Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-28-2012

In the United States we have a few “secular-sacred” civic holidays. Memorial Day is one of them. Its origins, significance, and meaning have all become somewhat obscured and homogenized in the commercialization of all holidays into justifications for department-store and used-car sales. A sorry situation. Ask people what “Memorial Day” is, today, and you are more likely to hear responses about the “beginning of summer” or sales or barbeques than honoring servicemen of the past.

When I was a boy, many people still called it Decoration Day. Its origins after the Civil War were among Black freedmen, celebrating their liberation and the nation’s fratricidal war to achieve it. Union veterans under the Grand Army of the Republic (an early American Legion of sorts) urged that it be a holiday for all veterans; in fact, for all Americans to remember war, honor peace, and commemorate fallen military personnel. People would pray, hold parades and solemn gatherings, and decorate graves. When I was a kid, moms would decorate baby carriages in red, white, and blue bunting, and join the parades. Hello, Ridgewood, Queens, New York.

Before and after the Civil War, the American military protected the Republic, one of the very few responsibilities delegated to the Federal government by the Constitution. It is interesting – and, I believe, instructive – that the more that our military has been used for humanitarian work and “nation-building,” the less effective it has been as a fighting force. My yardstick is the traditional standard: results of wars that look like wars (e.g., Vietnam), not non-military actions like evacuations from Libya, distribution of laptops to Iraqi children, and earthquake relief all over the place.

In the meantime, and as part of the same imperatives, the military has been forced to advocate for homosexuality in its ranks and, also frequently in the news, prohibit expressions of Christian faith in its ranks. Under the radar, so to speak, the humanitarian work of the American military is subversive to its basic mission, as well as to our civic culture as envisioned by the Founders.

What I mean is this: there are many agencies that can, and do, minister to victims of disasters and even wars around the world. A governmental decision to use the military for such actions interferes with the Red Cross and other groups. Private charities – especially churches – exist to do Christ’s work on earth. God delights in our charitable instincts and responses. We volunteer, we serve, we give, we travel, we sacrifice, to minister after natural disasters in America and across the world. We bring medicine and food; we build schools and hospitals; we even distribute laptops and dig wells.

Or… the government can transform soldiers, sailors, and marines into White Wings. Noble intentions do not change the facts that the military is supposed to do military things, and private citizens are supposed to be free to do charity. Our own responses, and responsibilities, are being co-opted, and handed to people – our warriors – whose jobs they should not include.

Let us remember the spiritual traditions of Decoration Day, Memorial Day: thanking God for the incredible service and noble standards of our military in America. The red in Old Glory can remind us of the sacrifices made by countless servicemen and women through the generations. They served and often died to protect their flag, their communities, and the unknown future. Even the future that perverted the template of our “secular-sacred” civic experiment known as the United States of America. Shed a tear for our heritage, decorate a soldier’s grave, and give thanks.

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A musical tribute to the service and sacrifice, and eternal security, of people who have paid with their bodies for their souls’ desire. For those who are noble, and we all know some of them, let us remember them. Oftentimes it is the most modest who have the greatest stories. Seek them out this year.

Click: Gone Home

5-21-2012

On the heels from a week at the Christian Writers Conference in beautiful Estes Park CO, I come away with a heart exultant from fellowship, encouragement, and creative interaction with creative geniuses (some of them not yet published, but surely to be, soon). We also had reports and prayerful consideration of the cultural and spiritual crises facing Christians in this broken world. Human trafficking, persecution of believers, orphans in desperate situations… these “we will always have with us,” but as followers of Christ we cannot fail to respond.

I actually wonder whether Americans know what “hard times” are. I have been through some difficult patches, but I cannot say that I have known Hard Times in the sense that every previous generation in history, virtually everywhere in the world, has experienced.

I have been sad, but not in sorrow. I have been in debt, but never destitute. I have had regrets, but never grief. How many of us can share such relatively comfortable testimony? In my case, to whatever extent I rightly judge my insulation, it is largely due to my standing as a Christian — receiving joy that passes understanding — but we also have to credit modern life, in America, with /its technology, medicine, and general prosperity.

