Monday Morning Music Ministry

7-24-23

Last week’s metaphorical garden walk evoked great response. Among the characteristics of pretty and seemingly fragile flowers are, frequently, a tenacity that can inspire us to persevere against life’s onslaughts.

Perhaps the most opposite of objects to a fragile flower that we can think of in nature is a mountain. A giant rock, a monolith, an “immovable object.” Oh, yeah?

When I was a young teenager I visited Italy. I was interested, who isn’t, in Renaissance art, and I was grateful to be able to visit the legendary marble quarries of Carrara. It is an area where primeval formations during the creation of the world caused a wide swath of mountains to be composed of marble. Marble has unique properties – it is a rock (metamorphic carbonate), to be sure, hard and heavy, but at the same time malleable and in some conditions, a virginal pure white.

Michelangelo coveted the marble from Carrara and Seravezza for his planned façade of San Lorenzo in Florence. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and Pope Leo X indulged him, but Michelangelo knew his marble, having sculpted the supernal “David” and “Pieta” several years earlier. He was so intent on moving that marble of Carrara to that city of Florence – hundreds of miles down the Mediterranean coast, thence east into the boot, through Pisa to Florence – that he put aside painting and sculpting and architecture to oversee the “quarrying” of marble and moving gargantuan slabs down the sea and across lands. He became like Leonardo during those many months, inventing rigs and carts and boats and bridges.

Allora. Yes, to get to my point. I was fascinated, as a teenaged tourist, to learn how giant pieces of marble were secured – separated from the mountains that held them. Dynamite existed at the time, and primitive explosions might have been tried… but were not. Many workers with sledgehammers? No. Beasts of burden strapped with great ropes affixed to peaks and outcroppings? Not at all.

The giant chunks of marble were instead separated from the mountains by mere modest slivers of wood.

Wedges. It is a property of some stone, especially marble, that it can crack under pressure (hmmm… like many people do, but that is not my message!). Small cracks were found, or made, in the great marble monoliths, and Michelangelo, studying and planning properly, had narrow wooden wedges tapped into those cracks. Then water was applied to the wood, which expanded slightly from the moisture.

On the next day, after the engorged wood had, unlikely as it seems, pushed the marble monolith apart ever so slightly, other wedges were tapped in – a little larger in size, and soaked again.

This process was repeated, day after day, until (again with forethought and examination for the planned “capture” of the marble that was figured to break free) eventually the marble broke free. Making sure the chunks of rock were “caught,” not to crash down, they were lowered, then to make their serpentine way to Florence. No easy tricks themselves… but compared to the separating and securing of tons of precious marble from a massive mountain?

Now, I made reference to people cracking under pressure. Surely that is a simile if not a metaphor. But the real lesson – a valuable and quite appropriate lesson to learn – is similar to that provided by tenacious little flowers! Can you picture what I described in the quarry-process? “Moving mountains”… The power of planning, patience, and persistence… Being content with slow but steady results… Accomplishing a seemingly impossible task… and using seemingly absurd ideas and tools in order to succeed greatly.

May I suggest further: as beautiful as those snow-white chucks of a mountain were, they still were only pieces of rock. But in a master’s hand (and in the Master’s Hand) they became stunning façades of cathedrals; and lifelike statues of Moses and David; and of Mary holding her crucified Son. Living, breathing, miracles can emerge from cold stone. “The rocks cry out!”

Finally, before we forget the mountain itself: We think of Sisyphus, his impossible task being to push an impossible rock up an impossible mountain. We recall Moses smiting the rock. We remember God’s promise that with prayer and in faith we can move the metaphorical mountains that stand in our way. We remember hymns like A Mighty Fortress and Rock of Ages – that God is our refuge and strength.

But we remember too the fissures in mighty rocks and mountains. Remember how Michelangelo utilized the cracks – the “clefts” – that certainly play their own roles.

When we need it, as God assured us in His Word, those rocks can provide refuges too. He provides safe havens when we need protection from the world, even for a spell. Mountainous rocks can provide hiding places from the world’s attacks and storms, where we may regain strength and courage.

What promises! Move those mountains… and, when needed, find those safe places where God invites you to pray “Hide Thou Me.”

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Since we shared much here about Michelangelo, I would like to close with lines he wrote toward the end of his life:

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.

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Click: Hide Thou Me

11-11-13

I am glad that, through the years, the name “Armistice Day” was transformed to “Veterans’ Day.” There are legends that assert the choice to order the end of hostilities in World War I – 11:11 on 11-11 – was a public-relations conceit. Maybe so, but surely there were scattered soldiers – maybe hundreds or thousands? – who died as the artificially set clock ticked down. This, in conclusion of the “War to End All Wars,” the “Great War,” the war to “Make the World Safe for Democracy.”

