Monday Morning Music Ministry

5-10-21

I have been reading, and re-reading, classic novels and old books lately. I don’t really live in the past, although these days I find myself wishing I could.

But as I get older I realize how much I have missed of life, and in life. Rather than regret this, I make up for that lost time – reading, as I say, the classics. And I discover music of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Classical periods of music; and even have been enjoying music of the early Romantic period that I previously disdained. How odd that music of the 1840s can be “new.”

I know that not everyone will have the same tastes that I do, but my point is that we have a vast heritage that most of us never explore and appreciate, much less know. There is an old Italian saying that we cannot move forward without looking back. Truth in irony. “What’s past is prologue.” The greatest application of this view is that it is difficult to know the Savior, and gain Heaven, without a grounding in ancient scripture.

Well. A few of the old books I lately have read have surprised me in startling ways. Two were by Oscar Wilde. In a Christian essay, yes, I will mention them.

First, a true story about him. Near the end of his life, after surviving two brutal years in prison (for morals offenses) he encountered a friend on the sidewalk. The friend knew of Oscar’s impoverished state and the shabby room he rented. He asked how Oscar was doing, and the reply was, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
Ever ready with an epigram, Wilde suggested that he was near death, and knew it; and the comment was a stereotypical remark of a fastidious homosexual. It was his flouting of Victorian sensibilities in the 1890s, and affairs with famous men, and libel suits, and public scandals, that resulted in his two-year sentence at hard labor.

Some day, here, I shall write more, but pertinent to my topic are the two books he wrote while in prison. The Ballad of Reading Gaol (that is, the Jail near Reading Town) and De Profundis (“From the Depths”) are extremely moving short works. They are introspective confessions, not of his acts, but of larger matters of the soul and God’s loving justice – not what one might expect. He dwells upon the Savior, and understands Scripture, and speaks with clarity through the moral fog and fetid world to which he presumed he justly was consigned.

In his philosophical anguish we finds his lines that Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.

There are some people yet today who debate whether Oscar Wilde’s last days and last writings were searching for Christ and forgiveness. Yet his earlier fairy tales clearly were Christian allegories; and indeed on his deathbed he had a friend summon clergy that he be baptized, and made confession.

Not the impression history has of Oscar Wilde. Similarly, I have just finished reading three very thick, and fascinating, volumes, the complete letters of Vincent van Gogh. How he produced such an abundance of paintings in his short life, much less the massive amount of letters, is astonishing. History tries to tell us that he was a tortured, odd man, hermit-like and obsessive.

The van Gogh of his letters has constant money troubles, but chats with his brother, encourages other artists, comments on illustrators and cartoonists (!) in England and America, dwells on artistic scenes and painter’s tools… and he talks about God. In his youth he considered becoming a minister; he visited a rescue mission in London; and he was a Christian. Doubters today search for evidence of his occasional doubts, sigh, but once again, history paints a distorted picture.

My theme here is that there was a time not so long ago when Western Civilization – and I mean the arts; not only “common people” – believed in God, belonged to the church, accepted Christ. Of other recent “reads,” probably more than half of Hans Christian Andersen’s many tales have Christian themes. Robinson Crusoe as a character constantly dwells on Christ’s mercy and the ways of God. Mozart’s letters, to his father, and to his wife, frequently referred to God in the most natural way.

And so forth. Not Sunday-School lessons, not religious tracts, but much of popular literature and the arts, and “common” life, revolved around God and the Bible and Jesus Christ. Once upon a time.

Is it like that that today? Remotely? Speaking of “remote,” just take TV, for example. Condense the plots or jokes, the “situations” of situation-comedies, the premises of dramas and… realize how far we have fallen.

We can use another barometer. The man serving as president promised to appoint a cabinet that represents America, but has more transsexuals than professing Christians. An avowed Catholic, on his first day in office he directed that taxpayer funds be used to promote the killing of babies in foreign countries.

And this week’s “National Day of Prayer” proclamation did not mention God once.

We may expect God to respond accordingly.

Even the contemporary culture’s perfunctory “God bless,” uttered as if to say, “Have a nice day,” and unfortunately common with Christians, was not tossed into the proclamation when read to cameras.

In the West, we once devoted ourselves, even in the arts, to seeking, knowing, and explaining God. Today we seem to work hard at avoiding, ignoring, defying, insulting, and denying God. We have crossed the line of even pretending to be Christians any more.

God, You are real. God help us. Forgive us. Help Thou our unbelief.

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Click: Help Thou My Unbelief

I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief

7-22-19

Among the memories of the Moon Landing this week are the realizations I have learned through the years that certain words like “moon” have common sounds and spellings in myriad languages and cultures scattered across the globe. “Sun” is another; “mother” and “father” also. What sort of coincidences are these? Pilgrims in ancient days, in small groups or tribes, traversing swaths of land or ocean expanses?

