In the sanctuary and on the streets, alleluias and shared bread

Text posted first on Facebook last night.

 

Brewer Fountain, Boston Common

Two profoundly beautiful worship experiences today.

The first in the morning at Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston with Mendelssohn anthem; let's-tackle-this-one sermon with focused biblical analysis by the Rev. Pam Werntz; three baptisms; thanksgiving for 10 years of marriage equality; bread and wine blessed and shared; the final Bach cantata of Emmanuel Music's 2013-14 cantata season, glorious in praise and beauty. Candles and the play of light. Alleluias in hearts and voices.

The second, also with alleluias, a bit later in a very different setting: on Boston Common with Common Cathedral (often spelled common cathedral w/ no caps) in a congregation of mostly homeless men and women with some housed people as well, a dynamic young woman leading worship, and a youth group serving sandwich lunch before the service. A message of God's unconditional love for all and of God's very presence in our midst, a highly participatory service, with a structure but a lot of spontaneity (same structure as the other Sunday Eucharist but much simpler, pared down), and heartfelt Prayers of the People. Ragged at the edges in all the right ways, reverent, raw, with much assurance of forgiveness and comfort. Bread and grape juice blessed and shared. Sunlight, clouds, wind, the play of light.

Communion and contemplation in both places. And welcome. And song. And healing.

Not either/or. Both/and. The Church is a wide, deep, and diverse reality. Alleluia.

Emmanuel Church before the liturgy, 5th Sunday of Easter

Photos here are of parts of the worship space, the physical context. I don't take photos during worship; we do have photographers at Emmanuel who document some of our celebrations;  photographers and writers about common cathedral respect the anonymity and privacy of participants.

Today is International Jazz Day - and here's the live concert in Istanbul!

The International Jazz Day Global Concert is streaming live from Istanbul. 

They've just started the speeches (the concert and the day are sponsored by UNESCO) and the music will begin shortly. EVERY country in the world has some kind of celebration of International Jazz Day. Enjoy! Click here for the link.

P.S. Duke Ellington's birthday was yesterday. Did you celebrate it?

This is the night...

Lève-toi, réveille-toi d'entre les morts!

Click photo to enlarge and see detail.

See here and here for more from Kariye (Chora) in Istanbul.
Click the French line above for Resurrection chant from Taizé.

The oft-recycled Epiphany sermon (with asides on James Taylor, T.S. Eliot, Sadao Watanabe, and Masao Takanake)

Sadao Watanabe, The Magi's Dream

Bear in mind that I wrote this Epiphany sermon a little over a year after 9/11. It's from eight years ago, Epiphany 2003. I stand by what I said. Click here to read it.

I looked for artistic representations of Herod, since a good deal of the sermon focuses on him. What I found, for the most part, were representations of the consequences of Herod's actions: the slaughter of the innocents; the Magi returning home by another way; the flight into Egypt of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

Later on of course there is another Herod, Herod Antipas, who is the son of Herod the Great, and it is he who is involved in the deaths of both John the Baptizer and Jesus according to the Gospel stories.

The only scenes in which Herod shows up as a visible protagonist are, once in a while, Herod with the Magi, and, more often (at least in Western art), Herod's feast, but that one is Herod the son. The feast is the one at which which Herod Antipas's stepdaughter Salome dances and asks for the beheading of John.

In painted scenes of Jesus' infancy, even with Herod the Great's presence in the stories, artists tends to focus on the Holy Family, the shepherds, the animals, the angels, and the Magi. Makes sense. "But Herod's always out there. / He's got our cards on file," James Taylor's song notes. And... See the sermon for more.

Of course I also read --or listen to-- the T.S. Eliot poem "Journey of the Magi" every year, but I only cited a line or two of it in that sermon.

The link at the name of the poem will take you to the text of "Journey of the Magi" and to an audio of T.S. Eliot himself reading it. Well worth a listen.

Don't mix "Journey of the Magi" with the sermon though -- very different animals. Read them separately, or just read one or the other.

Note: I never see the work of the Japanese artist Sadao Watanabe (see above) without thinking fondly of Dr. Masao Takanake, who during his time at Harvard introduced me and others to Watanabe's work. Watanabe's art graces the cover of at least one of Takenaka's books, The Bible Through Asian Eyes. A scholar of Christian ethics, Takenaka also wrote God Is Rice: Asian Culture and Christian Faith and other works. He was for many years the President of the Asian Christian Art Association.

For the new year

One of my favorite Pete Seeger songs, written by David Mallett:

The Garden Song

Photo: Sugar Creek Township, Greene County, Ohio

As Christmas approaches...

... I think back to France, where I lived when I was growing up. I had hoped to be there for these holidays, but for a variety of reasons I could not go. Perhaps just as well since airport and other traffic in Northern Europe have been in a snarl due to snow. I hear from a friend, though, that things are lovely in Southern France.

Here is "Un Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle," which some of you will know as "Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella." This is the way it is supposed to sound.