World War I was none of these things, except “great” in terms of its numbers of participants, scope, and abject – not to say useless – horrors. And, as any examples would be superfluous to assert, neither the war nor its armistice, ended all wars. Indeed, its “peace treaty” rather sewed seeds of the next world war, as many commentators of the day cynically predicted. For neither the first nor last time in history, war’s victory was illusory; peace’s triumph was elusive.

As I write this, I am listening to Handel’s “Dettingen Te Deum” in the background. A church piece dedicated to a British battlefield victory on the banks of the Rhein, in Germany. It is, like much of Handel’s, wonderfully stirring music. Stick with me on the background of this battle so celebrated: it was part of the War of Austrian Succession, although Austrian troops were not in the battle. The British were commanded by King George II, the last time a British monarch led troops in battle. The Brits were allied with Hessians and Hanoverians, but not (looking farther northeast on a map of German states) Prussia, which was an enemy. The Brits arrived on the continent in the Netherlands, which was then ruled by Austria. The enemy was France. And all this was memorialized in a mass by the German composer living in England, Georg Friederich Handel.

Confusing enough, but not unique in history. Similarly convoluted was the array of grievances behind World War I – Czar Nicholas was cousin of the Kaiser, whose aunt was Queen Victoria. Under slightly altered circumstances, that war could have been conducted as a parking-lot fistfight of drunks after a wedding reception. And 22-million lives would have been spared.

Listening to the Te Deum also had me thinking about all the music and poetry and anniversaries dedicated to wars and battles; and how few dedicated to peace. Yes: there are some – the consecration of Armistice Day, and several poems and masses. Thanks to God (“Te Deum”) for victory presumes that peace will follow.

But I return to the new, and better, name, Veteran’s Day. Like precious few other holidays, the justification for this holiday should be universal, observed every day on the calendar. Wars come and wars go, but veterans we always have with us. I realize that is a facile aphorism whose elements can be switched, but I mean for us to remember that views about Rights and Justice, as in the War of Austrian Succession or the Great War, shift with the years, and are temporary passions.

But veterans – that is, the soldiers, seamen, and fliers who survive – are with us all. Whether they don uniforms willingly, or are conscripted, through history they have been the people who risk odds and defy death, performing amazing tasks. They wear those uniforms to love, more than hate: love their nations, their homelands, their families’ security, their children’s future.

For motivations as complex as the charts explaining the logic of some wartime leaders, veterans serve and sacrifice. They seldom complained or revolted. Traditionally they return to societies that try to forget they exist (that a splendid organization like Wounded Warriors had to be established, doing what the government should be doing for veterans, is a repugnant shame on America). Their selfless service to fellow-citizens is astounding, light-years beyond questions of “following orders.” Sacrifice does not demand attention or rewards, but the recipients of their service – that’s the rest of us – ought to honor veterans in any and all ways possible.

The seemingly discordant juncture of mercy and war is in fact not uncommon. One example is found with President Abraham Lincoln. I have been researching the life of his secretary John Hay for a possible novel, and learned this story: A Union soldier was recommended for severe punishment, perhaps death, for falling asleep on duty in a dangerous theater of war. His case reached Lincoln’s desk amidst a pile of other cases of other soldiers. All the others, however, carried appeals by important officials or “connected” figures, arguing for clemency in each case. A weary Lincoln asked Major Hay about the order at the bottom of the pile. “Has this man no ‘friends’?” His secretary said No. Lincoln said, “then I shall be his friend,” and issued a pardon.

Yes, there is military justice. But there is also heavenly pardon. In the 21st century, for good or ill, American soldiers fight fiercely, and they build communities too. They do war, but they do peace. They are remarkable creatures, doing remarkable things. May we, as a nation, be remarkable enough to deserve such servants.

In 2013, as on many Veterans’ Days of the past, I take flowers and a little flag, drive to a random cemetery, find a gravestone marked with a military legend or symbol, and honor that man or woman. Random representation. It seems more appropriate than seeking out a statue of a general on a horse. So many risked all… some gave all… we should honor all.

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I had the pleasure, when interviewing country music legends for a book on American roots music, to meet Bill Carlisle. Once part of a “brother act” with Cliff, Bill largely was known for novelty songs, and for jumping high on stage while singing and playing his guitar. But his best song, perhaps, is a solemn gospel favorite called “Gone Home.” Here it respectfully is sung by Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Images of my father’s generation of servicemen, by that amazing video producer Beanscot.

Click: Gone Home