Prophetic music: Guide our feet into the way of peace

And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest:
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;
to give knowledge of salvation unto his people for the remission of their sins,

through the tender mercy of our God;
whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,
to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace. Lk 1:76-79 (King James translation)

For almost thirty years I have prayed the Benedictus each morning, "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel.." Yesterday morning, I sat outside on a glorious fall day to pray. On such a still and perfect morning, war seems unimaginable. Yet I knew the paper that still lay on the driveway would make it all to easy to imagine the tempest that is gathering on distant shores.

I love the antiphonal nature of Vaughn Williams' setting.  It brings me to face  the prophetic call of this text, not just for the baby whose name was to be John, but our own baptismal call. A single voice of remarkable clarity calls forth a response from the many, with grace, the melody blossoms into four-part harmony.  Despite the traditional liturgical setting of this text  within morning prayer, Vaughn William's music evokes for me a sense of vigil, and a gathering darkness outse.

May our prayers so gather, layer upon layer, until we can be heard to the farthest ends of the earth.  We pray that we might be prophets, that we might prepare the way. We pray for light in the darkness. We pray for mercy. We stand in world torn by violence and we cry: Lord, guide our feet into the way of peace.

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A version of this post appeared at  RevGalBlogPals.

Writing as prayer

I'm reviewing Love and Salt by Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith at RevGalBlogPals today. It's a collection of letters, written over five years they say, "...to preserve and make sense of our daily lives; we wrote to confess and console, to rant and grieve. But more than anything else, we wrote because it was the only way we know how to pray...In our letters, we wrote ourselves back to belief." [p. xi]

I certainly resonate with this notion of writing, not so much about prayer, but as prayer.  In 1958 (when I was about 5 months old) Thomas Merton wrote in his journal "To write is to think and to live — even to pray."

 Questions on the table for discussion:

• What inspires you to put pen to paper and add a stamp? 
• Have you ever carried on a sustained correspondence, either through email or on paper? or dreamed of doing it? 
• Thomas Merton noted in a journal, "To write is to think and to live — even to pray." Do you find writing to be a way to pray?

Come join the conversation at RevGalBlogPals, or start one in the comments here.

RevGalBlogPals: The Graces of Galship

The Wednesday festival (I note there are few more minutes left in Wednesday here) at the RevGalBlogPals features posts on galship, however that has played out for each of us.

I joined the RevGalBlogPal (RGBP) blog ring in May of 2007, though I'm not (and cannot be) a reverend.  (I'm Roman Catholic, that should tell you all you need to know on that score.)  I had been blogging steadily for a couple of years, on this blog and my chemistry blog, and somehow happened on the RGBP.  I enjoyed reading the various voices, each wrestling with the way God was present in their lives and in the lives of those they ministered to (some of the stories have stuck with me for years (one in particular involving a wind, a flaming tablecloth and a baptismal font that still makes me laugh in wonder).

I started writing occasional posts for the RGBP blog, the first of which might be this review of Into Great Silence (the film) and An Infinity of Little Hours (a book about the Carthusians) and still write for the Sunday Afternoon Music Video feature (except when I forget to check my calendar!).

I love that the ring can wrap itself around many denominations, and around those ordained, seeking ordination, or those for whom this was not an option.  I have never been to a BigEvent, but have had many friendships grow from the RevGals nonetheless.  Friends to write with, to play Scrabble with (as a Lenten discipline, no less), to share meals with, to share faith with virtually and in real life.  Paul's letters bound a community of faith together through time and space, so I'm not surprised that our writings draw us together, and ever grateful for the support I find here for the writing that I now do.

Difficult mercies

Last week I discovered that someone had attempted to plagiarize work that I had done almost 20 years ago. The attempt was caught before it was published, and the editorial staff of the publication where the work was submitted are dealing with the sequeulae, but the experience has me thinking about mercy. That and Math Man and I have been watching Game of Thrones (or I've been watching some of it, and covering my eyes and ears for other parts - 'tis not for the faint of heart), with its battling knights, who cry "Mercy!" as a last resort, and slink from the tourney field as if they have taken the coward's way out.

