Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-1-12

Old and new. Up or down. Happy or sad. Passive or aggressive. Fast or slow. Liberal or conservative. Hot or cold. Yin and yang. Life is a story of extremes, and our choices between them. Can’t everything, basically, be understood through such a view?

Black or white? Right or wrong? … Good and evil? Not all things that seem like opposites ends of the spectrum are even on the same spectrum.

Aristotle thought so, that there were the extremes of thesis and antithesis, and the truth, or best formula for living, lay in the center: the “Golden Mean.” His friend Plato disagreed, sensing that there were abstract principles of right, and justice, and truth; and that humans should strive toward that truth, ennobling themselves by the quest for truth, and the fidelity to certain standards. Even before Christ, Platonists recognized Abstract Truth. Aristotelians claimed Relative Truth. The early church fathers were neo-Platonists.

In a civic sense we can say that the Founding Fathers of the United States proclaimed the “pursuit of happiness” as a right. Later politicians elevated “happiness” alone as a right — bestowed by government, since government would define the meaning of happiness every so often, and re-calibrate the Happiness Meter for its citizens.

In the spiritual realm, in religion, the question (and answer!) about two extremes is essential to our existence, not just our happiness or moral equilibrium. Many otherwise serious people secretly subscribe to the cartoon portrayal of good and evil as two silly characters sitting on our shoulders: the cartoon angel, and the cartoon devil. Yes or no; do it or don’t; speak up or shut up.

Many people believe that the figures, silly as they are, represent God and Satan. Of course. Our consciences roil. Whom shall we let persuade us?
But in this life-view of good and evil, such a view is fatally flawed. The opposite of God is not the devil. Neither is Satan’s counterpart Jesus. The Bible tells us that Satan is a fallen angel. In the heavenly realms, Satan’s counterpart is St. Michael, the Archangel… about whom many Christians neither know nor care much, and do not have to, really.

God is above all. Before all, and pre-existent. God is all-powerful, not co-powerful. All-knowing, not a partaker of certain knowledge. Creator, not co-worker. Judge, not jury.

God, not partner.

There is no counterpart to God. The spirit of evil, the devil whom we know, is so far beneath God that if we only realized that true relationship, we could better understand that sin has no power over us. Jesus confirmed this by the Resurrection and Ascension, which should ever remind us of God’s pre-eminent position in the universe, and in our lives, whether we fully comprehend it or not.

The opposite of God is not the devil, but the ABSENCE of God. He is so all-present that the only way we can find an opposite extreme is to shut him out completely from our hearts. This we are free to try, and result is not a variety of things we call sin, but worse: a coldness, a total isolation, a frightening awareness of separation that is horrifying.

Suicide victims, despairing of God, have spoken of that coldness. Listen, by the way, to many atheists, such as the late Christopher Hitchens, who, in spite of themselves, often argued against God as unfair or demanding or confusing. But NOT non-existent. Such positions place them somewhere on the road to belief, not non-belief. Hitchen’s famous book, after all, was called “God Is Not Good,” not “There Is No God, So Why Are We Even Talking?”

Fortified with such understanding — whose points are posited hundreds of times in hundreds of ways in the Bible — we can stand stronger when we face moral dilemmas and ethical challenges. Jesus reigns in our hearts, and that funny character with a tail and a red suit never really sat on our shoulder at all. And if Satan’s jewel crown (sung about in those terms in an old and profound gospel song) is on your head, you placed it there once when you thought false choices were real. Let God reach down and cast it away.

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Many singers have sung the amazing gospel song of the obscure past by the forgotten composer Edgar L. Eden. One was Bruce Springsteen, of all people, in a stirring version:

Click: Satan’s Jewel Crown

9-24-12

“Regrets, I’ve had a few…” Such words imply a summation, and we humans often stop on the path to wipe our brows and rest, and think about what got us there. There is not one among us who does not think about the What Ifs or the Missed Opportunities, but we seldom give thanks for the wrong decisions we avoided or the opportunities that might have led to grief.

The saddest situation attends those whose regrets outnumber the joys. And sadder still is when people sigh and believe that such is their fate, or that it is too late to change their life’s profile, so to speak. While anyone has one breath remaining, this is a cruel lie.

