Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-29-24

Many of you know the Gospel songs “The Sweetest Gift, A Mother’s Smile” and “Where Could I Go But To the Lord” and “Winging My Way Back Home.” I know them as precious songs in some hymnals, also as Gospel, folk, and country classics that recording artists have sung for a generation or two. They have touched millions, as have hundreds of other compositions by their composer J B Coats.

In turn, I know J B Coats’s grandson as a friend, an Ole Miss graduate who loves the Lord and loves comics (two of my loves, too!). I am not going to link to J B Coats song this week, but some week I will focus on his music ministry. In the meantime: Daryl Coats the grandson recently shared something that could sound like a mere Internet meme… but got me to thinking deeper. He wrote –

When you hear someone say, “the last thing I wanna do is hurt you” – it suggests there’s a list, and that hurting you is on that list.

Right? That is not the same as saying, “I never want to hurt you,” or “I can’t imagine ever hurting you.” Is it a subtle difference… or big difference? The “last thing”? The person seems to be saying, “I do want to hurt you, but it’s not my main priority.”

Here is what it reminded me of: Paul wrote in II Timothy 1:7 –

God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

In the same way as Daryl parsed the words, I think St Paul meant: There IS a spirit of fear… but, remember, it does come from God. That is the similarity I see. Some Christians, “eternal optimists,” are tempted to claim that fear is something that does not exist, or have to exist. (Like the intention to hurt someone, or not). Christian-Lite celebrities like Norman Vincent Peale and Joel Osteen preach that fear is a false emotion, casually to be wished away.

Well, fear is real.

Safety comes from recognizing and respecting fear. Not yielding, but dealing. Note that the Bible does not say “There is no such thing as fear.” It says rather clearly, that there is a spirit of fear; sure enough.

… we see truth, and take heart, and overcome fear by realizing that there is a spirit of fear in this world, this life; but that God is not its author. We can fear certain things in life – let us start a list, as suggested by Daryl’s aphorism. As a nation we can fear pandemics; foreign wars; economic disruption; political corruption; assassinations; crime; personal tragedies… We can fear such things. Or we can anticipate them. Or we can work against them. Or we can plan.

We can see similarities, as I suggested above, or we can see great differences indeed when we confront “fear” – by any of its manifestations and nuances.

So we can “translate” Paul – it is called exegesis, or apologetics – and make our list:
1. There is such a thing as Fear
2. There is a Spirit of Fear that can affect people
3. God is not the author of that Spirit of Fear
4. The author, then, is the devil, or people who hate us, or we ourselves
5. We do not have to yield to that Spirit of Fear.

There is another Spirit, and that is the Spirit of God. The Holy Ghost was sent to encourage us, comfort us, and strengthen us.

And speaking of power, and love, and a sound mind (weren’t we?), do you realize that Jesus Christ said “Fear Not” almost as often as He said “Hello”? In fact, the Bible counts 365 times the phrase “fear not” appears. If you want to see it this way – once for every day of the year!

Where do you keep your lists? On the fridge? On your computer screen’s frame? On Post-It notes? Keep this list in your hearts and minds.

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Click: No Depression in Heaven

7- 22 -24

I have received many responses to last week’s blog essay that addressed the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. I have always been sensitive about the proposition because I can make quick sketches, but (as regular readers here know too well) I tend to be prolix. Talkative-by-keypad. (My excuse is that I seldom have the time to write shorter…)

The blog inspired many readers to declare themselves in the camp of either representational art (paintings and sculpture) or writing (prose and poetry) as the higher mode of expression.

It is an open question – ultimately a question that is neither silly nor intractable, but, rather, impossible definitively to answer. It clearly is subjective, but it stimulates worthwhile thoughts. Which “speaks” to you more, pictures or words? Art or story? Visuals or concepts? Which mode leads to fulfillment as a creator or an appreciator?

…all those reflections and discussions are collateral to composers, performers, or lovers of music joining the debate!

I have a friend in Ireland whom technically – no, literally – I have not yet met; but we have many mutual friends including my daughter Emily, and through his paintings I feel I know better than I do many lifelong friends. Fergus Ryan is an artist who works in some ancient traditions, both in media and themes. His images are ultra-realistic, and so are his subjects… until they both frequently invoke golden moods and motifs, whether in subjects’ eyes – which seldom meet the viewers’ – or what is seen through the mists over seas and fields.

