Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-30-17

“The old order changeth,” and sometimes it changeth pretty dang fast. With the sum of human knowledge doubling every 17 months, they say – whoops, this just in: it doubles every 16-1/2 months – our heads spin.

Surely this is the case beyond facts and scientific data. Common folk feel a disconnect with changing morality, musical styles, social policies, and fashion. Such things have always evolved, but never before between breakfast and bedtime. To the extent that essentially evanescent matters change, humankind has always been assured, and relied upon, and embraced the Word of God as immutable, everlasting.

That contemporary churches and denominations are re-shaping their brands of theology to accommodate contemporary mores, instead of the opposite, is disturbing. It offends the faithful, subliminally. It is incendiary to spiritual activists, Christian soldiers, as the hymn identifies us. It is odious, we are persuaded, to God Almighty, whose Word commands that we not conform to this world.

The nature of friendship has changed, or rather has been changed. Once upon a time if you fell out of affection with an associate, you discussed the problem. In the misty past, and in extreme cases, opponents would fight duels… but only then after elaborate notices, challenges, appointments, nominations of “seconds,” and scheduling. Swords or pistols must have seemed virtually inconsequential after all those preliminaries.

Fast forward to today, when people Unfriend others on Facebook. It is the equivalent.

Inherent in Unfriending, except when clearing one’s In-Box (or re-establishing order and sanity to the daily grind, another topic) is condescension, disapproval, and exclusion. Safer than swords or pistols, the e-version of casting someone from your social circle and yelling “unclean!!!” is to Unfriend.

It has happened to me lately, although not specifically. I have been gathered, like a happy fish minding my own business, in wide nets cast in the waters by people who demand that folks who voted the way I did recently remove myself from their site. Anathema! – we are denounced, condemned, excommunicated.

In a few cases I have taken the trouble to say, in effect, “It’s been swell; have a nice life.” In every case the response has been that their outburst was not personal, and, gee, we can still talk and Message (now a verb, ugh) but simply avoid politics. My cheek should become Unslapped by the glove.

Beyond the evidence of a culture hurtling toward terminal superficiality, there is a deeper and more disquieting trend at work here at the nexus of Politeness and Politics. Relevant Magazine recently published an article about the dangers of social isolation and the resulting indifference to other people and their needs. It is true that Internet Etiquette has transformed our computer and smart phone screens into virtual shields, or allows us that option.

I think it is an objection without full force; apart from spiritual regrets we might have, it is largely a mechanistic argument. In any event, what is more alarming to me is the visceral effect: it is a condition, not a theory, that confronts us.

The election of Donald Trump – I would say the America of both Obama and Trump – has our society in a more contentious state than at any time since the Civil War. This is a major malady, no longer a possible passing case of civic indigestion. We are headed for some form of crack-up; it is inevitable.

As in the Civil War, families are split, arguments are heated, friendships are… Undone. I have not one single (or married) friend who does not have a story about dinner-table arguments, holiday disruptions, emotional scenes, snide insults, rolling eyes, snarky comments, about politics in general and the election specifically. Liberals AND conservatives. In person, and online.

Before and during the Civil War this was the case, despite the issues being deeper and the bloodshed flowing redder. But every family and every neighborhood was affected, and tensions were high; friendships ended.

I cannot think of other civic strife in America that tore the social fabric more. Civil Rights? The Vietnam War? Prohibition? Perhaps back to Senator John Calhoun’s calls for Nullification (which I lump with Slavery issues) or Andrew Jackson’s dissolution of the National Bank… no. New England’s threats of Secession in the 1810’s? Not likely. Those issues fomented debates, not divorces. Maybe the Revolution itself, when Loyalists, Revolutionaries, and the indifferent split the Colonial population into thirds.

Now there is a national nastiness, and the word proudly has been appropriated by the women and “others” who marched on the day after the Inauguration. Despite protestations, the national media largely has waged an ideological war on the public, and the public’s awakening to the assault is branded illegitimate – so says the man behind the curtain in the Emerald City.

