Singing the Difficult Songs

I am finding much solace in the beautiful old hymn, Lo, How a Rose E 'er Blooming. If you had asked me about this hymn prior to this week, you would have heard me say, "No, I don't care for it.  It is kind of hard to sing."  That response, of course, is akin to hearing a lovely chamber piece and shrugging it off with a response of, "Well, it is a little slow." 

 

As our news continues to be be crowded with questions, statements, and various posturings (some quite pompous) concerning the tragedy in Newtown, I cannot help but think it is too early for all of that.  What we are crowding out is the profound experience of mourning.  We are not letting the seemingly deep emptiness be.  We are trying desperately to take the easy way out because otherwise we hurt. We hear the the psalmists and prophets warning us that a life in God is not always easy.  Those ancient echos scare us.   We want the easy.  We want God to pick up the pace.              

 

The time for analysis and making changes will always arrive.  However, that is not what we are really yearning for.  We are waiting for a new rose of life.  It is already within us: fragile, and stunningly beautiful.   Let us courageously wait for this tender bloom in hope, and receive it in love.   May all who mourn know that we are waiting with them; they are not alone. We may be frightened, but we will not run.        

  

Emmanuel.  God is with us.  Alleluias will return.  However, for now, we light Advent candles to ward off the chill, and we wait.  

    

 

Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming

from tender stem hath sprung!

Of Jesse's lineage coming, 

as those of old have sung.

It came, a floweret bright, 

amid the cold of winter 

when half spent was the night. 

    

  

The People Sang

In one home dedicated to the care of Alzheimer's patients, the pianist who joins me is blind,  Therefore, we typically do not use our monthly song sheets, but rather I depend on a small Rock of Ages hymnal.  If I spot a hymn that I can sing,  will ask the pianist if he knows it, and often he does.   Together we find hymns that he knows the music to and that I have the words to.  We also have several old favorites that we know we can always fall back on, including some of his solos.  Yet, as meaningful as "Amazing Grace" is, as I was driving over that morning, I was thinking that I really needed a break from it.

As I perused the small hymnal, conveniently compiled in alphabetical order, I looked to see if "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee," was there. As I was about to ask the pianist if he knew it, I spotted "Joy to the World."  I suggested we sing it, and we had a lively rendition.  Several more residents joined us. The room where we gather is small, and by the time we had reached the end of the hymn, the room was quite full.   

I could not resist picking another Christmas carol.  Then one more.  I asked the residents if this was silly - this singing Christmas carols in October. Several responded with a resounding, "No! Let's keep going!"   

Just before communion, we sang "Oh, Come All Ye Faithful."  As I moved about the room offering the wafer and the cup, the pianist repeated the carol by playing a very simple, quiet melody line.  I heard one voice singing. Then another. Eventually there were several voices quietly singing.  It was such a beautiful moment because neither the pianist nor I were singing.  From that deep wellspring of memory and devotion, the people sang.  I was so touched I could barely keep going.  Yet, I did, and every person in the room, those who had come well dressed and those still in bathrobes, took communion.         

We finished up with "Go Tell It on the Mountain,"  amid much hand clapping and laughter.   Carol said, "We should sing these everyday!" She has a very fine ear and loves to sing.  She will often throw her head back and sing with an abandonment that I envy.  Sister Juliette, whose tremors sometimes seem ready to overtake her small body completely, quietly exclaimed, "Glorious. Christ is with us."  We had moved from our separate identities as pianist, residents with Alzheimer's, and a pastor, into a community that was experiencing the great mystery that Christ continues to come, and Christmas happens any day where there is love.  

  

Emmanuel.       

Found in Out of the Way Places

When I saw Roger, he and Charlie were engaged in conversation in the lobby.  My heart is always touched by them both. Roger is highly educated and elegant.  He has little or no mobility in his lower body, and he can no longer read, but his mind is very much intact. I know at times he feels trapped.   The last two times I had visited him, he was ill and quite angry.  Yet, when I saw him this week, his color was good and he was smiling.  He took my hand and said, "Oh, Sue Ann, I have been in the hospital twice.  While I was there, I found myself thinking about some of the people that are here - people who are really very caring.  I found myself thinking about you, and how you are always telling us that God is calling us into relationships.  I think I am finally beginning to understand."

