The Melody of Lent

 

This week I invite you to lean in and listen to Yiruma, a South Korea-born piano player, whose music I find soulful and soothing.  As the notes of his instrumental pieces wash over you, I invite you each day to this prayer practice:

·        First, listen one time through the entire piece.  Pay attention to any emotion that is evoked or provoked from the piece.

·        Second, listen again, this time you may want to imagine a story that goes along with this piece of music – or write down words that stir and swirl in response.  One day this week, you may want to get out your crayons or colored pencils connecting your hand to the melody of the music.

·        Third, enter a period of silence.  Attend, pay attention to the reverberations of both the music of Yiruma and the response from your soul sit side-by-side.  What awakens within your awareness of this moment? 

The first piece from Yiruma is entitled, Kiss the Rain.  I invite you to click on the link above and enter prayerfully and purposefully into this time.

When I listen to this piece, I hear the cascading notes like rain splattering and splashing on the cement.  I sense the waves of notes washing over me meeting me in both the peacefulness and pain of the soul – which often sit side-by-side.  I imagine being out in the rain, soaked and saturated, in that moment feeling refreshed and renewed.  After repeating the chords a few times, around the 2:45 mark in the video, there is a crescendo, a build-up, like a storm letting loose.  Until that tension is resolved and released.

This piece makes me wonder if Noah ever went out and kissed the rain on the ark?  Or a farmer, who after days of a drought, when the land is cracked and craving water, goes out to kiss the rain when it finally starts to fall.

Where does your life need to be saturated and soaked right now by the sacred?

What would it look like to kiss the rain?  Or, better yet, what would it feel like?

What colors from your crayon box would you use to color this picture?  What words surface as you lean in and listen to this beautiful piece?  Feel free to post in the comments.

Prayer: God of rainfall that renews and revives us, wash over us this day with Your presence that meets us where we are and guides us each second of this day.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

Today, I want to offer space for you to name and notice your learnings this week.

What was one pain you identified?

What was one balm that seems to help/heal right now?

How did this Spiritual, There is a Balm in Gilead, sing to your soul?

What questions do you have?

 

Sit with this hymn, letting the words and melody hover and hang within you and around you.  And may you sense more than a trace of God’s grace every day.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

There is a balm in Gilead

To make the wounded whole

There is a balm in Gilead

To heal the wounded soul

Rev. Howard Thurman once wrote of this Spiritual, “The peculiar genius of the Negro slave [song] is revealed here in much of its structural splendor. The setting is the book of Jeremiah. The prophet has come to a “Dead Sea” place in his life. Not only is he discouraged over the external events in the life of Israel, but he is also spiritually depressed and tortured. [Wounded,] he cried out, ‘Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there?’ It is not a question of fact that he is raising—it is not a question directed to any particular person for an answer. It is not addressed either to God or to Israel, but rather it is a question raised by Jeremiah’s entire life. He is searching his own soul. He is stripped to the literal substance of himself, and is turned back on himself for an answer. Jeremiah is saying actually, “There must be a balm in Gilead; it cannot be that there is no balm in Gilead.” The relentless winnowing of his own bitter experience has laid bare his soul to the end that he is brought face to face with the very ground and core of his own faith.”

Rev. Thurman help us notice that the balm doesn’t just come magically in the mail like your prescription.  Sometimes it is only when we have laid our souls bare, worn out, and weary that we get the sip of water for which we are so thirsty.  Sometimes our woundedness is an openness, vulnerability, if we doggedly stay hopeful in the hurt ~ which is a spiritual muscle that many of us have not been taught to exercise ~ or that even exists.

I invite you to re-read Thurman’s words and find yourself in them.  Are you like Jeremiah feeling in exile?  Do you feel like you have laid your soul bare?  Do you long for a Spirit to strengthen and sustain you? 

Where have you found a balm in these Lenten days so far?

Where do you continue to search for the Sacred stirring and swirling in such a time as this?