My daughter Heather, thinking about this dilemma in our midst, wishes for a National Game Night that might re-set the meter of comity and amity. But she knows that dream is a metaphor: unrealizable wishful thinking.

The Bible’s words to be “in this world, but not of this world” shout to us more than ever before. I have shared the impulses, for years, of gathering the communion of saints around us; encouraging one another; joining home schools and small groups. Yes, we should witness. No, we should not leave the non-believers outside the camps. Christians are withdrawing into spiritual cocoons. Good or bad?

I understand that God is our real Friend, an ever-present help in time of trouble, and in every other aspect of life. When we are Unfriended by a hostile world, are we to sigh Relief? Or find new friends? Or Re-friend? It is not an Internet “meme” yet, but might become one: Refriending.

“Hear ye now what the Lord says; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice” (Micah 6:1).

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Click: Prayer

8-19-13

I attended a local theater production of “Fiddler on the Roof” this week. The legendary musical and the Yiddish story that inspired it concern themselves with assimilation, and, of course, tradition – the writer Sholem Aleichem was a sensitive genius – but I found myself, this week, seeing it as a strong treatment of the relationship of fathers and daughters.

One reason might be that this week was the first anniversary of my granddaughter Sarah’s birth; followed after nine days by her death. The precious preemie, in the words on the grave marker her parents placed over the tiny casket, will always be loved and never forgotten.

We cannot quantify, and scarcely begin a manner to measure, the loss and grief in the hearts of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, when death visits us. “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure,” said a hero of mine, Theodore Roosevelt. He wrote this after his son Quentin was killed in a World War I dogfight over French battlefields; we he left unsaid is the anguish of those left behind as others join that Great Adventure. And those who watch die a child not yet of the age of knowing.

I thought further about the notable paucity of father-daughter relationships in sacred writings, mythology, and literature. Unless there is a hole in my memory (and I invite discussion) the subtext of Aleichem’s story is a rare theme. Think: most of the resonant generational male-female stories in the myths of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. are mother-son, not father-daughter. Isis married her brother and became mother of Horus. The legend of Oedipus was, famously, a son-mother tale. The complicated cosmogony of Roman deities was comprised of some father-daughter relationships, as of course anything emanating from life, real or invented, cannot avoid – however, virtually all of the significant relational myths are father-son, brother-brother, or, sometimes, mother-son.

In the Bible it is rather the same. Fathers have daughters, of course, but the significant stories and lessons seldom involved fathers and their daughters. Adam and Eve had two sons; Noah had three. Abraham was challenged to sacrifice his son… with the attendant emotions and reflections readers cannot avoid. Indeed, God the Father arranged that His only begotten Son be sacrificed. Lot’s daughters? Not our role models. Naomi and Ruth: meaningful story, but not father-daughter. We revere Mary through the Magnificat, and empathize with her presence at the cross and the tomb, but by inference.

In literature we find, again, numerous enough examples of fathers and daughters, but portrayals are seldom invested with the cathartic implications of male-to-male relationships, or mothers-and-sons. Curious, really. Often, characters who are the daughters of fathers are cast as manifestations of rebellion or symbols of fulfillment – filling roles of the weak paterfamilias. Interesting literary devices, but, again, failing to examine the love, the special love, that exists between father and daughter.

A few examples: Shakespeare’s daughters often were social surrogates more than generational, emotional partners. In “Romeo and Juliet,” Juliet came of age and was willful in part because her father, Capulet, was not. The rebellions of Desdemona and Jessica (in “Othello” and “Merchant of Venice”) were as two-dimensional as the compliance of Ophelia in “Hamlet”; that is, bereft of mature love. Pure hate we see in the daughters Goneril and Regan in the tragedy of tragedies, “King Lear,” while their sister Cordelia is an exception that proves my rule.

In more recent literature, the daughters in the novels and plays of Goldsmith, and the novels of Austen where they rose to be lead characters, asserted themselves almost always as patient surrogates for weak-willed fathers. Their fulfillment usually was prompted as much by duty, or pity, as much as by love. The same can largely be said of the daughters in Thackeray and Dickens.

