life, unlike, say, the network being down, or the internet being slow. Or even a thunderstorm blowing out the power for two minutes, or twenty.
Still, I like the phrase--the dew came up. But does it come up? The water comes from the air and the term for the formation of dew is dewfall. I just now learned more about all this by looking up dew at Wikipedia. There's not much to know, but the photos on the site--dew on a blade of grass, dew on spider webs--are beautiful: small, tender things supporting the weight of clear drops of water. Surface tension on the dewdrops makes them glisten and seem to move, even in a still photograph.
There are no pretty pictures of dew drops on a bright green plastic canopy. This morning, the canopy in the backyard is covered in puddles, not dew. It rained during the night and early this morning. With rain and thundershowers in the weather forecast for the next several days, getting this thing dry on both sides is going to take timing, and I suspect there are mosquitos laying eggs in those puddles right this moment. I can't see it happening, but I will feel the effects, just as I could not see the dewfall but felt the drops of water.
I prefer the dew to the mosquitos.
The canopy is a large piece of plastic--a tarp that fits over a roof-like framework of aluminum poles. We use it on camping trips to shelter our cooking and eating area from the sun and the rain. Kris and his friends had set the thing up at a Saturday barbecue--an all-afternoon, all-evening party for a large group of friends. They got rained on, and the canopy was wet when it was packed up and returned to our house. So we spread it out to dry in the sunshine before putting it away in the attic.
Spreading it out is the easy part. Folding it to the right size and cramming it neatly into the zippered bag that also holds the poles is more difficult, which is why, I suppose, the canopy was still out there on the grass when it got dark. Fireflies were out, and mosquitos, too, when I decided I would bring the thing back indoors, even if I had to do it by myself.
I got some help from Kurt (the younger son), but as we folded the tarp in halves and then quarters, I could feel drops of water on the underside. Too late, I said, the dew came up. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to get it thoroughly dry in the sunshine.
The dew came up. I'm not sure I know what this means or why this happens. From childhood I remember that the toes of my canvas PF Flyers would get soaked as I walked through the grass to get my bicycle out of the garage early on a summer morning. As an adult, I learned while camping that dry towels left on the clothesline overnight would be damp in the morning. All this is related to dew, something about water condensing when surface temperatures drop. It's a natural condition, but unless I'm camping or dealing with camping equipment, the dew coming up is not a phenomenon that affects my life, unlike, say, the network being down, or the internet being slow. Or even a thunderstorm blowing out the power for two minutes, or twenty.
Still, I like the phrase--the dew came up. But does it come up? The water comes from the air and the term for the formation of dew is dewfall. I just now learned more about all this by looking up dew at Wikipedia. There's not much to know, but the photos on the site--dew on a blade of grass, dew on spider webs--are beautiful: small, tender things supporting the weight of clear drops of water. Surface tension on the dewdrops makes them glisten and seem to move, even in a still photograph.
There are no pretty pictures of dew drops on a bright green plastic canopy. This morning, the canopy in the backyard is covered in puddles, not dew. It rained during the night and early this morning. With rain and thundershowers in the weather forecast for the next several days, getting this thing dry on both sides is going to take timing, and I suspect there are mosquitos laying eggs in those puddles right this moment. I can't see it happening, but I will feel the effects, just as I could not see the dewfall but felt the drops of water.
I prefer the dew to the mosquitos.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
New and different
One of my favorite exchanges in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice comes while Elizabeth Bennet is dancing with Mr. Darcy at the Netherfield ball. The conversation is about conversation and the need to make an effort at it, since as Elizabeth observes,
"It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together." Then Elizabeth supplies an explanation for why she and Darcy may prefer to talk as little as possible while dancing together.
"We are each of us of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."
Darcy replies, "This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure. . . . How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say."
Darcy's protest is polite, but ironic. Elizabeth's conversation is full of clever, original remarks, and she knows it. What she doesn't know is that Darcy finds this quality startlingly attractive.