One of the Bible’s great subtexts is that it is never too late. And the application is in every sphere of life, not a theological corner. (Eventually we all will realize that theology is not a corner of life but the entire room, the broad landscape. Other “important” aspects of life are actually corners and compartments.) That is, it is never too late to receive, and accept, God’s favor. Salvation is offered to the vilest sinner. Think of the worst person you know, or history’s cruelest villains. Not one person will be shut out of Heaven, or receive God’s forgiveness, if that heart seeks God, repents, and accepts Christ as Lord and Savior. The Bible tells us so.

If that seems unjust, it is because you look at things, still, from a human’s point of view, instead of God’s. All Heaven rejoices, as you will too, some day in Glory, when a sinner is saved. And for some detail, or by some perspective, or after altered circumstances, you or I might be that vilest sinner. Shudder that you might be voted off the island of Eternity. Even St. Paul called himself “Chief among sinners.” We are well off when we are aware of our faults

… AND when we are aware of our opportunities. It is never too late. I have friends of great accomplishment who nevertheless regret that they have not mastered new languages, or learned to play instruments, or mastered the arts of painting. Yet any of these things can be done in short months. We all have the capacity to write a poem that will move the hearts of millions, or write The Great American Novel. Or – no less significant, essentially, to our lives – to come to a truth, share a thought, touch another person’s soul, that will “make it all worthwhile.”

Acts and deeds, concepts and creations, all may ennoble us; but the important matter to our self-regard, at least, is that we realize it. God confirms our worth so that we may affirm our courses. We need not be condemned, or condemn ourselves, by either the taunts of unfulfilled dreams or the dubiety of the Now, that things will never change.

To pull back from the brink of blather: Orlando Gibbons, almost four centuries ago, wrote and set to music the simplest illustration of the encouragement that our life’s glory can come even at the last moment. And cancel all the rest, which is prep-time after all for what might be our most satisfying acts. The simple song is about the silver swan, a gangly and sometimes mangy, always awkward – in fact absurd-looking – water fowl. Yet geese can be sillier, right? In the song, at one moment the bird rises to elegance, becomes handsome, and sings a beautiful note which it previously was never capable of “unlocking.”

His lesson, for sinners, for creative minds, for fellow and average humans, is that we are forever capable of that Moment, that act; and that we should never judge ourselves by false standards, or the consensus of the rabble all about us. More fools now live, than wise.

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approach’d, unlock’d her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more.
Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.

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The very brief, but very profound, madrigal from the Restoration Period. The haunting and beautiful tune helps fuse this to our consciousness. An early example of polyphonic harmony:

Click: The Silver Swan

9-17-12

Civil eruptions everywhere, from American streets to foreign cities. Financial doom. Social decay. Dirty politics. Depressing statistics. Polls that reveal Americans believe the country is moving backwards.

Indeed, Americans have moved. Christians have moved.

In truth, we once were tipping, then sliding, then running away from our foundational heritage; and now are in a free-fall. We chose to move from so many secure places, and now we moan about the consequences.

We act like we have no faith in the Faith we profess, as Christians, or as Patriots. It is natural that our children grow up doubting what we tell them, because parents and pastors try to fit every “truth” into the molds of peoples’ desires. The Bible’s words can apply to the duties of responsible citizenship as well as religious practice: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall turn toward fables.” (II Timothy 4:3-4). Itching ears.

Citizens become disinterested, or embarrassed, or ashamed, of their nation when its leaders stumble down such pathways themselves. The same applies, though more subtly, to religion.

We see people of other religions jeopardize their lives for their beliefs. Not only jihadists who attack embassies and murder people; but Christians, too, around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned, and martyred for their faith. More people lost their lives for professing Christianity in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. Yet in the West we apologize for Christianity, endure insults, and too often regard it as a personal quirk instead of the hope of humankind.

Once upon a time the kidnapping of an American would have citizens breathing fire, because the average American was viewed by other average Americans as more exalted than any other country’s Sovereign. Today Americans watch their soldiers killed and humiliated in the streets; and the American flag desecrated every week, some place on earth… and too many citizens turn the page or switch the channel, and yawn.