    

Charlie, who was looking freshly scrubbed, began to tell us yet again, in his carefully measured speech,  that he has a Ph.D. from Harvard.  His life path has not been an idyllic stroll, but rather one marked by the extreme highs and lows of mental illness.  I think that he keeps telling us so he can remember that there were not just difficulties and dramatic  mishaps in his life, but some real triumphs as well.  He reminded us of his thesis that had been returned to him marked, "Immanently acceptable."  And then he smiled and said, "I suspect that Sue Ann believes that we are all immanently acceptable."  We all laughed deeply, but it was a poignant moment of being known and loved for each of us.  We have now known each other five years.     

I think you all for your birthday wishes.  This year I turned sixty, and on October 15 I will celebrate my fifth year with SpiritCare, a truly life changing ministry.   I also have been serving as an interim minister for a small church in San Jose,  New Community of Faith.   Yes, it is a balancing act, but I am grateful.    

This blessing came to me twice yesterday, so it seems wise and well to send it to all of you.   May your courage and your love be rekindled today, and know that you, too, are immanently acceptable, for you belong to God.        

        

For a  New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,

Where your thoughts never think to wander,

This beginning has been quietly forming,

Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,

Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

Noticing how you willed yourself on,

Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety

And the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,

Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,

And out you stepped onto new ground,

Your eyes young again with energy and dream,

A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear

You can trust the promise of this opening;

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning

That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~  

  

Great Expectations

I have a friend who is Hindu, and formally, she is addressed as Swami 
(I believe there is more to her title, but I am a bit of my league with the language). As she goes about in the world with her ready smile, shaved head, and orange robes, she is most certainly noticeable.   She often greets people, and even my dog, with "Oh! I have been waiting for you!"  She says this, not with a sense of "Where have you been, you are late!" but with the sense of great openness and hospitality that creates a sense of belonging even before one arrives.  It is a gift that is wonderful to witness and to receive.  

This, of course, is the sort of hospitality that Christians should extend.  However, my friend told me that recently some young men, claiming to be Christians, announced to her, and not in a loving way, that she was, without a doubt, going to hell.  Now, she is secure in her faith, but it did leave her wondering how professed followers of Jesus could be so unwelcoming.  I often wonder that myself, and I know I am not alone.   I think some of the breach comes from a misguided notion that some are broken, and some are not.  That some are saved and some are not.  That somehow, only  Christians can experience God, despite a very rich and diverse world that is brimming with a variety of cultures and faith traditions. 

  

Certainly such prejudice is not limited to Christians.  We see this prejudice tragically played out across the world.  Yet, I think for those of us who claim that we follow the way of Jesus, the call is to always to be reaching out with love.  Reconciling with love.  And receiving with love.  That is the gift, and the responsibility of the communion table.  There can be no feast if we do not generously share in love.  The rest we leave to God.    

  

   

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him," Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly (Luke 19:5-6).       

   

The way we answer the door is the way we deal with the world...When the person knocks - whenever the person knocks - the porter [the one whose responsibility is is to answer the door] is to say, "Thanks be to God" or "Your blessing, please" to indicate the gift the guest is to the community. The porter is to be warmth and welcome at all times, not just when it feels convenient. In the Rule of Benedict, there is no such thing as coming out of time to the monastery. Come in the middle of lunch; come in the middle of prayer; come and bother us with your blessings at any time. There is always someone waiting for you.   

                                                     Rule of St. Benedict, Joan Chittister, O.S.B.  

  

Dreaming in the Morning

I had such a beautiful dream about running this morning, that I woke forgetting the summer cold that has taken lodging in my chest.  Nonetheless, dreams of freedom and expansive green fields have inspired much and many.  Or can, at least, get us out of bed.  There is much in this life we must bless and release, but let us heed the advice to dismiss nothing.   Such arrogance is doing much harm in this beautiful world.      

 

May you be blessed with vision today.

See it for the first time

By plucking her petals, you do not
gather the beauty of the flower.

Clouds come floating into my life,
no longer to carry rain or usher storm,
but to add colour to my sunset sky.

Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is only putting out the lamp
because the dawn has come.

Do not say, ‘It is morning,’
and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time
as a newborn child that has no name.

Don’t limit a child to your own learning,
for he was born in another time.