I posted this video for the RevGalBlogPals' Sunday Afternoon Music feature, reflecting briefly there about the difficult mercies today's readings speak of. I wonder, in particular, how much of a mercy Paul found that angel that kept him grounded in the gritty realities of daily life, and how much courage it took to admit to a need to keep his pride in check. And the courage it took to see the grace and mercy caught up in what must have been an exquisitely troubling experience. He asked for one mercy — relief from the thorns, metaphorical or otherwise — and another was offered, grace sufficient to endure whatever came. It was not a mercy for the cowardly.

I kept hearing this stanza from Rory Cooney's Canticle of the Turning:

Though I am small, my God, my all, you work great things in me,
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame, and to those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight, for the world is about to turn.

The simmering power of this arrangement, the bass and cello lines that made my desk reverberate, reminded me that while I might welcome the small mercies of relief, the difficult mercies are what at work in my depths. It takes more than a small measure of courage to open oneself to such such mercy, a grace in itself.

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Update: Fran pointed me to Michael Iafrate's version of this piece which sounds like drops on a still lake.

The touch of Christ

(Cross posted from RevGalBlogPals)

Our homilist talked about incarnation, God walking among us, as us, touching us as we ourselves touch each other, touching us as we cannot or will not. Jesus touched a leper, an unthinkable act.

I love the lines in this song, which we used to as our opening hymn, about Christ's hands and presence:

Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith,
Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe...

Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,
Your hands swift to welcome, Your arms to embrace...

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm...

Where are we balm, when do we reach out to touch what the world considers untouchable?

Breaking silence

The wind blows hard against this mountain side
Across the sea into my soul
It reaches into where I cannot hide
Setting my feet upon the road

....

Kyrie eleison
Down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison
Through the darkness of the night
Kyrie eleison
Where I'm going would you follow?
Kyrie eleison
on the highway in the light — from Kyrie by Mr. Mister


I'm back from almost 2 full weeks of silence, the last 8 days of them on retreat here. When I got back in the car to drive home Friday and hit play on the iPod, this song by Mr. Mister was at the top of my play list. Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy down the road that I must travel. I loved the joyous beat of it all, propelling me back out into the world.

I gave up two things for the duration of the retreat — praying the Liturgy of the Hours and writing — as I waded deeply into the waters of the Exercises. It was hard to let go of these stalwart companions. And it was easy at the same time. All the while that wind reached far into the place where I could not hide....

Pentecost and typhoons

[A version of this is cross-posted at RGBP as the Sunday Afternoon Music Video]

It's Pentecost, which always brings to mind the start of this sonnet of John Donne's

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

The Spirit often feels like a boisterous presence among us, shaking the timbers of the churches as well as our souls. Two weeks ago today I was in Japan, my plans to take a ferry across the Inland Sea scuttled by a great wind - a Tai Phun. Yet it was not the great winds and deluging rains that took my breath away, it was the post-typhoon clarity. The water pouring forth from a steep mountain side, folding and re-folding the light of the sun, molten gold in the afternoon sun.

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt's setting of the traditional Pentecost sequence, Veni Spirtus Sancte, has that same stilling clarity for me. Part of a Mass composed for Pentecost, first celebrated in Berlin in 1990, I find it reaches deep into my soul. Clear, ringing quietly, in the space cleared by the great winds and flames, the Spirit works here, too...

Sunday Afternoon Music Video: Elijah Rock

(Cross-posted from RevGalBlogPals.)

In my community today, we read from the minor prophet Amos. Then we heard from the pulpit a challenge to let ourselves not only listen to what prophets old and new have to say to us, but to be prophets ourselves, in word and action. We are called, we are chosen. Here and now.

Moses Hogan's arrangement of the spiritual Elijah Rock sounds prophetic to me. The word is sometimes loud, sometimes whispered; it can be piercing or deeply sustaining; it is on the move, first in one section, then in another; but the voice of God is heard regardless.

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Just the vocals:

Elijah Rock - Moses Hogan Chorale