May your reflections and responses to these questions, even if all you can say is, “I don’t know”, open you to the peace and presence of God. Amen.

The Melody of Lent

If you can't pray like Peter

If you can't preach like Paul

Go home and tell your neighbor

He died to save us all

Yesterday, we talked about prayer.  Prayer is one of those topics that gets tossed and thrown around.  Beyond saying that you should pray, do we ever try to describe what prayer feels like?  Sounds like?  Smells or tastes like?  Prayer is more than folding your hands and bowing your head.  Prayer is more than a monologue we lob at God.  Prayer is an encounter and experience of the divine.

Re-read that last sentence again, please.

An encounter, a sense that the Spirit is hovering and hanging around.  We trust the holy is near.

An experience, something we can taste or touch or hear or feel.

Of the divine – that God is everywhere.

Prayer happens all the time in our lives.  Prayer can be brushing your teeth, eating, walking, sitting in silence, listening to music, talking to a friend, reading the Bible or a book.  You can fill in the blank of other moments.

At the heart of prayer is attention and intention.

Attention – that you are open to God moving in your midst.

Intention – that you set your gaze toward God to move in your midst.

This is why I suggested listening to music as a prayer practice for Lent this year.  It is a different form, but one I believe we can all find meaning in.  Today, listen again to your piece of music for this week, either the hymn I am reflecting on, or the one you selected.  Slowly savor each note, every word, and then repeat.  Repeat again until the Holy Spirit revives your soul again.

Prayer: Composer and conductor of my life, help me find Your rhythm in this day I pray.  Amen.

 

The Melody of Lent

 

Sometimes I feel discouraged,

and think my work's in vain,

(or I have also seen this second line, “And deep I feel the pain”)

but then the Holy Spirit

revives my soul again.

When in the last week did the above words feel like the soundtrack for your soul?  Where do the words above give expression to an experience you are having?  We live in a world where it is easy to be discourage and deep within feel an ache and pain and wonder if what we are doing is making a difference.

Pandemic; polarization in our politics; personal problems that wake us up in the middle of the night for a chat; discrimination all its vast variety of shapes and sizes.  The 24-hour-news cycle perpetuates this sense that there is always “Breaking News”…and that if you don’t know about it immediately, well, then you must not care.  Turn on whatever news channel, there are at least five different stories your brain is forced to process.  The crawl across the bottom (which is a relatively new phenomenon that came into widespread use after 9/11).  On one side are stock updates.  Below that is an ad for the anchor’s interview with this person.  Then, there is the current anchor talking at you sharing detail after detail.

Sometimes I feel discourage and deep within my soul I feel the pain.

So much pain that we might feel paralyzed.  I mean, what can I do about refugees across the world, when in my own community there are people without a shelter and security?  So, we end up writing a check to alleviate some of the weight on our souls/shoulders. 

But I love how the Spiritual spins in a new direction by proclaiming and preaching that it is in prayer that our soul is revived.  Not always by my actions, not by filling my calendar trying to save the world, not by my check book.  By prayer.  Grounded and guided by God.  This Spiritual is a prayer that opens us to the moments we feel dismayed and disheartened and disjointed.  This Spiritual helps us give voice to the truth that live has difficulty and assures us that God is there in the valley every bit as God is there on the mountain top moments of joy. 

Where have you felt God’s comfort and compassion in the last week?  What role does prayer have in reviving your soul?  How can listening to Spirituals/music help?  How does talking with others help?  How does stillness/silence/shutting off the 24-hour news cycle both on the television and the endless loops in our mind help?

I invite you to breathe in God’s love.  Hold that holy presence.  Slow exhale.  Repeat.  Repeat again.  Repeat a fourth time until you sense that Spirit resuscitating and renewing and reviving your soul for today.

Prayer: Spirit of the living God fall afresh on me, meeting me in the midst of the pain, and helping me sense Your presence.  Amen.