America’s new religion is “fairness,” “kindness,” “hope,” “openness,” “transparency,” with no real meanings to those words. People whose minds are so open that their brains have fallen out. All that remains is Ego, manifested, for example, in the belief that a couple decades of sins and social fads cancel the wisdom of human history and the words of Scripture – the commands of an Almighty God.

American believers, even Christian patriots, have moved from places where once we stood. We are pushed, and moved, every day, by circumstances, by fear of what others might think or say. We make excuses for our own discarded values; we act as if moral cowardice is a positive virtue in this New Age. We fool no one but ourselves. Especially not God Almighty, who showed us the Truth, and instructed us in diverse ways. Neither will we fool History: if the world indeed survives, future generations will look back at Western Civilization, Post-Modern Christianity, and the American Culture circa 2012, in wonder.

What we have squandered. The things we have surrendered. The bad choices we made. The leaders we chose and the policies they inflicted. History will weep in sorrow, or laugh in derision. And will wonder, over and over, how we cut off our own roots, how we allowed ourselves to be moved, and toppled, and to decay. Once we were, like the old spiritual song said, like trees planted by the waters, never to be moved.

God, surely, never moves. His ways are eternal. We can move away from Him, even run away, and pretend that truth and stability follow us. But we deceive ourselves. God cannot be moved, and neither does He allow Himself, for long, to be mocked.

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I mentioned that old spiritual song. Its words are a reminder:

Jesus is my Savior, I shall not be moved;
In His love and favor, I shall not be moved,
Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,
Lord, I shall not be moved.

In my Christ abiding, I shall not be moved;
In His love I’m hiding, I shall not be moved,
Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,
Lord, I shall not be moved.

If I trust Him ever, I shall not be moved;
He will fail me never, I shall not be moved,
Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,
Lord, I shall not be moved.

On His word I’m feeding, I shall not be moved;
He’s the One that’s leading, I shall not be moved,
Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,
Lord, I shall not be moved.

Chorus
I shall not be, I shall not be moved;
I shall not be, I shall not be moved;
Just like a tree that’s planted by the waters,
Lord, I shall not be moved.

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Four young musicians from around the South, starting their careers or hoping to, gathered in a humble studio in Memphis in 1956. They all were raised in the Assembly of God Church, and they knew the old hymns. As they gathered around the piano, very informally, and sang from the wellsprings of their heritage, someone was smart enough to turn microphones on. Rough, but heartfelt and all from memory, the de facto “Million-Dollar Quartet” – Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins – spent an hour sharing their music, including songs like “I Shall Not Be Moved.”

Click: I Shall Not Be Moved

9-10-12

The political conventions are over, but I have found myself thinking of the past, not the future. Forty years ago a political convention, in a rather unconventional way, led to my career as a journalist and author. It was 1972, Nixon vs McGovern, a time and a campaign famous for “dirty tricks,” and an invitation I received to be a minor player turned a national footnote into my personal narrative.

I had been a middle-level player in college political movements during the tumultuous era of student protests and campus activism, on the right. State chairman of Young Americans for Freedom chapters (the youth movement founded by William F Buckley); employee at YAF headquarters; cartoonist for New Guard magazine; Editor of Free Campus News Service. Et cetera. A budding activist.

As the 1972 political season began, my girlfriend and I were invited to a meeting in a hotel room in midtown Manhattan by a person who went on to prominent roles in Republican politics, lobbying, and government work. He shows up as a talking head, these days, on TV news shows, and so do several of his old partners. Generically, these days, a “consultant.” His proposition that day was this: the Democrats were going to hold their convention in Miami Beach; their 1968 convention had been crippled by violent protests in the streets; and Would we be willing to travel to Miami and mix with the inevitable protesters? Not to provoke anything, of course, but to… encourage the angry, to seek out TV cameras, those sorts of benign things.