Well, I have broken my intention of keeping this introduction to a compelling riddle brief. I will segue by wondering (a facile escape, not a logical answer) whether fables, and the Bible, and literature, come up short on treatments of father-daughter bonds for same reason they seldom address why the sky is blue or why trees are made of wood: the obvious need not be addressed. But 10,000 speculative essays cannot convey the truth, and the depth, of father-daughter love as to experience, as a shy and crusty bad dancer, the invitation to dance with your daughter to the corny “Daddy’s Little Girl” at her wedding reception.

So the “Fiddler” performance reinforced my thoughts on the anniversary of Sarah’s death. Early and in distress, she lived only nine days.

Pain and sorrow, especially for Pat and my Heather and Sarah’s two brothers Gabe and Zach, will never disappear and scarcely dissipate, although God grants peace and acceptance in His measurements of grace.

From the blog Heather started after Sarah’s death (http://sarahs-baby-steps.blogspot.com/ ):
“Can I let you know that grief isn’t like a pit that you climb out of or like a fork in the road that you walk away from? Our grief and sadness will be a part of our lives until we are reunited with Sarah in heaven. We are healing from the ‘rawness’ of the grief, but we still have difficult moments…. I’ve heard it said that we learn from our children even as we are teaching them and I believe that is true…. We didn’t know Sarah personally very long, but the experience of having known her and then dealing with the grief of missing her has changed us deeply.”

There is a way that fathers can bond with departed daughters… or any readers, with any families of babies who have died. After Sarah died, a nurse offered a dress that was, sadly, unused in a similar situation, for a photo to be taken. Heather continues the story: “We decided to just lay the dress on Sarah and tuck it around her so as not to move her much. It was a beautiful white crocheted dress with a pink rosette and was just what I had envisioned for her baptism dress. Later, after pictures, I asked about it and if they had lots of dresses–I assumed there was a closet-full. [The nurse] said that she had been given the dress awhile ago and told to give it to a family who needed it. For whatever reason, she felt we were the right family. That kindness shown to us and our daughter took a bit of the rawness out of the day. Our girl was ‘dressed up’ for a bit and we got to have sweet pictures taken as a family.

“We started a fund to provide dresses to families whose preemies are in the NICU where Sarah was. Much more was generously given that we ever thought. The [nurse] says that the donations given in Sarah’s name ‘have currently purchased over 75 beautifully handmade layette sets for infants and their grieving families.'”

What a beautiful concept. If anyone is moved, please consider a donation. See below.

Otherwise, take a moment any time (or many times) during the anniversary of Sarah’s life, Aug. 14-23, and remember a brief life, a tender life situation, a lost life… the precious gift of Life itself, in all its ways and promise.

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“Going Home” has become a sacred song for those who have passed from life. It is actually a Negro spiritual based on the tune of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Performed here, in church, by the London churchboy’s choir Libera.

Click: Going Home

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NICU Dress fund
Donations can be made to “William Beaumont Hospital NICU” in memory of Sarah Shaw…. We would like to provide dresses in Sarah’s memory for other families who have to say goodbye to their little girls. This is a fund we started to support families in their grief. Checks or micro-preemie dresses (button or closures in the back, please) may be sent to William Beaumont Hospital, 3601 W. Thirteen Mile Rd. Royal Oak, MI 48073-6769 Attn: Mara Sipols). Please put “Sarah Shaw” in the memo of checks so your donation goes to the right fund.

1-21-13

On January 20, 2013, less than a month shy of the day we met 40 years ago, Nancy Marschall was taken off life support. My wife was a strong Christian, an amazing mother, and possessor of a modest personality that everyone loved. Her shyness masked a robust faith that touched and inspired uncountable people. Many of us would have defined ourselves by the ailments she endured: a diabetic since 13, she sustained several heart attacks, a heart and kidney transplant, thyroid cancer, legal blindness, toe amputation, broken bones, celiac disease, several strokes, dialysis, and, last week, a ruptured stomach ulcer that saw her lose 14 units of blood, outpacing transfusions. She experienced miraculous healings, and some healings by doctors’ hands. Other healings, she is experiencing right now.