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil
is no freedom for the tree.

Every child comes with the message
that God is not yet discouraged of man.

Every difficulty slurred over
will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

Everything comes to us that belongs to us
if we create the capacity to receive it.

Faith is the bird that feels the light
when the dawn is still dark.

From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play and forgets the priest.

I have become my own version of an optimist.
If I can’t make it through one door,
I’ll go through another door - or I’ll make a door.
Something terrific will come
no matter how dark the present.

—Rabindranath Tagore. With thanks to it's all dhamma.   

   

Home Is Where the Mysterious Heart Is

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home. It is a journey we can make only by the acceptance of mystery and of mystification—by yielding to the condition that what we have expected is not there.

—Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness

I love the phrase, arriving "at the ground at our own feet."  We must begin with the humble beginnings of who we are in the bodies we have today.   We will be always be called further along, but most of us will not leave our own skin today.  Tomorrow, perhaps.  These passages are usually not for us to calculate.   Our call is always to come home to the moment.  Not as a this or a that, but as being.  A wise elder shared with me a few days ago:  "The only way I can live in faith is accepting that God is a mystery. Faith is not knowing.  We do not know, so we go in faith."   Despite our fears and our graspings, we really do not need God, or ourselves, to be a quantifiable this or a that.  We do, however, very much need God, and ourselves, to faithfully be where we are - and where we are is quite mysterious indeed.     

   

Today, I arrive at the ground of my own feet and fingers, and begin to write again.  I am grateful to reconnect.    

 

I pray the summer is bringing you a sense of connection and joy - in the home of your being in our beautifully mysterious God.    

 

My thanks to Parabola for sharing Wendell Berry's wise musing. 

Belonging, Even When We Don't Know It.

The gentleman in the wheelchair looked suspicious when he asked, "What church are you from?"  When I responded that SpiritCare was non-denominational, he pressed further.  "No," he replied, " I want to know what church."  I told him I was ordained United Church of Christ.  

   

He refused communion.  "You are not of the The Church," which not surprising, turned out to be his denomination.  "There is only one church and you are not part of is not it."  He wheeled away.  

  

As I looked around at those gathered in wheel chairs and gurneys, I became acutely aware that I have been walking into that crowded multi-purpose room, turning off "The Price is Right," and jauntily saying, "Good morning, everyone!"  for close to five years.  Many of those gathered that morning I have known since the first day I walk in.  I look around to see that both Francisco and  Estelle have begun their personal rituals of standing to take communion, no easy feat for either of them.  They both slowly come in on walkers and immediately sit down, but in the moment of communion, they courageously leave their chairs and stand.  I noticed that the two activity assistants were taking a few quiet moments to simply sit and listen to the pianist.  Gentle Leona, who is over 90, was dozing, but I knew she would not be happy if I passed by without waking her.  David was patiently sitting and waiting with his mother, as he does every day.  Virgil was raising his hand, letting me know he wanted to take communion, and the sooner the better. The room was full with believers of various faiths, of no faith, of lost faith.  Of found hope, and of lost hope.  Of acceptance and frustration.  The heroic and the disheveled. Of all that we humans are, and all that we are not.  That is indeed church, whether you are in a cathedral, a chapel, a skilled nursing community, or in the park.  Wherever people are gathered,  there the living Christ can be found, and fortunately for all of us, the living Christ is neither arrogant nor squeamish.          

 

   

Afterwards we began to sing our song of thanksgiving which was Amazing Grace.  I was surprised to see that the gentleman was back in the room.  This time, however, the dark scowl was replaced by a radiance.  He seemed to be transported by the music.  He looked happy.   Then, he was gone again, and everything seemed uncommonly quiet. I thought of those in the home who had passed and felt their gentle presence.      

But then, I heard the very much alive Charlie ask his regular question, "How do I look?"  I tell him that he is looking just great.  He really is looking better and better as he slowly is able to set some of his personal demons aside.  The activity assistants get up to tend to others once again.  I hear announcements over the intercom, and the ever moving elevators begins to whir.   I hear the tv in the lobby and the ringing telephones.  I am handed the song sheets that a volunteer had graciously gathered.  I repack my bag, and my month of amazing grace was officially underway.

  

Dear friends, let's love one another, because love is from God...

                                                                                                          1 John 4:7