Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-3-13

Do you have memories that come unbidden to your mind? There is one I have recalled a thousand times through the years. Not a bad recollection; in all, a good memory; but it convicts me – there is always a little wince that accompanies it.

Decades ago, before I married, I worked in Manhattan for a newspaper syndicate, editing comics and columns. Often I worked late and would walk cross-town in the dark to catch a late train. But one evening it was bitterly cold, and I hopped a bus. As I settled into my seat I overheard an elderly couple behind me sharing the fact that the icy cold obliged them, too, to take the bus despite the fact that an occasional bus fare affected their meager budgets.

It was hard not to listen, as they sat right behind me. They were friends, maybe closer than friends. She shared some cute facts about what she had done during the day: little babies she saw; fancy window displays; how she called to a lady who had dropped her gloves; and how she couldn’t wait to meet her companion for what was this impromptu and warm bus ride. For his part, he told little stories about people he met and conversations he had. A magazine article he read at the Public Library; music he heard outside the Record Hunter store. They had each stopped at churches during their day. With delight, he said he bought some hot chestnuts. He opened the bag and they shared them.

This sounds almost charming, but – shame on me – I let other senses trump my sentimentality. I turned my head as if to look at something out the window, and could see that they were as ragged as could be. Today, in political correctness, they would be filed away as “homeless.” They probably had homes, or shelters, but anyway were clearly in extremely straitened circumstances. They exuded an aroma – wet clothes on a warm bus – that was redolent of urine and other city smells. Shame on me, I moved to another seat.

My new seat, however, let me observe them better. They took joy in each other’s stories and little gifts, in each other’s smiles and eyes. It is a cliché to say they didn’t care about each other’s clothes or fragrance; and I didn’t know about their commitments or relations, but they loved each other. They loved being with each other. I don’t think I have ever seen another couple so much in love as those two raggedy denizens of the bus.

I shed tears for them – not in pity, not at all. I was touched, I was envious, I was scolding myself: I almost missed, and dismissed, an example of pure and unconditional love as we seldom see in this life. I realized this was a manifestation of Jesus’ love for us. Jesus could have been the dispenser of love as I beheld; He should always be the recipient of love that we are told to share “even unto the least of these.”

And… I had a sense that these people were, in a way, manifestations of myself relative to Jesus. Believe me, for I know: there is no one more raggedy, at times, and stinky too, than I. I am speaking metaphorically – but not sarcastically. There we sit, ungainly, unattractive, reeking of sin and who knows what else… and Jesus comes alongside us with a smile. And joyful words. And little gifts. In a warm, comforting place. With the assurance of friendship. More: love. Pure and unconditional.

How odd, I thought then, and think now, a thousand recollections later. Finding another person who shares such love, in this world, is actually a rare occurrence, precious and to be cherished.

… when the love of Jesus, freely offered and available to every one of us – especially those who need it most – is often ignored or rejected. Odd, and sad.

Those raggedy denizens of the bus were happier, and luckier – that is, more blessed – than they knew, I thought. God bless them. But on second thought, I think they knew quite well how happy and “lucky” they were indeed. And such a realization, when it happens to any of us, is even rarer than the fact.

How often do we say “God bless you”? How much more often should we recognize reality, and encourage people, and say, “God blessed you!”

“I have learned how to be content with whatever I have” (Philippians 4:11b).

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Approaching Jesus, or receiving Him, surely is a “come as you are” party. Not only are there no conditions He places on fellowship, or healing our wounds, or receiving our confessions or needs – it would be as ridiculous as thinking we have to bathe before we take a shower. He already knows not only who we are, already, but how we are. So we approach Him “Just As I Am.” There is powerful meaning in the old hymn, here sung in a Celtic version by Eden’s Bridge. Designed by the great Beanscot Channel.

Click: Just As I Am

5-21-2012

On the heels from a week at the Christian Writers Conference in beautiful Estes Park CO, I come away with a heart exultant from fellowship, encouragement, and creative interaction with creative geniuses (some of them not yet published, but surely to be, soon). We also had reports and prayerful consideration of the cultural and spiritual crises facing Christians in this broken world. Human trafficking, persecution of believers, orphans in desperate situations… these “we will always have with us,” but as followers of Christ we cannot fail to respond.

I actually wonder whether Americans know what “hard times” are. I have been through some difficult patches, but I cannot say that I have known Hard Times in the sense that every previous generation in history, virtually everywhere in the world, has experienced.

I have been sad, but not in sorrow. I have been in debt, but never destitute. I have had regrets, but never grief. How many of us can share such relatively comfortable testimony? In my case, to whatever extent I rightly judge my insulation, it is largely due to my standing as a Christian — receiving joy that passes understanding — but we also have to credit modern life, in America, with /its technology, medicine, and general prosperity.

Hard Times do come in America, but somehow all the wars and crises have the lengths of TV mini-series, and if not, the public grows impatient. The public has a sound-bite mentality. We used to face our challenges; but now we are distracted with the modern equivalents of the Romans’ “bread and circuses” — pop entertainment, push-button gratification.