For a long time she was unable to exercise, as you might imagine. But she exercised her faith. While waiting 18 weeks for a heart and kidney transplant, she overcame her shyness to pray with patients waiting with her at Temple University Hospital. Then she held services. I assisted, and she recruited our children Heather, Ted, and Emily, to participate in the services and room visitations, and pray with our counterparts in recipients’ families. Our faith was strengthened too as we dealt with heartache, unanswerable questions, grief, and shared joy. We witnessed healings, and helped lead people to conversions, in a ministry that lasted more than six years.

I could write many tributes to Nancy… or share how her life was a tribute to her Savior. Rather, recalling the “great cloud of witnesses” in Heaven who watch us, according to Hebrews chapter 11, I will quote from one of the many articles and media stories about Nancy, additional witnesses so to speak, and her affect on people on behalf of Christ.

“Giving Heart To Those Awaiting A New Life At Temple University Hospital, Nancy Marschall Leads Weekly Prayers For Patients On The Heart-Transplant List. Not Long Ago, She Was In Their Place,” was the headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 28, 1999. By Ellen O’Brien:

Nancy Marschall got a new heart and a new kidney on Valentine’s Day, 1996. Naturally, this is not something she would forget.

But Marschall does more than remember, when she wakes up every morning, that she’s still around at 45, and that – yes, again – she has a whole new day to live. Once a week for the last three years… she goes back to the seventh floor of Temple University Hospital, where she spent what may have been the longest 18 weeks of her life – the floor known officially as the Heart-Failure Care Unit….

“We’re just trying to open ourselves up to what God would have us do,” Marschall said, by way of explanation. “He’s just leading us.” Last Sunday, 14 patients and family members piled in to the prayer service, filling the little room to bursting – white, African American, West African and Asian, all of them speaking of life in very, very simple terms. “Our health is out of our hands. There’s nothing we can do any more,” Marschall said.

But still, she said, there is God to rely on: “He’s here. He’s with us, and nobody can separate us.” She was sitting in a wheelchair near the door, with one foot propped up in a plaster cast. She’s had diabetes for 30 years, which can numb the extremities, so when she broke a bone in her foot, she continued to limp around on it for an extra week, unaware of the injury.

The room where the Marschalls lead their service is small and modern, high off Broad Street, with a line of windows that curve into a bay. Three philodendron plants hang like leafy green globes in the sunlight…. When Marschall was waiting for her heart, patients couldn’t leave their rooms without an intravenous pole – and a hospital nurse to roll a heart-monitor along beside them. But not all the change is good: Now the wait is growing longer because the number of heart-failure cases is increasing every year while the number of heart donors has stayed the same.

“When people would go down for transplant, we’d say we’d pray for them. But did it really happen? . . . I just felt God speaking to me. And Rick had the same call,” Marschall said. “We’re talking about Christ, and the love of God, and the change He can have in our lives,” Marschall said. She added that she prays for guidance in this new missionary role: “I don’t want to mislead people.”

“We try to point everything to a better relationship with Christ,” Rick Marschall added. “We’re Christians, we’re not deists [or mere feel-good cheerleaders].”

In fact, until the transplant, the Marschalls attended services at the Pentecostal Christian Life Center in Bensalem every Sunday, and they still consider themselves part of that congregation, although they’re otherwise engaged now on Sunday mornings. … “I think we’re just like everybody,” Marschall said. “When there are things or burdens upon you, you tend to pray more. When things are going well, you tend to do it less.” Personally, she thinks this is a human trait that God understands.

At Sunday’s prayer service, the last hymn was “Amazing Grace,” but the tape that the Marschalls had brought along – to guide the impromptu choir – failed to include the second verse. This was a verse that Rick Marschall found particularly meaningful. As the tape rolled to the end, he urged everybody on: “Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. . . .”