Hard Times do come in America, but somehow all the wars and crises have the lengths of TV mini-series, and if not, the public grows impatient. The public has a sound-bite mentality. We used to face our challenges; but now we are distracted with the modern equivalents of the Romans’ “bread and circuses” — pop entertainment, push-button gratification.

In many ways this indicates that we are not advancing as a culture. I’m not sure we are “going backwards,” either, because that might actually be beneficial. Giuseppi Verdi (yes, the composer otherwise known as Joe Green) once said, “Torniamo all’antico: Sara un progresso” — “We turn to the past in order to move forward.”

I got thinking of Hard Times in America when I pulled an elegant old volume off my bookshelf. “Folk Songs” was published in 1860, before the Civil War. This book is leather-bound, all edges gilt, pages as supple as when it was printed, a joy to hold. The “folk songs” of its title refers not to early-day coffee houses, but to poems and songs of the people, in contradistinction to epic verse or heroic sagas; the way the German word “Volk” refers to the shared-group spirit of the masses.

Many of the titles are charming: “The Age of Wisdom,” “My Child,” “Baby’s Shoes,” “The Flower of Beauty,” “The First Snow-Fall”… However, such sweet titles mask preoccupations with children dying in snow drifts, lovers deserting, husbands lost at sea, fatal illness, mourning for decades, unfaithful friends. No need to guess the themes other titles from the index:”Tommy’s Dead,” “The Murdered Traveler,” and “Ode To a Dead Body.”

It reminded me that people 150 years ago were not gloomy pessimists: they were not. But Hard Times were a part of life, and therefore part of poetry and song. On the frontier, life could be snuffed out in a moment. In the imminent Civil War, roughly every third household was affected by death, maiming, split families, or hideous disruption; yet anti-war movements never gained traction; life went on. Abraham Lincoln almost lost his mind over an unhappy love affair; his wife likely did lose her mind when her favorite son died in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt’s young wife (in childbirth) and mother (of a kidney disease) died on the same day in the same house. Hard Times? Close enough, we would agree.

Also before the Civil War, a composer named Stephen Foster wrote a song called “Hard Times.” He is barely recalled today, sometimes as a caricature, but he might be America’s greatest composer. He wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair,” “Old Black Joe,” “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginia,” “Way Down Upon the Swannee River / Old Folks At Home,” “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Beautiful Dreamer”… and “Hard Times, Come Again No More.”

This last song has been resurrected lately to a certain repute, or at least utility. In some circles it has become an anthem for charities and lamentation of poverty. Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, even the Squirrel Nut Zippers, have sung it. It has taken on the air of a secular anthem. But in fact, although Stephen Foster did not embed a Gospel message in the lyrics, he had written many hymns in his life, and — if we can turn back our minds to the world of 150 years ago — it is clear that the Hard Times he wrote of were the world’s trials, to be relieved in heaven. It is clear that the “cabin,” and its door, in the song are metaphors.

Here is a memorable video to evoke the reality of life’s Hard Times, the promise heaven holds, and the beauty of Stephen Foster’s music to you. The seven singers are from the amazing project of a few years ago, “The Transatlantic Sessions” — singers and musicians from America (US and Canada), Ireland, and Scotland singing old and new “folkish” songs in a living-room setting.

Listen to the wonderful performance, the amazing music, and the important reminder that we should keep Hard Times in perspective… but also that God provides a joyful relief from life’s disappointments when they come. By and by, they will “come no more.”

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The singers are, left to right, Rod Paterson, Scotland; Karen Matheson, Scotland — hear her incredible soprano harmony on the left channel; Mary Black, Ireland; Emmylou Harris, US; Rufus Wainwright, his mother the late Kate McGarrigle, and her sister Anna McGarrigle on the button accordion, all Canadians. The other musicians are fiddler Jay Ungar — he wrote the haunting “Ashokan’s Farewell: tune of the PBS “Civil War” series — and his wife Molly Mason on the bass.