In many ways this indicates that we are not advancing as a culture. I’m not sure we are “going backwards,” either, because that might actually be beneficial. Giuseppi Verdi (yes, the composer otherwise known as Joe Green) once said, “Torniamo all’antico: Sara un progresso” — “We turn to the past in order to move forward.”

I got thinking of Hard Times in America when I pulled an elegant old volume off my bookshelf. “Folk Songs” was published in 1860, before the Civil War. This book is leather-bound, all edges gilt, pages as supple as when it was printed, a joy to hold. The “folk songs” of its title refers not to early-day coffee houses, but to poems and songs of the people, in contradistinction to epic verse or heroic sagas; the way the German word “Volk” refers to the shared-group spirit of the masses.

Many of the titles are charming: “The Age of Wisdom,” “My Child,” “Baby’s Shoes,” “The Flower of Beauty,” “The First Snow-Fall”… However, such sweet titles mask preoccupations with children dying in snow drifts, lovers deserting, husbands lost at sea, fatal illness, mourning for decades, unfaithful friends. No need to guess the themes other titles from the index:”Tommy’s Dead,” “The Murdered Traveler,” and “Ode To a Dead Body.”

It reminded me that people 150 years ago were not gloomy pessimists: they were not. But Hard Times were a part of life, and therefore part of poetry and song. On the frontier, life could be snuffed out in a moment. In the imminent Civil War, roughly every third household was affected by death, maiming, split families, or hideous disruption; yet anti-war movements never gained traction; life went on. Abraham Lincoln almost lost his mind over an unhappy love affair; his wife likely did lose her mind when her favorite son died in the White House. Theodore Roosevelt’s young wife (in childbirth) and mother (of a kidney disease) died on the same day in the same house. Hard Times? Close enough, we would agree.

Also before the Civil War, a composer named Stephen Foster wrote a song called “Hard Times.” He is barely recalled today, sometimes as a caricature, but he might be America’s greatest composer. He wrote “My Old Kentucky Home,” “I Dream of Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair,” “Old Black Joe,” “Carry Me Back to Ol’ Virginia,” “Way Down Upon the Swannee River / Old Folks At Home,” “Oh, Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Beautiful Dreamer”… and “Hard Times, Come Again No More.”

This last song has been resurrected lately to a certain repute, or at least utility. In some circles it has become an anthem for charities and lamentation of poverty. Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, even the Squirrel Nut Zippers, have sung it. It has taken on the air of a secular anthem. But in fact, although Stephen Foster did not embed a Gospel message in the lyrics, he had written many hymns in his life, and — if we can turn back our minds to the world of 150 years ago — it is clear that the Hard Times he wrote of were the world’s trials, to be relieved in heaven. It is clear that the “cabin,” and its door, in the song are metaphors.

Here is a memorable video to evoke the reality of life’s Hard Times, the promise heaven holds, and the beauty of Stephen Foster’s music to you. The seven singers are from the amazing project of a few years ago, “The Transatlantic Sessions” — singers and musicians from America (US and Canada), Ireland, and Scotland singing old and new “folkish” songs in a living-room setting.

Listen to the wonderful performance, the amazing music, and the important reminder that we should keep Hard Times in perspective… but also that God provides a joyful relief from life’s disappointments when they come. By and by, they will “come no more.”

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The singers are, left to right, Rod Paterson, Scotland; Karen Matheson, Scotland — hear her incredible soprano harmony on the left channel; Mary Black, Ireland; Emmylou Harris, US; Rufus Wainwright, his mother the late Kate McGarrigle, and her sister Anna McGarrigle on the button accordion, all Canadians. The other musicians are fiddler Jay Ungar — he wrote the haunting “Ashokan’s Farewell: tune of the PBS “Civil War” series — and his wife Molly Mason on the bass.

Click: Hard Times Come Again No More

Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

Chorus:
‘Tis the song, the sigh, of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times, come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

There’s a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o’er:
Though her voice would be merry, ’tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.

(Chorus)

9-19-11

My granddaughter Elsie was dedicated this weekend. Since I was not able to attend – partly because she is in Northern Ireland and I am not – Emily and Norman did the next best thing these days: hooked up a Skype connection. The ceremony “streamed live,” and when I was asked to pray, a microphone was held to my spectral, flickering image. I am not sure the people in the church could hear (in fact I heard only every fifth word or so of theirs), but we all know that God did. I got to wondering: would the 120 have gathered in the Upper Room if there had been Skype 2000 years ago?