There were enough winks to know what was desired. It was an odd request, I thought, not the least because no recent grad looked LESS like a hippie than I did. My girlfriend might have blended in, but I would have looked like a pit bull at a cat show. No matter: I confess that I was interested. It was a season of dirty tricks. My friend Lucianne Goldberg pretended to be a reporter, and gained a spot on the McGovern press bus. Some goniffs visited the Watergate Hotel late one night, too…

My main interest, frankly, was what I perceived to be an expenses-paid front-row seat to history. Of course I didn’t know Lucianne yet or had a hint about Watergate. Wanting to wear a second hat, however, I had the idea to go to my local newspaper, the Press-Journal of Englewood NJ, which was so small they had trouble covering local school board meetings. But I asked the editor, Laurette Kitchen, if she would be interested in some reportage by a local guy, no charge.

She was not tempted for a moment – Laurette surely was realistic about the weekly’s modest scope in the community – but did ask if I would be interested to apply for an open position, for a local reporter. School boards. Town councils. Obituaries. Since I was floating, at the time, between grad courses and a vague idea to be a teacher, I jumped at the chance. As mentioned above, writing, cartooning, editing were already in my bag of ambitions. I took their writing test on the spot, did HORRIBLY on it (believe me), but was hired on the spot anyway. I have never looked back.

I did not go to Miami. I was a local reporter (yes, writing death notices, the ladder’s first rung, even for many literary giants); moved to a Connecticut paper where I was columnist, cartoonist, and magazine editor; I became editor at three newspaper syndicates; moved to Marvel Comics and Disney; and… 70 books later, found myself watching the political conventions this year, occasionally wondering “What if?”

One thing is certain, after 40 years. Political parties have changed more than I have. Dirty tricks? I don’t want to sound like a cynic – well, yes; I do – but the schemers we will always have with us. Franklin Roosevelt’s crew committed dirty tricks at their own convention in 1940. Afraid of tdelegates’ reluctance to crown FDR for a third term, the Administration stuffed the galleries and even the ventilation system with leather-lunged partisans who sparked “spontaneous” chants and rallies on cue. Even the hallowed Abraham Lincoln was the beneficiary of dirty tricks. The Republican convention of 1860 was held in Lincoln’s Chicago, so his handlers were able similarly to shape events… and even were on hand to bribe leaders with offers of cabinet positions. Sometimes the same office to different men. “With malice toward none, with offices for all…”

But a lot has changed in 40 years. More than 10 presidential elections have passed. Politics is different. The American culture has changed. Society has been transformed. Religion is on its head; not the Bible, but practice and standards in America. At political conventions, the only thing that has not changed, it seems to me, is funny hats.

A party whose icon, FDR, once led a nation in prayer on radio, and had a signed letter to servicemen inserted in Bibles provided during the war, this year celebrated in myriad ways homosexual marriage, unrestricted abortion, public funding of free contraception devices, and obeisance to those who identify themselves as bi-sexual and transgender.

But the dirty tricks of this convention, not well reported by all media outlets, came when someone noticed that the party’s platform had quietly removed all references to God. Even the perfunctory clichés of all past platforms – “God-given rights,” “God has blessed our nation…” “Boilerplate” language of the last platform was retained, minus the God particle, so to speak.

When this gratuitous omission was discovered, it went viral in certain circles. The party leaders must have feared a firestorm, so in the opening moments of the penultimate session, the convention chairman fast-tracked a rule change that would lead to a re-written platform. What unfolded was an astonishing lose/lose proposition.

He announced the new language and asked for a voice vote; approval requires two-thirds of delegates. But the “nays” outnumbered the “yeas”; the chairman had expected a rubber-stamp but did not receive it. In confusion he asked a second time, and the results also were mixed, to be polite, about re-inserting a mild reference to God in the platform. More delays, consultation with the parliamentarian, and enough time (as revealed in subsequent photos) for the teleprompter to display his script, straight from the bosses. After the third voice-vote, certainly inconclusive, the chairman nevertheless read, “In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds of the delegates having voted in the affirmative …”

A good result? Good for traditionalists, Christians? Only if it is commendable for a major American political party to attempt to scrub acknowledgement, or thanks, to God, from its official document; to be hypocritical about ramming it back in because a public-relations disaster loomed; to be anti-democratic about the vote… and for the delegates, representing the rank-and-file, after all, to be enthusiastically in favor of abortion, homosexual marriage, and what history has routinely regarded as deviant lifestyles; but clearly, loudly, repeatedly against the very mention of God. Angry arm-waving, red faces.