Karl Barth and Thomas Merton - and Mozart

Note: I am writing this post on the weekend of December 11-13 but back-dating it to the day of the anniversary, the day I thought of it.

Karl Barth, considered by many to be the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century, author of the The Epistle to the Romans and the Church Dogmatics and principal author of the Barmen Declaration, and Thomas Merton, writer, Catholic convert, Trappist monk, spiritual seeker and teacher, died on the same day in 1968, December 10, and today we remember them both.

I remember them especially through the lens of Merton's short essay (from his journal) at the beginning of Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, one of two books that influenced and moved me during my conversion to Catholicism, which was also my time as an M.Div. student at Harvard Divinity School. The other book was Thoughts in Solitude. The Seven Storey Mountain never did much for me.

Here is the essay.


Karl Barth had a dream about Mozart.

Barth had always been piqued by the Catholicism of Mozart, and by Mozart's rejection of Protestantism. For Mozart said that "Protestantism was all in the head" and that "Protestants did not know the meaning of the Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi."


Barth, in his dream, was appointed to examine Mozart in theology. He wanted to make the exam as favorable as possible, and in his questions he alluded pointedly to Mozart's masses.

But Mozart did not answer a word.

I was deeply moved by Barth's account of this dream and almost wanted to write him a letter about it. The dream concerns his salvation, and Barth perhaps is striving to admit that he will be saved more by the Mozart in himself than by his theology.

Each day, for years, Barth played Mozart every morning before going to work on his dogma.: unconsciously seeking to awaken, perhaps, the hidden sophianic Mozart in himself, the central wisdom that comes in tune with the divine and cosmic music and is saved by love, yes, even by eros. While the other, theological self, seemingly more concerned with love, grasps at a more stern, more cerebral agape: a love that, after all, is not in our own heart but only in God and revealed only to our head.

Barth says, also significantly, that "it is a child, even a 'divine' child, who speaks in Mozart's music to us." Some, he says, considered Mozart always a child in practical affairs (but Burckhardt "earnestly took exception" to this view). At the same time, Mozart, the child prodigy, "was never allowed to be a child in the literal meaning of that word." He gave his first concert at the age of six.

Yet he was always a child "in the higher meaning of that word."

Fear not, Karl Barth! Trust in the divine mercy. Though you have grown up to become a theologian, Christ remains a child in you. Your books (and mine) matter less than we might think! There is in us a Mozart who will be our salvation.

Thomas Merton
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

New York: Doubleday/Image, 1965, 1966

pp. 11-12

Back from Boston and Halifax (to the tune of Cole Porter)

Halifax Public Gardens

I am back safely from Halifax, Nova Scotia, and before that, Boston. I intend to blog about some aspects of my trip. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, happy birthday, Cole Porter!

Grading music prescription from Kirkepiscatoid

We had a little conversation going on Facebook last night about the appropriate music to accompany end-of-semester grading. I raised the question and a remarkable number of people chimed in with suggestions.

Our friend Kirkepiscatoid, who is not only an Episcopalian, as her nom de blog indicates, but also an MD pathologist (not to be confused with pathological) who trains and thus grades medical students, had a suggestion I cannot resist posting. It is, as it were, part of the core curriculum of grading music.

Enjoy. And note the brass players tapping their feet to the rhythm!

If you're one of my Facebook friends, you will probably see more links to grading music on FB as the evening continues. Or you can just go to my update from last night and see some suggestions and links already present.

P.S. Kirkepiscatoid is also a thoughtful blogger on matters spiritual and temporal, so you might want to check out her blog.

Musical silliness (related to sheep theme below)

Thanks to Kirstin for this one!

Baa, baa, bamba!

Sing along bilingually!

(+Maya Pavlova says thank you for el gatito.)

Gratuitous JT post #3

I heard this live around the time it came out --not this particular performance, but the same year and with the same great backup singers.

Note: if anyone can figure out the meaning of this song, let me know. JT has all kinds of cryptic, poetic songs, and this is one of them. It may well be that to let them be evocative is the best approach, but sometimes there are stories behind the songs.

Gratuitous JT post #2

Another old song -- from my college years! I still love it.

Picture from now, because middle-aged men are much more sexy than younger ones.

And a bonus: JT's first appearance on network TV! Great song. Mellow out, folks, it's Friday.

Gratuitous JT post # 1

He still sings this song well -- perhaps even better than before.

P.S. He has a new album out, Covers.

It's music time: Let It Be

I just posted this on Facebook for a friend who is deep in a writing job and thought I'd share it here for the assembled multitudes. I'm enjoying watching and listening to this video. (Sorry MP, I still love the Beatles.) And for you religious types, this has Mother Mary in it, too. What's not to love?

Enjoy.

With thoughts and prayers for the people of Mexico as they face the swine flu epidemic and the aftermath of an earthquake.

Anne Rothenberg, R.I.P.