The screen has become a part of our lives now. Tekkies tell us that, soon, smart-phone screens will substitute for computer screens, and soon will projected onto walls, even to handle touch-screen capabilities once projected. (In the meantime, of course, it took me 20 minutes to remember how to charge the laptop’s batteries…)

In recent history, much of my supposed field, popular culture, essentially has been related to the small screen. Even our political history. Richard Nixon might have been kicked off Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential ticket in 1952, but for the “Checkers Speech” he made on TV (decades later my mother still grew misty-eyed, recalling that piece of political theater). Eight years later, radio listeners to the Nixon-Kennedy debates rated Nixon the winner; but on TV he came across as sweaty, shifty-eyed, and dark (here merely was ill, warm, and had a five-o’clock shadow)… and such was the power of TV that Kennedy narrowly won that election. It has always been my opinion that much of the American public and even a lot of Ronald Reagan’s supporters viewed him as an overly amiable “aw, shucks” guy, until one night in the 1980 primaries, a moderator tried to shut off Reagan’s microphone in a hall he had rented. The Gipper angrily shouted, “I’m PAYING for this microphone, Mr Breen!” Even Reagan’s political rivals broke out in applause; and I remember thinking, “THAT’s how he’ll face down the Soviets.” I think America saw him differently too, because of a TV moment.

Last week a similar moment happened. I doubt whether history will turn on the exchange… but for one moment the crux of the Great Debate of the 20th century, and the American government’s fate in the 21st, was in the headlights. Then things moved on, maybe never to be raised again. It was a moment in the Republican debate when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked a hypothetical health-care question of the only doctor on stage, Ron Paul. If a healthy man who chose not to buy insurance got very sick, “are you saying that society should just let him die?”

I am not making a brief for a candidate, believe me: The response was mechanistic, not theological. However, Rep. Paul spoke some common sense when he recalled that he began his medical practice before the days of Medicare and Medicaid. He never turned a patient away, and never knew a hospital to do so. “What about family, friends, and churches?” he asked rhetorically. Is that a heartless attitude… or is it biblical?

Statistics indicate that Americans bestow more charity than do citizens of most other nations; that Christians donate more than people of other faiths; that conservatives are far more generous than liberals, along these lines. This is instructive, especially in the face of concerted campaigns to the contrary. That is, there are serious political efforts to end tax deductions for charitable contributions, and since the New Deal, we are confronted with philosophies that attempt to have government substitute for private charity.

The dilemma is not, of course, whether to render assistance. It is co-opting the impulse behind it, making war on our freedoms of conscience and action. When government “takes care of the poor,” we don’t have to, is the general proposition: that is the mindset of the modern state. Whether the poor, or sick, or homeless, are measurably assisted, is actually an open question (poverty rates have changed little since the Great Society) – but many people’s consciences are deadened “because the government will take care of the needy.” And this is apart from the question of whether it is moral to coerce one person here to support the children of another person there; or a woman from, say, Arizona to have to pay for the surgery of a man from, say, Maine. Eventually, citizens will be unable on their own to assist folks when they hear about children needing assistance, or surgical procedures requiring help. Already 1.75 citizens supports one Social Security beneficiary, and then we start adding Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, disaster relief, foreign aid…

Years ago I was impressed, when reading St Augustine’s Confessions, how he regarded charity. He quoted Christ’s words, “the poor ye shall always have with you,” and explained this otherwise enigmatic verse. Augustine identified with the poor, in part because Christ did, and he was extraordinarily active on their behalf. Augustine had a vision of corrupt man as someone who, despite our best intentions, keeps returning to self. He warned in the same vein against a circular form of love where even acts of charity were futile if divorced from the love and will of God.

“Anonymous” charity – that is, actions devoid of love; empty – is self-absorbing at best, and an offense to God at worst. For Augustine came to realize, through the humility to which the Cross inevitably brings us, that an act of charity (that word is also translated as “love”) is a godly construct. The poor, who we will always have with us, inspire us to imitate Christ in their care… and that pleases God.

That the humility, even the shame, of the Cross, takes us (drags us?) to more of an outwardly focused life, is the essence of the fulfilled believer’s life on earth. We evolve from awareness to compassion to identification to brokenness with the hurting, needy, and dependent. Which is, of course, our state too. Even when we are in Christ – I say, even MORE so, when we are in Christ – we must practice sacrificial love, tender mercy, and authentic assistance.

“That TV moment” I mentioned above is when political types, and TV watchers, had a chance to think about the drift – more like a tsunami – of the past several generations. It is mighty hard to maintain the impulse of individual response, when the “world system” keeps saying it is not our job, but theirs. St Augustine seemed to be looking 1600 years into the future when he wrote, “Woe to the soul which supposes it will find something better if it forsakes You!”

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Casting Crowns and the Beanscot Channel combine for a simple but powerful lesson drawn from true “Christian Charity” – with Christ in our hearts we trust Him more; and with Christ in our hearts we do His will more willingly.

Click: It’s So Sweet To Trust in Jesus

(Last week’s music was from an ancient opera, Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, which prompted a few questions about a “pagan” theme. First, I offered it with a Christian application, but [“full circle”] St Augustine himself is thought to have patterned the structure, not the contents, of his Confessions after The Aeneid. And Virgil, of course, patterned his epic after Homer’s Odyssey. And my point was that the nation of America, like the character Dido, is appropriate for a Lament to be sung.)