Fergus’s work has been compared, favorably, with that of Andrew Wyeth. Many of his subjects could be relatives of Helga; and many of his landscapes could be those of Winslow Homer or (to me) scenes reminiscent of Edward Hopper. His media are egg tempera (ancient of days) and oil; and his surfaces include silk besides traditional canvas.

Fergus is a Christian whose beliefs do not directly inspire individual works but in a much larger sense inform his work, his love of the natural world and its inhabitants: human and otherwise. Embracing this larger appreciation of God’s world led him recently to share an affinity with another great artist, Michelangelo:

“Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to calm my soul, now turned toward that Divine Love that opened His arms on the cross to take us in” (from The Voyage of My Life, 1555).

This was the man (I mean Michelangelo Buonarroti, not Fergus Ryan), a contemporary of Leonardo and Raphael, who sculpted the Pieta when barely into his twenties; later David and Moses; and painted the Sistine Chapel; who made holy figures and holy things relatable to humanity… who yet declared sublimation to the overwhelming message of the Cross. The “agony and the ecstasy”? To Michelangelo the simple and profound were one: the power and the glory.

To my theme here, however, about words, art, creativity: when Fergus shared the quotation by Michelangelo, a self-important skeptic – I should say an aggressive denier of God and anything faintly Biblical or religious – peppered him with allegations of Biblical forgeries and historical hoaxes. No proof, just ad hoc claims that only the stupidcould be seduced by “obvious nonsense.” Fergus, God (or Whoever) bless him, patiently debated the delusional correspondent online.

The Bible talks about “itching ears” – people who seek out the arguments they need to feed their prejudices. To quickly, and seriously, switch to the principal crisis in the lives of such people: Scripture lists many sins, and the Lord holds out mercy and forgiveness for them all… except one: Blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Willfully ignoring the Truth; ascribing God’s miracles to luck or (worse) one’s self; beholding the things of God but denying the Power thereof… these are things, to me, that might be called blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

Finally, to visit one bit of ignorance that was thrown at Fergus is one that skeptics, atheists, blasphemers often bray: that the creative genius of a Michelangelo, or the music of a Bach, or the kindness of a mother’s smile… have nothing to do with the Divine Spark. Individuals create, compose, and love on their own, these people say: a God has nothing to do with it.

I don’t know whether to have contempt or pity for people who harbor such bankruptcies of emotion. Knowing that God is in the midst of tender creativity is so much more profound than any notion of human origination! Don’t you agree?

Well. If you do – or if not – I will get off my soapbox and return to living-room discussions and debates. I ask (as my title says) a Question with No Right Answer. But it is fun, and worthwhile, to think about. It is, perhaps, about the nub of Creativity, and what is special to humankind when we create and perceive.

Let us say that you adore the Pieta of Michelangelo; or have been moved by the Magnificat by Bach; or have been reduced to tears by “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Which choice would make them more special to you? – if you could only have experienced them once in your life… and then you retained their memories; embraced the special ways they touched you; and you sought to recapture the meanings and emotions forever after?

Or… to see, hear, and read them over and over? Whenever you wanted? To dial-up the moods; to feed impulses; to memorize every one of their details? Would “familiarity breed contempt”?

No right or wrong answers? In either case, cherish the expressions of creativity… in others, and in yourself. May I suggest that God graces all His children with creative talents. But it is no less a Gift of God to have the taste, curiosity, and sensitivity to hold such things dear. That may be the answer: to let Him work through us and in us. Outward and inward.

Catch the Divine Spark.

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Click: All Things Bright And Beautiful

7-15-24

My old and dear friend Mark Dittmar shares wonderful, brief but profound spiritual thoughts every day through e-mail blasts he calls “Nuggets.”

Recently one of his messages spoke to me more than usual, and on several levels. His title was a question – “How Much Is a Picture Worth?” and the old saying was turned around:

An artist and a writer were arguing about whose work was more significant. “Well,” said the artist smugly, “one picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Hey, that’s good. Who wrote that?” countered the writer.