The sound of singing rose, strong and healthy and enthusiastic. You could hear it out in the hall…

Out in the halls, indeed. And far beyond. For the first time in decades, Nancy is now healed and whole and pain-free. I imagine she will look around Heaven for her granddaughter and our own stillborn baby, and the many people she inspired through the years, unless, of course, they see her first. In my picture of Heaven, all those wonderful reunions will have to wait a moment until Jesus stops hugging her as He whispers, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

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Christians often refer to death in a biblical way. It is not a euphemism like “passing away,” but the literal situation – “home-going.” Those of us who remain cannot fail to be a little jealous of sick people who become well, the lonely who embrace their Savior, the troubled who find peace. It is the home prepared for us, a place with many mansions, joy unspeakable and full of glory. This picture finds musical expression in the Negro spiritual based on the tune of the second movement of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony.” Performed here, with beautiful images, by the London churchboy’s choir Libera.

Click: Going Home

11- 12-12

The recent election sees half of America crowing in jubilation, and half disappointed. Nothing new, there. For once the media has it right, when headlines proclaim that we are a 50-50 nation. Generally, conservatives and many Christians populate the corps of those who despair. But everyone lives to fight another day – sometimes, they itch to fight; sometimes they grow weary of what democracy has become.

I have the feeling that once the dust settles – the debates, the analysis, the what-ifs, the recriminations, the second-guessing, and such – many people will recognize that 2012 was more of a “consequential” election than any of the prophets could have foreseen. Forget the negative ads, the “ground games,” the media bias. This was the year that America went off the cliff – not only a financial cliff, but a social one.

The resounding, and fateful, votes across America were on the “undercards.” State ballot initiatives OK’d homosexual marriage, legalized recreational marijuana, and censorship of political speech; i.e., contra Citizens United – two approvals of each matter, spread across various states.

No longer can traditional conservatives and Christian patriots direct their complaints at small court majorities or legislatures that might have been influenced in one way or another.

The people are speaking. The rejection of traditional values goes hand-in-hand with the dependency culture, a society that enables various form of vice. In the name of “welcome,” “acceptance,” and non-judgmentalism, we are calling evil good. America will never be the same: throughout history, societies that so self-destruct seldom hit the rewind button.

I try to reconcile the traditional concept of “the Divine Right of Kings” with the democratic age. God does not SEND leaders to peoples in every case; He “allows” leaders and situations and consequences. Which is to say, we get the leaders we deserve. This is axiomatic. What we do to deserve them, and how we cope with consequences, is neither axiomatic nor automatic.

Those whom I gather under the umbrellas of cultural traditionalists and Christian patriots with me would do well to stop complaining about media bias, cynical campaigning practices, and pandering to voting blocs, however true and pernicious those factors are. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

WE have let a generation slip away. WE have allowed churches to dilute the message of the gospel so they preach a feel-good, enablement gospel that leaves people without moral compasses. WE have allowed the entertainment media to pollute the sensibilities of audiences. WE have stood by while the educational-industrial complex has gutted schools of the Bible, traditional morality, and nationalism. WE have supported the news media while the commercialization of subversive concepts rolls along. WE have overseen the destruction of the traditional family, the spread of a drug culture, the erosion of personal responsibility.

It is almost ridiculous that, having watched, and often failed to resist, all these trends, that we regard an election whose results we regret and blame politicians or even other voters. Our actions – our inaction – has brought this to pass. How can it be otherwise?

What could we have done, what can we do? A lot. It involves “hurting other peoples’ feelings,” a cardinal sin these days. But Christians have come to the place where they don’t mind offending God, as long as our sinning and suffering neighbors are not offended. It involves yelling out our thoughts at more than our cats, our spouses, and our TV sets – getting in the face of those whom we see as negative influences, from school board candidates to presidents. It involves acting like we love the past, hate the present, and care about the future.

It involves doing what cultural traditionalists and Christian patriots have done through history. Work, sacrifice, fight. And pray, because this is a spiritual crisis more than an electoral contest.