I could almost hear a sound above the crowd noise as I watched this dirtiest of dirty tricks foisted on the body politic: “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, Peter – this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny three times that you even know me.’”

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There is theme music to this situation. The great song by Barry McGuire, from those tumultuous days of protest, more relevant year after year after year in our once-great nation:

Click: The Eve of Destruction

9-3-12

Labor Day weekend. The end of summer… Schools back in session… Once upon a time, it was the “new television season”… The beginning of the presidential campaigns (I wish it WERE only starting now, instead of two hundred weeks ago)…. Anyway, these few days are called many things, but they are also regarded by many, many families as the Festival of the Empty Nest. Many young people are going off to college for the first time.

Leaving home, whether it is to dive into life, or for the intermediary step of a college career, or the military, or a job opportunity, is a Rite of Passage. For parents and children alike it is, or should be, the essence of Bittersweet. All of a sudden, 18 years or so seems like a blur; everyone becomes conscious of unfinished projects and unshared words; but the clock is ticking, the calendar is calling, and life awaits.

I watched the Republican convention this week and wondered about the rising class of future leaders. Impressive speakers, comparatively young to be national leaders, boosted the candidate, but also, as part of their assignments, introduced themselves to a national audience. I thought, here are people who might be on the scene four or eight years from now, or 20: should they hold back with their searing testimonies or impressive personal stories, until “their day in the sun” arrives? Of course not!

That day might never come. Or, the way to assist its advent is to tell all, show all, be all, right now. It is a lesson framed many ways: “Carpe diem” – seize the day. “Never a second chance at a first impression.” “Strike while the iron is hot.” “We pass this way but once.”

I saw this as a lesson to be applied in family situations when kids leave home, too. Having regrets should not equate with not letting go. And every one of us should say all that we can, express everything, without reservation. Children can juggle the loss of the family’s pod-like security and the excitement of independence. However, their parents will always be as close as a phone call, e-mail, text, or an ATM.

For parents there is no way properly to describe the mixed feelings of the mixed blessing. You will miss the daughter or son – for many of us, despite the contrary assurance of worldly logic, a crater suddenly exists in our everyday lives. But we are wired as parents to possess an indescribable joy in seeing our children take their next steps into the world. Spread their wings. It is RIGHT. It is what you have prepared your child for – even if not yourself, fully – these 18 years.

Being a parent was never easy. Right? Then how is it that the hardest part comes when they leave our homes?

I’m not sure science has ever analyzed tears. Maybe one of our budding students will win the Nobel Prize for such research. But there are tears of pain, of regret, of sorrow, of bitterness, of lost opportunities, of lost love and found love, and surely tears of joy. The tears that parents (and, I can remember back that far, children too) shed during these rites of passage are of a special composition. Distilled, they somehow confirm to us God’s loving “wheel” of life – “there is a season,” He tells us. Whether a little scary, or seemingly sudden, or a guarantee of big changes in our lives… we must seize the season too.

“Letting go?” Think of it as spreading your arms in fond farewell, so that they can be open to receive, when the next season comes.

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I have never heard a song, or read lyrics, that more beautifully reflect the bundle of emotions in the Rite of Passage of children leaving home (in this case, a college student). “Letting Go,” by Doug Crider and Matt Rollings.

She’ll take the painting in the hallway,
The one she did in junior high.
And that old lamp up in the attic,
She’ll need some light to study by.

She’s had 18 years to get ready for this day.
She should be past the tears; she cries some anyway.

Letting go: There’s nothing in the way now,
Oh, letting go, there’s room enough to fly.
And even though she spent her whole life waiting,
It’s never easy letting go.

Mother sits down at the table,
So many things she’d like to do.
Spend more time out in the garden,
Now she can get those books read too.

She’s had 18 years to get ready for this day.
She should be past the tears; she cries some anyway.

Letting go: There’s nothing in the way now,
Oh, letting go, there’s room enough to fly.
And even though she spent her whole life waiting,
It’s never easy letting go.

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For a music video of this song, amazingly performed by the amazing Suzy Bogguss (wife of Doug Crider), click:

Click: Letting Go