As someone who is a writer and an artist (come to think of it, so is Mark) I appreciated the points of view. Throughout most of human history, works of art and narratives were inextricably related. The creative expressions had virtually common functions. From cave paintings through scrolls and tapestries, paintings and stained-glass windows, pictures told stories. In the same fashion, as writing became codified, alphabets and books revealed themselves through more than letters and words: illuminated manuscripts; decorative scrolls; fabulous works like The Book of Kells.

Words and pictures – narratives and images – underwent a Great Divorce with the invention of the printing press. Almost overnight, words were“liberated.” Books comprised of only printed type were the norm; and artists were seduced, in a manner of speaking, to be “non-representational,” no longer obliged to tell stories or depict scenes with narrative import.

But at the turn of the 20^th century there was reconciliation of sorts. Stories and graphics, aided by technology and ingenuity and commercialism, discovered each other again in movies, comics, animation, and other plastic arts and expressions.

Again, it could be stated, or argued: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” I think it is creative delight that the proposition is an insoluble mystery. But one manifestation I have not yet mentioned is the age-old literary form of the fable… myths… epic poems and sagas… what storytellers and troubadours have done. That is, melding different artistic forms of expression.

Jesus called them “parables.”

Post-modernists think they have invented the “Power of Story,” but they merely have rediscovered, or try to, the mode of “painting word pictures.” He did not say anything to them without using a parable (Mark 4:34). Jesus, maybe more than Aesop or Confucius, dealt in word-pictures.

Mark – my friend, not the ancient Apostle – made reference to a painting that is making the rounds of the Internet. It illustrates a familiar parable, a well-known story: Jesus’s description of the Lost Sheep.

If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray (Matthew 8:12,13).

The parable presents a picture partly because it poses a moral dilemma; at least a “practical” challenge. Would you jeopardize the whole flock to search for one sheep? Would the owner of the flock approve? Did the lost sheep deserve its fate by straying from the flock? These are legitimate questions.

… unless you are that lost sheep.

The Savior of our souls is willing – He was willing; we have the record of it – to sacrifice all, even His own life, so the lost sheep might be saved. The point of the parable, in fact the point of view of God’s plan of salvation, is that He cares for us. He seeks us out. I believe that if the entirety of the human race had been sinless except for one person – let’s say you – Jesus would still have gone to the cross.

Speaking of the cross, we know that Jesus was beaten and whipped and nailed to that cross. But, in truth (imagine this as a picture) He virtually climbed and scrambled up the cross, and invited those spikes… so willing was He to die for you and me, taking our punishment upon Himself.

In the same way, the painting that’s going around the Internet really brought tears to my eyes. It depicts the sheep not merely lost but stuck in mud and muck, struggling. And it depicts the Good Shepherd. He is not viewing the distressed sheep from afar, or calling its name, or tip-toeing in its direction.

No, the Good Shepherd is running, trudging, muddy Himself, desperate to save the Lost Sheep. Picture the scene.

One more artistic expression to add to the miracle of creativity. This parable, this word-picture, this painting, has a holy counterpart in many hymns and Gospel songs. We have “sermons in song,” just as pictures can tell stories. One that moves me the most is “The Ninety and Nine.”

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety and nine; Are they not enough for Thee?” But the Shepherd made answer: “This of Mine Has wandered away from Me. And although the road be rough and steep, I go to the desert to find My sheep.”

And all through the mountains, thunder-riv’n, And up from the rocky steep, There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heav’n, “Rejoice! I have found My sheep!” And the angels echoed around the throne, “Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!”

What a picture.

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If any readers are interested in receiving Mark’s “Daily Nuggets,” contact him at mdittmar65@yahoo.com and ask to be put on the circulation list by putting “Interested in Receiving Nuggets” in the subject line.

Click: The Ninety and Nine

7-8-24

Sin. It might have different names (or euphemisms or disguises) but it is something – a challenge, a problem, an incipient cancer – about which all humans are aware. All peoples in all ages in all ways have dealt with it; almost always censoriously, of course, because our core instincts have recognition of right and wrong. When societies stray from these inherent beliefs – and rules that follow – they deteriorate. And fall.

A corrupted respect for sin’s effects has not prevented entire cultures from occasionally – in fact, more than occasionally – dismissing its dangers, lying to themselves. We see it in history. We see it today. We see it in our midst.