The Melody of Lent

 

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul

The theologian Ruby Sales, who at age of 17 marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, has been an insightful voice for generations.  She worked for SNCC in Alabama to advance the cause of Civil Rights.  One of her many profound and powerful questions that she proposes is for us to ponder, where does it hurt?

Right now…where does it hurt?

Within your own body.

Within your heart.

Within your mind.

Within your soul.

Pause for a moment with me, hold this question close.  Because until we name and notice the pain, rather than push it down or ignore it or overprocess it, the pain will continue to throb and rob us of our wholeness.  Until we diagnose and determine that ache that is within us, we will continue to pass it along to others, declaring and deciding that “they” are the problem.  And if “they” would only do what you want, everything would be chocolate rivers and pony rides.  Pain is part of human life, but we tend to numb the pain with endless rushing, running here or there; addictions to alcohol or shopping or staring at phones or anything to distract us; our minds are wired to calculate that the energy it would take to process the pain is too great…so just have another piece of Dove chocolate – after all with a name like Dove it should be holy, right?

The hymn for this week, There is a balm in Gilead, is a beautiful spiritual and salve for the soul in such a time as this.  The words come from Jeremiah, who was a prophet during the Exile.  The Exile was when people were taken from their homes, everything they knew removed from them, they were strangers living in a strange land.  We are now a year into an Exile from the life you knew before the pandemic.  Our normal patterns and rhythms removed from us.  We are strangers now behind masks fearful of a virus that is lurking invisibly and mutating.  We know Exile, it has been our address for the last year.  Our brothers and sisters who are African American, LGBTQ, immigrants know Exile and often feel as if they are strangers in this land of their birth; never really feeling at home. 

We all ache.

We all know pain.

The question is whether we will have the courage to name and notice, process our pain.  Listen to this spiritual, let the music/melody/words provoke and evoke from you prayerfully the places within you that need healing.

Prayer: Let us bathe in Your balm, O God.  Let us be immersed in Your embrace.  Let us be honest about all that hurts within us, we pray.  Amen.

Lent 3

 

When I reach the River Jordan, bid my anxious fears subside.  Death of death, and hell’s destruction, land me safe on heaven’s side.  Songs of praises, songs of praises I will ever sing to you, I will ever sing to you.

This is such a powerful verse.  I am struck by how fears, death, and destruction are put aside awakening a song of praise within us.  I think about how often fear, death, and destruction are part of our lives.  We hear it all the time on the news.  And now with a 24-hour news cycle, you can hear about why the world is going you know where in a handbasket any time you want.  You don’t need to wait to see fear or hear about someone dying or encounter pain, there are countless channels dedicated to telling you.  Or you prefer, you can just refresh your newsfeed on your computer, because the internet will find in any gaps.

I get that the world is not all ponies rides and chocolate rivers.  I get that pain is real.  I know that there is heartbreaking suffering and struggle.  But, we focus a lot of energy there.  So much that we can feel paralyzed, unable to do anything besides reach for another bag of the clearance Valentine’s   candy we picked up at the store yesterday.  I mean, you can’t pass up Godiva at that price! 

I am not trying to be Pollyanna or tell you that everything is going to be fine.  Struggle is real.  Pain is part of this human condition.  Joy is also baked and built into the mix.  We just don’t trust the joy is as real as the pain.  If something good happens, we think it is a trick or won’t last or feel guilty for enjoying a moment of grace when others are hurting.  If we wait for all the fears and death and destruction to finally be ended, we might not ever sing.  But if, in moments when our souls feel their full worth, we risk singing, there is a beauty in that moment.  Moreover, if you risk singing out praise, someone might join you.  And someone else, then someone else.  To be sure, that doesn’t mean everything is fine and dandy.  It just means that we believe in a God who is still at work and still creating and still saying that brokenness is never the last word.  And that truth makes me want to sing.

Holy One, hear my song, my prayer that comes from my heart to Your ears, trusting that You are there in the good times and difficult moments.  That Your resurrection promise of life is a light to my life every day.  Amen.