Click: Hard Times Come Again No More

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

Chorus:
‘Tis the song, the sigh, of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

5-14-12

Last week my little corner of the country, mid-Michigan, made the news. Actually, after living here for five years, I still cannot describe the geography well. Some news-readers and weathermen describe the area as “central mid-Michigan,” or “northern southeast Michigan,” or “west of the ‘thumb’,” and “south of the Upper Peninsula.”

But it wasn’t difficult for a freakish thunderstorm to find it last week. Almost 10 inches of rain fell in a five-hour period. Power was out for 15 hours. Experts called it a “Once in 500 years storm.” It was five solid hours of lightning and thunder, very strange, like in a cheap horror movie. I suffered a basement flood, damaging some of my archives and collection of thousands of books and hundreds of boxes just down there. This despite a rather comical – I can say now – routine of trying to keep the rising water from a dead sump pump, by candlelight, one pot at a time. The Little Dutch Boy I am not. Eventually I lost the race with the rising water and leaking walls.

What could be worse?

Well… my neighbors who lost everything. Nearby basement apartments where water on the ground burst through their windows. A friend whose bedroom had water up to his chin. Dozens of cars in town completely covered by water. A tractor-trailer on the interstate (this is what made national news) that was stuck in a flooded underpass, and the driver had to be rescued after climbing atop the truck’s roof.

They all had it worse. No matter how bad things get for any of us, we can always find someone who is worse off. Sometimes that truth is a reality-check about our own conditions. We should not always be Whine connoisseurs. Sometimes this truth inspires sympathy toward others, a good thing. It is a reaction common to the human condition that we wonder whether our suffering (or pain or disappointment or betrayal or sickness) is unique to us. My family started a hospital ministry after my wife’s heart transplant, and we frequently were asked the question by patients and members of their families, and survivors after a death: “Why me?”

I eventually came to a revelation that the question, as natural as it is, is partially misdirected. We walk through this vale of tears; disease and sickness exist around us; there is sin in this world, and humanity suffers the consequences; and “the rain falls on the just and unjust.” Sometimes, a lot of it.

“Why me?” I suggest the real question should rather ask, “Why me – why does God love me so?” or “How do I deserve His favor?” or “While I was yet a sinner… and despite my continual rebellion… God sent His Son to die for… ME?” — Why me?

This is the real meaning of the real question we should cry out every day. It brings a very humbling perspective. While there are possible reasons for “Why did my house get flooded?” or plausible factors behind “Why does someone’s heart fail?” – there is NO answer to “Why me, Lord? How do I deserve You?” … except the answer of His loving Grace.

Let THAT answer flood over us all.

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A musical treatment of this perspective is expressed in the classic gospel song written by Rusty Goodman, “Who Am I?”

Click: Why Me?

5-7-12

Did you hear enough about the Titanic last month? I didn’t! I actually was surprised that there were not more memorials and anniversary events on the hundredth anniversary of its sinking. It is something that will forever attract people’s attention – fascination, always-fresh horror, disgust, and admiration.

There was another anniversary this past week – of the formal service, a century ago, in honor of one of the ship’s greatest heroes, and most forgotten men.

Major Archibald Butt had been military aide to President Theodore Roosevelt and, after TR’s retirement, to President William Howard Taft. “Archie” was a remarkable man, a combination military aide, social secretary, confidant, political scout, diplomat… and friend. He was like a family member to the Roosevelts. He was just as loyal to Taft, and one could add the trait of protectiveness, for the hapless Taft was narcoleptic, negligent of many duties, careless about political maneuvers. Archie often interceded with whispered advice or behind-the-scenes discretionary moves.

As 1912 approached, many Republicans, disappointed with Taft, wanted Roosevelt to run again. The growing animosity between TR and Taft placed Archie Butt in an excruciating position: he was devoted to the person of Roosevelt, loyal to the office of Taft. Soon his nerves began to wear. President Taft almost insisted that Archie take a leave from office… perhaps join his friend Francis Millet, the famous artist, for a trip to Rome.

Butt and Millet made the trip, and worked their way up the continent to return to America on the marvel of the age, The Titanic.