That’s “human nature.” People of both the Christian and non-Christian traditions, societies calling themselves religious, and even aggressively pagan or secular cultures, fall prey to sinfulness. Usually they nominally are opposed to what we call sin.

But, you know, you can be against things like boredom and forgetfulness and even cancer, too, but these things visit us all anyway. I frequently parry arguments from secularists and agnostics and atheists about sin (and other aspects of reality like fatal diseases or natural disasters or school shootings) – variations of “How can a loving God permit such things?”

I always remind myself that people who complain in such fashion are (even subconsciously) not arguing that there is no God; they are, in effect, confessing an inability to understand His ways. One of many answers, of course, is that God could have created a world of robots with no free will; where there would be no reason to challenge and be challenged, to “advance” and better oneself; where impulses of love and charity would be needless. Boring?

In a larger sense, a world where there is no such thing as sin would be a world where forgiveness, redemption, and salvation would be unknown qualities; where songs like “Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound” would be useless and confusing; where the desire to embrace joy would be, well, superfluous.

This is all academic, if not rhetorical, because such a world does not exist. In the meantime – excuse me while I thank God – uncountable lives through history have been ennobled by artistic expression that praises God; music that exalts God; charity that serves God. Ah, how about all the hatred and killings and wars in the name of religion, those secularists and agnostics and atheists ask. Thank you for the distinctions, I reply: they have been in the names of religion, not God – two very different sources of love and hate. Now go to your rooms.

So… there is the problem of sin. And sin is not yielded to, by definition, except by temptation. In the 1970s the TV comedian Flip Wilson made people howl with laughter when one of his characters would scream, “The devil made me do it!” Humor’s foundation is a sense of recognition, and in this case it is not true that the devil makes us do anything. We can recognize that the devil may tempt (one of his job descriptions) but cannot make us do anything.

The recognition comes with acknowledging that we blame the devil – or a thousand other “tempters” – but seldom ourselves. “Everybody does it.” “It’s no big thing.” “Who does it hurt?” and so forth.

That part of the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” has always stumped me somewhat. The Bible assures us elsewhere that God will never tempt us beyond that which we cannot endure (I Corinthians 10:13) and outside what is common to mankind. So, right before petitioning God to deliver from evil, why suppose that God would “lead us” into temptation; and therefore pray to be delivered from that situation? In the meantime – please give us “daily bread” and forgive us our trespasses…

Yes; why?

Speaking very personally, I regard Biblical conundrums like this not as flaws nor contradictions nor spiritual “gotchas.” There are some points – for instance, when the Rapture will take place – where I think God wants us to think and pray and think and pray some more, to keep us on our toes. Thinking and praying about sinning, it is useful to note that in one sense the entire Bible is a family album of sinners. Take a look – murderers; cheats; whores; adulterers; liars; betrayers… and those are just the heroes.

Well… take heart, sinners. That fact is a message that you are not alone. More importantly, do not enter the realms of self-condemnation. Do not hide your faces from God. Do not act like all is lost – least of all, that YOU are “lost” without hope. God hates sin, but loves the sinner. And He loves repentance and redemption most of all.

Among the Bible’s great sinners (don’t be surprised at the list), Job learned humility and obedience; Jonah learned grace; Abraham learned to be willing to sacrifice; Moses learned responsibility; David learned about confession and the need for forgiveness; Elijah learned to seek Heavenly guidance; Peter learned what the Holy Spirit could provide.

… all these people – every one a sinner – and so many names in the Bible, we properly regard as saints. And they are.

And we can be on that honor-roll, too. We were all sinners; and all may be redeemed. Remember that Christ died for us… “while we were yet sinners.” The sweetest thing in life, as we interact with friends, even strangers, is to greet and be greeted as “former sinner!”

God, our loving Father, does not lead us into temptation. In fact… neither does the devil. We lead ourselves; we yield because, basically, we want to; nothing compels us. We can resist – and when we need a little help, that’s why the Holy Spirit was sent. One of His Biblical names is The Helper.

No temptation, no sin, is greater than the great One who lives in our hearts. Lead yourself not into temptation.

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Click: Temptation