I would classify myself as one of Elizabeth Bennet's unsocial, taciturn individuals--timid about speaking unless I've got something original and insightful to say. That's my excuse for two-and-a-half months of silence from the Perverse Lutheran. Despite beginning several posts, I've had nothing to say that would amaze the entire room, much less please myself.
I write because I want to find a new way to say something, because I want to test the truth for myself and find a new connection with it. I am looking for original insight, but even in summer's abundance of sunshine, I'm leaning towards the writer of Ecclesiastes' view of things: there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecc. 1:9). Or Shakespeare's view--the same idea with an original twist: "There is nothing left remarkable/Beneath the visiting moon." (Antony and Cleopatra, IV.xiii.60) Cleopatra says this shortly before she dies.
As for the Preacher behind the book of Ecclesiastes--well, I'd have to read the durn book to comment on where he goes in the eleven chapters that follow his declaration that "what has been is what will be." I have no objections to reading Ecclesiastes, but stopping to do so now would probably keep me from finishing this post. I'm skipping to the end of the book: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."
Secret? That's a word I heard in church this morning, in the Gospel reading:
"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. (Matthew 10:26)
So God will ferret out every secret thing and will show these hidden things in a new light when they are brought to judgment. It's probably not theologically correct to describe God as taciturn and unsocial, but apparently the Creator likes to astound everyone in the room with amazing new views of stuff that is now hidden. Hey, being God, she can't help it.
Is that where Elizabeth Bennet and I get it from? Yes, there's some vanity, some false pride, maybe some prejudice, in having to discover everything for yourself There is vanity in thinking you can think what others have not thought, or that you can at least put a new twist on it. But I'm thinking the desire to do this could be part of what Paul described as being "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Rom. 6:11--the second lesson this morning)
A new creation!
"It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together." Then Elizabeth supplies an explanation for why she and Darcy may prefer to talk as little as possible while dancing together.
"We are each of us of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."
Darcy replies, "This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure. . . . How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say."
Darcy's protest is polite, but ironic. Elizabeth's conversation is full of clever, original remarks, and she knows it. What she doesn't know is that Darcy finds this quality startlingly attractive.
I would classify myself as one of Elizabeth Bennet's unsocial, taciturn individuals--timid about speaking unless I've got something original and insightful to say. That's my excuse for two-and-a-half months of silence from the Perverse Lutheran. Despite beginning several posts, I've had nothing to say that would amaze the entire room, much less please myself.
I write because I want to find a new way to say something, because I want to test the truth for myself and find a new connection with it. I am looking for original insight, but even in summer's abundance of sunshine, I'm leaning towards the writer of Ecclesiastes' view of things: there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecc. 1:9). Or Shakespeare's view--the same idea with an original twist: "There is nothing left remarkable/Beneath the visiting moon." (Antony and Cleopatra, IV.xiii.60) Cleopatra says this shortly before she dies.
As for the Preacher behind the book of Ecclesiastes--well, I'd have to read the durn book to comment on where he goes in the eleven chapters that follow his declaration that "what has been is what will be." I have no objections to reading Ecclesiastes, but stopping to do so now would probably keep me from finishing this post. I'm skipping to the end of the book: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil."
Secret? That's a word I heard in church this morning, in the Gospel reading:
"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. (Matthew 10:26)
So God will ferret out every secret thing and will show these hidden things in a new light when they are brought to judgment. It's probably not theologically correct to describe God as taciturn and unsocial, but apparently the Creator likes to astound everyone in the room with amazing new views of stuff that is now hidden. Hey, being God, she can't help it.
Is that where Elizabeth Bennet and I get it from? Yes, there's some vanity, some false pride, maybe some prejudice, in having to discover everything for yourself There is vanity in thinking you can think what others have not thought, or that you can at least put a new twist on it. But I'm thinking the desire to do this could be part of what Paul described as being "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." (Rom. 6:11--the second lesson this morning)
A new creation!
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