My aunt Anne Rothenberg, née Anne Becker, died of cardiac arrest early this evening in New York.

Her son, my cousin Ron, said that she went peacefully. She had been in failing health and was undergoing physical therapy at a nursing home following a stay in the hospital after surgery.

Anne sang and played the piano (in her younger years she performed as Anne Barry) and was a vocal coach for Broadway performers. Her husband, my uncle Bill, died a few years ago after several years in a nursing home following a stroke. Bill had been a strong, handsome, athletic man, an educator, coach, and summer camp director and it was hard for many to see him weakened and unable to speak much after his stroke. Anne visited him every day after his move to the residential facility, staying most of the day and, after lunch, playing the piano for him and the other residents and singing their favorite tunes.

When we were younger and all involved in the summer camp my grandparents founded (Anne and Bill directed it for some years) Anne composed and directed children's musicals. At our big family reunion a couple of years ago, she sat down at the piano and played and sang, and several of us cousins sang with her. She was a spunky, dramatic, generous woman.

Anne was the mother not only of Ron, who cared for her kindly and diligently in her last months, but also of Lisa, who recently lost her husband Gerald. This is a lot of loss for my cousin Lisa.

May Anne rest in peace. May the Holy One bring consolation to Anne's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and may her memory be a blessing.

Shabbat Shalom

A friend dropped by a few hours ago with a warm, freshly baked loaf of challah which she had just made. Mmmm!

I gave her some flowers from the yard-garden-whatever-this-land-is-called.

The weather is sunny and fresh.

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Here, for your enjoyment and perhaps also your edification, are some Shabbat songs and prayers.

I think I posted this a year or so ago, but never mind. It's a traditional Sephardic blessing before lighting candles. The beautiful (more on Sephardic music here) is by Balkan composer Flory Jagoda. The words are in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish, which is to Mediterranean Jews what Yiddish is to Eastern European Jews). You can hear the song, sung by Susan Gaeta, if you scroll down the page to where it says "click here." Here's the page.

Thanks to Ritualwell.org for the above and for the following.

Kiddush (prayer over the wine) with either feminine or masculine God-language. Has the tune of the chant, too. Here.

HaMotzi[ah] (prayer over the bread) with either masculine or feminine God-language. With the tunes.

Contemporary blessing after the meal here.

Healing Psalms, Day Ten - part 1

I am going to make this 10th healing Psalm last. Mostly because I have had a huge, long day and am cooking a little sniffle and want to take myself to bed and get a good sleep so that I don't get sick.

So I will post the Psalm tonight and then commentary tomorrow.

I'm posting the Psalm twice here, with the traditionally used pronoun in the first version and the other pronoun in the second. If G*d has no gender, then let's use all genders or none.

Psalm 150

Halleluyah/Praise God!
***Praise God in His Sanctuary;
***Praise Him
******in the vast expanse of Heaven!

Praise Him for mighty deeds;
***Praise Him
******according to His abundant greatness!

Praise Him
***with the blowing of the shofar;
******Praise Him
*********with the lyre and the harp!

Praise Him
***with drum and dance;
******Praise Him
*********with string instruments and flute!

Praise Him
***with resounding cymbals!
******Praise Him
*********with clanging cymbals!

Let every breath of life praise God,
******Halleluyah/Praise God!


Psalm 150

Halleluyah/Praise God!
***Praise God in Her Sanctuary;
***Praise God
******in the vast expanse of Heaven!

Praise Her for mighty deeds;
***Praise Her
******according to Her abundant greatness!

Praise Her
***with the blowing of the shofar;
******Praise Her
*********with the lyre and the harp!

Praise Her
***with drum and dance;
******Praise Her
*********with string instruments and flute!

Praise Her
***with resounding cymbals!
******Praise Her*********

with clanging cymbals!

Let every breath of life praise God,
******Halleluyah/Praise God!

Scroll down to posts below for previous Psalms and explanation of the origins of this custom of praying ten specific Psalms for healing of body and soul. Thank you, Reb Nachman. Blessings, all.

Bonus: swingin' Brazilian duck

Where else but Brazil could you get two grown men singing about a duck sounding and looking so sexy? This is an old song (compared to some of you youngsters, anyway). The performers are João Gilberto and Caetano Veloso.

Jethro Tull does Bach, again

I posted two versions of this in May (live here, recorded three and a half decades earlier here) but here is another. I never get sick of this piece. Enjoy.

"Stimulus: More than bread alone"

A good op-ed on the need for a stimulus package for the arts in the new administration, by an old friend of the Acts of Hope family whose work has occasionally appeared here. Thank you, Jerry.

Stimulus: More than bread alone

by Jerry M. Landay
The Providence Journal

There's a rumor that President Obama plans to create a new cabinet position — secretary for the arts. Should he do that, I for one will shout to the skies: Bravo! Bravissimo!

You may reply: “Surely he’s got more important priorities.” Think again.

Read on here.

(P.J., you will like the Isak Dinesen quote.)