Some interviews with survivors included:

“When the order to man the boats came, the captain whispered something to Major Butt … the Major immediately became as one in supreme command. You would have thought he was at a White House reception. A dozen or more women became hysterical all at once, as something connected with a life-boat went wrong. Major Butt stepped over to them and said, ‘Really, you must not act like that; we are all going to see you through this thing.’ He helped the sailors rearrange the rope or chain that had gone wrong and lifted some of the women in with a touch of gallantry. Not only was there a complete lack of fear in his manner, but there was the action of an aristocrat.

“When the time came, he was a man to be feared. In one of the earlier boats, fifty women, it seemed, were about to be lowered, when a man, suddenly panic-stricken, ran to the stern of it, Major Butt shot one arm out, caught him by the back of the neck and jerked him backward like a pillow… ‘Sorry,’ said Major Butt, ‘women will be attended to first or I’ll break every damned bone in your body.'”

Another survivor said, “The boats were lowered one by one, and as I stood by, my husband said to me, ‘Thank God for Archie Butt.’ Perhaps Major Butt heard it, for he turned his face towards us for a second and smiled. Just at that moment, a young man was arguing to get into a life-boat, and Major Butt had a hold of the lad by the arm, like a big brother, and telling him to keep his head and be a man. Major Butt helped those poor frightened steerage people so wonderfully, so tenderly and yet with such cool and manly firmness that he prevented the loss of many lives from panic. He was a soldier to the last. He was one of God’s greatest noblemen, and I think I can say he was an example of bravery even to men on the ship.”

Another interview read:

“His last goodbye was smilingly said to Miss Marie Young, formerly a music teacher to some of the Roosevelt children. Miss Young had frequently met Maj. Butt at the White House. She was on the last boat to leave.

“‘Maj. Butt escorted me to a seat in the bow,’ she said …. ‘He helped me find a space, arranged my clothing about me, stood erect, doffed his hat and smiled and said Good-bye. And then he stepped back to the deck, already awash. As we rowed away we looked back, and the last I saw of him he was smiling and waving his hand to me.'”

Roosevelt and Taft alike were devastated. At the memorial service for Archie, in Georgia, Taft could hardly keep his composure. He said something that any person would be proud to have said about him: “When I heard the ship had sunk, I knew Archie must have perished. As long as there was one other person alive on deck, Archie Butt would have made sure that person received preference to himself.”

We are reminded of Christ’s words, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life…” In Archibald Butt’s case, there also was the matter of duty. His story, and others, provide some of the compelling reasons that The Titanic disaster will always speak to us.

Another story that has lived in legend is that the ship’s band, a string quartet, played music, heroically, calmly, almost stoically abstract, until The Titanic sank beneath the icy surface. They played the old hymn, “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Again: What were people made of a hundred years ago? Would we see their like today? Perhaps: we remember Todd Beamer – “Let’s roll!”

Then, as now, and throughout human history, the God component always seems to be a part of these stories. “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” That old hymn was on President McKinley’s lips when he died of an assassin’s bullet; and countless others have been blessed by the words.

“If on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly,
Still all my song shall be:
Nearer, my God, to Thee.”

Births… death… times of crisis and stress… It only feels at those life-moments that we are closest to God because… we are. Better put, He is closest to us. Best put, at those moments we make ourselves aware of His presence. He is always there.

Have you ever wished that sometimes God would shout instead of whisper, when we need reassurance, or guidance? The real problem is not with His voice, but with our ears, our hearts. The next time you face a crisis – God forbid it be as grave as The Titanic’s passengers, but if so, may we all comport ourselves as honorably as Major Butt – hear His words. Remember His promises. Listen for His sweet music.

The Titanic fared ill against an iceberg. But many of its passengers were standing on a solid rock nonetheless.

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Here is an amazing performance of the haunting melody of this classic hymn. Andre Rieu, soloist and conductor of more than 400 brass players, a large orchestra, and a larger chorus.

Click: Nearer, My God, to Thee

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A friend has written a book, to be published soon, about The Titanic’s fateful voyage, through the prism of the unique social conventions – afternoon teas and society’s customs – that largely disappeared from our culture when the great ship did. It is an informative book, and useful (recipes and info about tea) from a recognized expert, Penelope Carlevato.

Click: www.TeaOnTheTitanic.com