Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-25-16

I noted the annual observance of Earth Day. And right about now I am making ready for my annual pilgrimage to the top of that earth.

Not quite Mount Everest or Mont Blanc or Mount McKinley, but high enough: Rocky Mountain High. Not a holy trek… although it is associated with the annual Greater Colorado Christian Writer’s Conference (attendance at which I urge on all aspiring writers, published authors, casual readers, and everyone in between). Is it a true pilgrimage? Yes, it is.

Many pilgrimages have been undertaken by pilgrims (obviously) to sites of holy or historical significance; sometimes in celebration or in observation of dates or past events. They can venture to the unknown (think the New World) or to very familiar places (think Jerusalem or Lourdes).

Or they can serve to re-charge one’s battery, so to speak. To savor the sustenance one expects to be waiting. To commune in a way unavailable elsewhere.

I will re-create the experience for those of you not from bumpy lands. I was born in New York City, where all the peaks are of stone, but piled up by man, not God. (Ask me about trips to Bavaria and Switzerland and Austria sometime, too.) You arrive in Denver, nestled in mountains a mile high. You drive to Estes Park, a frontier-flavored town half again as high above sea level. Local landmarks are the Stanley Hotel and the sprawling YMCA retreat and conference center, which hosts the writers’ conference. And, of course, 360 degrees of mountains, snow-capped year-‘round.

Every year after the conference a few faculty members and friends make the trek upward – so it seems, straight up! Past the Theodore Roosevelt National Forest, into the Rocky Mountain National Park, passing scattered cabins and lazy elk and deer, we climb farther, into thinner air. The deciduous trees disappear; we are above the pine line. Soon, even the pine trees can grow no more, and there are only strange scrub plants, jagged rocks, and frozen snow.

At summits you stop to walk – carefully and slowly, because the thin air ensures that you easily become winded. If the temperatures are cold, even when you see your breath, you still shed jackets and sweaters because the sun strangely compensates. At these levels, discreet signage informs you of the height; of the fact that nearby snow scarcely melts and might be many years old; and strictly warns against stepping on the only discernible vegetation: lichens and moss. The organisms, actually not related to each other, form greenish shadows on rocks, and – as the signs warn – can take hundreds of years to reestablish themselves if stepped on and destroyed.

As high as I and my friends have ever ventured, there are always peaks not far away (probably many miles!) that reach higher. Birds with magnificent wing-spreads float above, not having to flap their wings, seemingly ever, as they catch the upward wind drafts. We stand at cliffs’ edges and look down, down, down, seeing four-legged animals we can hardly distinguish, gaily leaping between precarious peaks.

One year, in glaring sunlight and amidst unearthly silence, our group beheld these scenes and someone started singing the old hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” One by one, everybody joined in.

“This is my Father’s world, And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and ‘round me rings The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought.”

Perfect-seeming. A natural setting, an appropriate response, a love song to God as He has revealed Himself. Who would not have the same reaction?

Very few of us, that’s who. Yet God, I think, would have us remember that such glorious scenery can be seductive; pristine nature is only part of the Father’s world. I believe God would have us remember two categories of truths that easily elude us, especially after we plan pilgrimages or encounter the stunning beauty of Creation.

The first category of truths – reminders, I will call them – is comprised of realities that are as hard and sharp as those of mountains. We can occasionally drive away from, but not escape, the concurrent existence of sickness and disease; of hate and sorrow; of wars and rumors of wars; of crying mothers and crying orphans; of abused women and aborted babies; of poverty and injustice; of persecution and oppression; of pollution and waste; of prejudice and corruption; of slums and poverty; of greed and envy; of empty hope and no faith. All around us.

THESE are also parts of my Father’s world. Just as much as pretty landscapes and joy-filled nature.

The second category of reminders, no less significant in God’s plan, tells us that the first category is not a random list of uncomfortable truths. Rather, they are God’s checklist of matters we must address. Christians are familiar with forebears who knew about the Promised Land. All of Creation once looked like the snow-capped Rockies. The Garden of Eden we know. The Land of Beulah was sought in Old Testament days as representing a virtual marriage feast, preparing for fellowship with the Lord.

Heaven has been described to us: The land of milk and honey, where sorrows shall cease, where joys will never end, where the buildings shall be as mansions prepared for us. If it were not so He would not have told us.

But the pathway there requires all of us to climb down those mountains, often to dwell in dark valleys. Vales of tears, usually. Valleys of the shadows of death. We will not merely encounter unpleasant things in life: we must confront and do battle with them. God’s work must be our own. We must wrestle with more than flesh and blood “but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Not a warning; not an option; more like a prediction; in fact a promise from God. These are not assignments to win God’s favor. They are simply the duties of a follower of Christ.

In fact, they are privileges.

To care for those who hurt, to minister to their souls as well as their bodies, is what Christians do. Not often enough, maybe… but it is what we do. To comfort, to feed and clothe, to sacrifice and serve, to share Christ and to BE Christ; to love. To love.

Marlene Bagnull, Director of the conference in Estes Park, always remembers among the hubbub of seminars and programs and fellowship, to highlight two missions programs each year; one at home, one overseas. Truly, it is meet and right so to do. The work God gives us is as likely to be halfway around His world as across our hometowns.

And surely those tasks are also in our neighbors’ houses; in our schools and offices; in the hallways and bedrooms of our own homes. These places, these people, these problems… are all squarely in “My Father’s World,” too. As we redeem His people, we redeem His planet. His world. Let us all remember every corner of creation; pleasant and – for the moment – unpleasant. By the way, Earth Day is not a celebration of Mother Nature but Father God, Creator.

“This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world. The battle is not done.
Jesus who died shall be satisfied, and earth and Heaven be one.”

+ + +

Click the embedded link to learn more about the Colorado Writer’s conference.

Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been to many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

For those who have followed us on RCR, please be sure to continue receiving our weekly essays by Subscribing to Monday Morning Music Ministry. (See link under “Pages” at right.)

Click: This Is My Father’s World

6-11-2012

One of my favorite books in the world is one I re-read every few years. One of the reasons it is a favorite book is a favorite chapter. (Sometime I would like to edit a book and call it “Chapters” – to ask people to nominate favorite chapters of favorite books, because sometimes an author strikes a chord, composes a masterful scene, captures a special feeling, standing even higher than the whole book.) Anyway, for me, “The Piper At the Gates of Dawn” stands out from the rest of the Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. I am no fan of the Disney commercialization, but the original book, and this chapter, are magically unique. Grahame draws readers into a special world.

Nurturing my interest and affection, I recently read a book by Grahame’s widow Elspeth (I’m sorry: her name could not be anything other than Elspeth), an obscure book now, but written after she was widowed. She shared stories of her family, and of the creation of Wind in the Willows. And the book offers some previously unknown drafts.

In the course of her story, she quoted an appreciation by Clayton Hamilton, a professor of English Literature. He tells a story of visiting the Grand Canyon, seeing a copy of Grahame’s book in a gift shop, and surprising the owner, who had been waiting years for some customer to express affection for her favorite book. In that unlikely setting she was doubly gratified that her customer was actually a friend of its author.

Fans of certain books have an automatic kinship. And I value anyone whose fond instincts draw him to the world that Kenneth Grahame created. But even Grahame realized there were other worlds: he loved the world of nature (real nature, not just that of Toad Hall); and the world of childhood, as he created and defended in his other books The Golden Age and Dream Days. Read what Prof. Hamilton said of the Grand Canyon:

“Having seen it, I am relieved of any desire to see it again. It is the most gigantic chasm in the surface of the earth and is, of course, impressive because of its immensity…. But it is a lonely place, devoid of any human interest. Nobody, in historic or prehistoric times, has ever lived in the Grand Canyon. Though many of its pinnacles and buttes take on at times the look of towered castles, they have been sculpted only by uncounted centuries of wind, and show no touch of mortal hands. That dizzying immensity is empty of all human memories, and offers nothing to stimulate the sense of drama or romance.”

It is not hard to summon pity for people like Prof. Hamilton. My guess is that Kenneth Grahame would have disdained his cold sense of wonder. I do. Theodore Roosevelt (another fan of Grahame) beheld American landscapes like the Grand Canyon and unilaterally preserved them by the millions of acres, so that future generations, even Hamilton’s descendents, could be awestruck by the beauty of God’s creation. In their pristine states. Even if their pinnacles were formed not by men or even winds alone, but by God.

The humanistic phase of human history, where we float now, elevates the human mind and its accomplishments, but unfortunately is unable to separate human passions from that which guides us. It is the dark side of freedom, the residue of democracy – human nature, which never changes on its own, generation to generation. Religion, philosophy, and politics aside, humankind tends to lose something in exchange for greater “self-expression”: the acknowledgment of a marvelous Creator God; finding pleasure in His amazing works; and the enjoyment of His handiwork. In the beginning, it was created for our delight, too.

I have just returned from a three-week trip in which I experienced snow in the mountains of Colorado and 107-degree heat in the Nevada deserts. Bright red sandstone was the coincidental theme: a friend took me to Red Rocks, high above mile-high Denver; Red Rocks is the name of an area north of Las Vegas, similarly dotted with sandstone monoliths and buttes. And my son planned a day in the “Valley of Fire,” so called because its endless stretches of sandstone are so brilliantly hued as to resemble, from a distance, flames.

I have been blessed to visit many of the world’s great cities, and I marvel indeed at buildings and monuments and statues. But I have been doubly blessed to have visited many scenes of God’s handiwork. Sorry, Prof. Hamilton: it is not an “either/or” situation. The natural world of nature’s God is awesome because He intended that we be awestruck. If “towered castles” impress you, remember that it was God’s children and their God-given talents that made them. God still wins, buddy.

The evangelist Ellen G. White put it in perspective: “The flowers of the field, in their endless variety, are always ministering to the delight of the children of men. God Himself nourishes every root, that He may express His love to all who will be softened and subdued by the works
of His hands.

“We need no artificial display. God’s love is represented by the beautiful things of His creation.”

+ + +

Is there any more beautiful musical expression of these thoughts than the old hymn (with glorious nature videos)? –

Click: This Is My Father’s World