On this Veterans day, with Election Day just behind us, we have a special set of role models before the eyes of our conscience. It always strikes me that many armies in history have been fueled by hatred, but the US military, invariably, suits up and reports for duty in order to liberate, aid, and serve.

“Greater love hath no man than this, than to lay down his life for his fellow man.”

Lamenting the drift of our civil culture, and pausing to honor our veterans, reminds me of the old hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Its chorus does NOT say, “marching to war,” but “marching AS to war.” Traditionalists and Christian patriots should not necessarily make war, but march for biblical values as if girding for battle.

Abraham Lincoln once said that our concern should not be whether God is on our side, but that we are on God’s side. In the battles to come – and there will be many; there SHOULD be many! – this should be our concern too.

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A moving rendition of the classic hymn that can be an anthem of renewal for citizen-battlers in the fight to reclaim our culture:

Click: Onward, Christian Soldiers

Categories: Government, Patriotism, Service

6-20-11

Theodore Roosevelt, about whom I currently am writing a biography, began his own autobiography – the story of a crowded life and successful careers – with the sentence “My father was the best man I ever knew.”

Surely, no man could desire a better epitaph. Such an assessment by one’s children is worth more to one’s soul than material success or inventories of accumulations. Even the plaudits of peers or hoped-for “posterity” are fickle and, in the end, worthless. Fathers who have earned the loving respect of children do not need such things; and without the sincere regard of one’s children, other things seem meaningless.

These are universal truths. It matters little whether you meditate on them from the perspective of being a father or being a son or daughter; whether your father has passed on or is still with you. I believe I can say without fear of contradiction that if you are reading this, you have a father. And let’s say that you cannot quite quote Theodore Roosevelt about your own dad, think for a second about words attributed to Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to be around him. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

There is, in the Bible, a concept called the “Scarlet Thread of Redemption,” where the person, and the work, of Christ, is seen in countless prophecies, references, allusions, allegories, types, numerologies, before His coming, apart from His immediate incarnation. So it is – or should be – with our families, and our fathers. We cannot be free of examples and influences, words and advice. We cannot even escape what every generation of human history but our own has believed in: bloodlines, tendencies, inherited talents. “We are our fathers’ children” is meant to convey the inevitable patrimonies we inherit.

In the rare and sorry cases where fathers are not the role models we wish for – like some Dickens characters – it is still wise for us to learn and know about our families’ pasts. For correction, for reproach, as curatives. In my own case, I can state a variation on TR’s tribute: my own father was the best friend I ever had. Every project I do, I wonder how he would like it; every week, I start to reach for the phone to share something he would find interesting. But he has been gone for more than a dozen years.

But this is not about my father, or me as a father; or your father; or – stick with me – even on Father’s Day, any mortal fathers. God did not put any qualifiers on the Commandment. “Honor your father and your mother.” Nothing about “if” this or that; or “after” they have proven themselves. Think of another famous Father in the Bible – remember when God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac: a father should sacrifice his son??? God intervened, of course, when Abraham showed his obedience, and then our minds rush forward – along the Golden Thread of Fatherhood – and realize that we had a picture of our Heavenly Father willing to sacrifice for the sake of history’s children, all of us, uncountable numbers except to Him, “for He so loved the world.”

As good a man, as good a friend, as we have in this world; or try ourselves to be, or ever hope to be, is nothing compared to the love of Father God. In this regard, every day of the year should be FATHER’S Day. And at the end of our days, if our children can say (doubly paraphrasing), “Well done, good and faithful father,” then we are blessed indeed.

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I have chosen a memorable and beautiful song, “Going Home,” to illustrate this message. It has been a Negro spiritual, hymn, and folk song; its tune is taken from, of all things, Antonin Dvorak’s 9th Symphony (which, in turn, had relied on American folk melodies). Clearly, it sings of death… but in the context of that precious tradition I spoke of, of family-generations not being separate things, but close parts. One day we shall not only share eternal life, but be reunited with mother and father who, the song says, “are waiting there; expecting us.” The performance is by the astonishingly impressive London boys’ choir called Libera. This will move you.

Click: Going Home