If that were the answer, why were not cultural objects, or tools and utensils, or more words and alphabets, also transplanted? Why only those elemental words? Is it because these are more concepts than mere words? If we ever are to learn the answers to these compelling questions, I think it will have more to do with common physical touchstones, urges, and expressive emotions, than with linguistics or semantics. (For instance, some social scientists think that the “M” sound as in Mama and Mother derives from babies’ physical need for nurture, an expression of hunger.)

In any event, “home” is not only a place but, indeed, a concept. Its name, and of course its essential idea, is common to all people, all classes, all ages. Among nobility and peasantry, in democratic societies and autocracies, the home is sacred. Taken further, the kitchen as the home’s heart is common too.

When we think on these things, we realize more than perhaps we often do, the real distinction between house and home. A house is where we get our bills, a song once said; home is where we live.

The Bible has many verses about home, both literal and figurative references. The same is true of poetry, songs, literature… think about it, every aspect of life. “Homemade,” the best you could want. “Home-going,” a term now in vogue in some churches, instead of a funeral or farewell. “Home town” usually obviates the necessity for an explanation of things honest, pure, accepting.

In college I had a friend, a bit of a strange guy, on the dorm floor; but maybe he was wiser than all of us. One evening we were all talking about our hometowns or neighborhoods where we grew up. And we shared photos, if we had them. Danny pulled out a photo from his wallet – a rather unremarkable snapshot, really, of the side of a house. No distinctive flowers or trees, fancy back yard, or a landscaped front yard and porch. Odd?

Danny explained that the photo was not of his house as we had assumed. It was his neighbor’s house. It was what he would see, looking out his bedroom window. When he woke up; when he went to sleep. That’s what he saw, and carried with him, the neighbor’s house.

“And that reminds me of home,” he said.

Yes. Of course. So logical we seldom think that way.

What reminds you of home? Your parent’s address; where you grew up? One of multiples places you have lived? A location in the “old country”? We need (anyway, I know that I need!) to think a little more – a lot more – of what God means by home.

When we “go home” at the end of life’s journeys – life’s troubles and trails, as we often confront them, or interact with people who do – we have opportunity to contemplate. I have a friend with three small girls whose husband, a pastor, recently died of cancer; another friend watching a neighbor’s husband dying day by day before their eyes… We can all supply et ceteras.

We can think in these moments about the Bible’s reassurance about home; about God “calling us home.” When you think about it, home is not somewhere strange and alien you go to for the first time. A home is something to which you return… that comfortable place that is waiting, in fact prepared, for you.

We can know we are on our way home, and it does not have to be not a strange journey, but a warm reunion.

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Click: Going Home

7-15-19

I think contemporary folks see a wall of separation between knowledge, belief, and faith. Not necessarily hostile camps of the mind, mutually exclusive; but different provinces. Maybe like summer and winter: hardly the same, but both are “weather.”

However, knowledge, belief, and faith – and other versions of our core convictions; trust, security, even firm hope, you know them all – are really just words, words, words for the same thing. I can know the lamp will turn on when when I flip a switch; but that knowledge is based on a belief that a lot of people know how to make that happen. And I have faith that they will do so, tomorrow too.

These are not superficial distinctions… and they apply to, yes, our core convictions.

In Western civilization in the 21st century, “progress” has freed us from the necessity to have faith any more in many things once requiring faith. Of course this goes beyond religion: and I mean, very much, to have us realize how rudderless, value-less, we have become. We have been coddled into thinking that so-called progress, and intelligence, and science, are sufficient in all things; indeed, that vital aspects of traditional faith… are obsolete. Impediments. Relics of the ignorant.

But we still exercise faith – more than ever. Only in different things.

Governments, politicians, scientists, heroes, philosophies, secularists, the “mind” of the “universe.” Superstition. Self-help courses. Gurus, not God. At the end, however, we all still believe in things; we all have faith in something. Or other.

It surprises some people to know that the mighty Reformer Martin Luther, during the Renaissance and at the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment, declared that Reason is the enemy of Faith.

As we fight against the greatest surge of slavery in history; as we face oppression and abuse and heartache in our midst; as we wipe our hands of the blood of the previous century’s myriad slaughters… let us think for at least a moment where Human Reason, unleashed for 500 years, has gotten us.

Another figure of faith, an example of embracing faith in the face of the world’s certainties, and hostility, also speaks through the centuries:

To sacrifice what you are, and to live without belief, is a fate more terrible than dying.
– Joan of Arc

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Click: I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief