The Hymnal of our Soul Part 4

 

Engaging with art means we have to slow down to allow a new experience to enter which perhaps cannot be accessed in another way. It can be an expansive experience.  Lourdes Bernard

 

So far this week you have been making a list and checking it twice or more for hymns that are a soundtrack to your soul.  Yesterday, I asked you to do the difficult, demanding, work of looking at hymns that irk or irate you, that you want to scratch like a rash that won’t go away!  Today, I am going to ask you to scan, survey your list to find five hymns (or ten if you want), Google the lyrics, and read them.  Or come to church, find a hymnal, settle into the pew to read.

 

What are your favorite hymns preaching and proclaiming?   What are your favorite hymns saying about the sacred?  What do the lyrics illuminate about the human condition?  Like scripture, hymns sometimes point out a problem.  For example, here is the second verse of “God, Who Stretched the Spangled Heavens”

 

We (meaning humans) have ventured worlds undreamed of since the childhood of our race.

Known the ecstasy of winging through untraveled realms of space;

Probed the secrets of the atom, yielding unimagined power,

Facing us with life’s destruction or our most triumphant hour.

 

In that verse we hear a celebration of ways human scientific achievements from things like space travel, personal computers, smart phones, and renewable energy sources.  We share inventive powers with God.  But the second part of the verse reminds us, in the immortal words of Spiderman’s uncle, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Humans haven’t always been as ethical as we could be with our responsibility – true then and now.  We have valued profit over people, bottom lines, and bank accounts to define worth rather than the truth that we are each in God’s image.  I hope you start to sense that when you slowly read the words of the hymn, you are entering a world.  Often, because of the way music functions in our worship, we don’t allow space to pause, letting the melody and music and meaning of the hymn fall afresh on us.  Find a few hymns or one hymn or however many you’d like to savor each syllable as though this was food for our souls ~ what lingers on the tip of your tongue as you taste what we sing?  May this question be held in each of our hearts now and in the days to come.  Amen.

The Hymnal of Our Soul Part 3

 

“We are all human beings. We are all feeling this emotion together at the same time. And this is uniting us. We are not separate.”  Alice Parker

 

I pray your list of favorite hymns is getting longer and longer.  I also pray you will know that what sings to your soul may leave another soul feeling, “Meh”.  This is where music can often cause tension.  You may want to defend singing of the “The Old Rugged Cross,” because when you sing that, it isn’t just the voices around you that you hear but your grandmother’s voice in that country church with the hard wooden pews and pastor who droned on and on.  It may not be the words that warm your heart, but the memory of the melody.  You may want to be insistent that we sing the hymn in a certain way because we all want to draw near to the afterglow of what is etched in our souls, even when the embers start to fade.  We may put our foot down on a new hymn because the words or melody or rhythm can feel like nails on the chalkboard of our souls.  Art, all art, has emotion (that is energy in motion) as an undercurrent.  You look at a painting you can still feel the vibration of the brush stroke, you look at a photograph and you can sense the wind touching your skin, you hear a poem that can cause confusion and connection at the same time; or you listen to a melody that for some reason doesn’t get it for you.  Humans are meaning-making machines, so we want to know why?  And once we find a satisfactory explanation for why we should never, ever sing, “Washed in the Blood” ever again, we have taken our stand.  On the one hand, our hymnal is a theology textbook.  Our hymnal has sermons and prayers that evoke a vast array of emotions.  On the other hand, most of us don’t ever want to be told what to feel.  Our inner five-year old still sings out defiantly, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to!”  Don’t tell me what to feel about this list of hymns I’ve carefully cultivated and curated, we stomp our foot and shout. 

 

While music is the language of our shy soul made audible, that doesn't mean the emotion you feel is the same as someone else.  Today, I invite you to flip the coin, what is a hymn that you would prefer we never, ever, under any circumstances sing or you will storm out of the church!!  Then, go read the words to the hymn trying to put your finger on what is it about that hymn that provokes such passion?  Often it is because a value about language or theology or a past scar or wound from the church has been violated.  The more we can be curious about response, we can take a deep breath.  As Viktor Frankl said, “Between the stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

 

I am asking you today to live in that space between what is provoked and before you start to preach the sermon.  Be in that moment that hymns can evoke to see where each of us can grow in grace, caring, love, faithfulness, and justice.   

The Hymnal that Hums in our Soul Part 2

 

My life flows on in endless song above earth’s lamentations;

I hear the real though far off hymn that hails a new creation.

No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I’m clinging;

While love is Lord o’er heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing.

 

I love the rhetorical question this hymn asks, “How can we keep from singing?”  Because, the truth is, we can’t.  This isn’t saying that we sing beautifully or will be asked to cut a record going on to fame and fortune.  Singing, like all art, is meant to shine a light on the ineffable.  Singing is about giving in to that which is both within us and around us.  The final verse of Richard Gillard’s Won’t You Let Me Be Your Servant preaches and proclaims, “When we sing to God in heaven, we shall such harmony, born of all we’ve known together, of God’s love and agony.”  Music will evoke something within that is bigger than our own individual and isolated story. 

 

What hymns did you write down yesterday?  Maybe you found typing into Google fragmented verses where you could only remember every other word.  I pray you found that title.  If not, ask someone else.  What Christmas Carols, camp songs, hymns that stir emotions within you began to surface?  Because hymns are art, music in church will stir different sensations in each of us.  Some people can’t get enough of “Immortal, Invisible God only Wise.”  Others of you are thinking, who is that person?  For the record, I do enjoy that hymn!  Other readers long for a certain category of church music.  Others find meaning in chant or repeated refrains that are part of Taizé music.  Still others are an eclectic mix of eccentric titles that break down barriers between centuries and country of origin and race and religious understanding.  Today, keep expanding your list to let your soul roam through the soundtrack of your life that has nourished and nurtured your faith this far.

The Hymnal that Hums in Our Soul Part 1

 

If music is the language of the soul made audible, then human voices, raised in concert and in human gatherings, are primary instruments of the soul.  Music conveys common memories, with powerful association.  Don Saliers

 

There is a musical soundtrack to your life that hums on repeat, replaying in your soul, perhaps just beneath the surface of consciousness.  It is a compilation of experiences and encounters with music that moved you, leaving an imprint upon you.  The soundtrack is not just hymns from church, but from concerts where your breath was caught in the back of your throat as tears welled up, dripped from your eyes.  The soundtrack of road trips where you and your friends sang along at the top of your lungs whilst rolling down the highway passing the miles.  Your high school dances or your wedding day or an ordinary Tuesday when a melody came from the speaker that stopped time.  The jukebox of your life is comprised collection of when/how/where and what awoke the holy hum that moves us through the day.

 

In May, I’ve invited the church to offer your favorite hymns.  If you read the fine print, I do ask that if you submit more than five to me, you do so alphabetically, please! 

 

The question is, how?  How do we begin to name and notice what is part of the soundtrack of our life?  There is no one way to do this.  This week, I will offer some structure for how you can begin to reflect on the music that is your soul’s shy voice made audible. 

 

First, I invite you to start with a blank piece of paper and write down all the hymns you can think of right now.  This is a soul-stirring and searching exercise, so tell your inner editor who wants to offer strikes or say, “Oh no…not that one!!” to go take a coffee break.  For example, I might write down, “In the Garden.”  This doesn’t mean that “In the Garden” will make the final cut, but this hymn is certainly there in my soul and you might even be humming the melody right now ~ and for the rest of the day.  You are welcome.

 

The point is to write down as many hymns as you can.  Don’t hold back.  Pro tip: this is NOT a timed test!  As a matter of fact, I hope you start the list now and come back to it at lunch and then before you go to bed and then again tomorrow morning.  I apologize in advance that you may wake up tonight with a hymn humming you hadn’t thought about in years.  Please do not text me, write it down.  As a matter of fact, you don’t ever need to stop this exercise.  This is also an open book invitation…or open hymnal.  There is an index right there in the back of the first lines to set your mind singing! 

 

Pro tip number two: if you have difficulty getting started, center your thoughts on a season.  What Christmas Carols warm your heart?  Silent Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, or maybe Joy to the World.  Next, think about hymns you sang at meaningful moments in your life: I am thinking here of summer camp with a campfire blazing in front of you and s’mores stuffing your stomach while stars shine down blessing the ground.  Or maybe funeral services for your parents or grandparents.  Or maybe a hymn that you sang recently in church.  Rewind and review your life for the melodies that cause goosebumps to race up and down your life. 

 

Pro tip number three: there is no wrong way to do this.  Listen to your shy soul start to sing reminding you of moment that made you feel alive and awake to the unfinished symphony that is within us and around us which our Composer, Conductor and Collaborator God is still writing every day.  May you fill a page with hymns that sing to your soul in such a time as this.  Amen.

Friday Morning Prayer

 

God of a new month, where what is unresolved from April can linger and leave an imprint, meet us in ways that we sense Your presence as Christ met the disciples on the way to Emmaus.  We pray for this unfolding season of Easter, the invitation to holy foolishness that we are still not certain we can adopt/adapt into our life.  We confess that it is easier to go along with the cynicism and criticism of culture.  That it is more acceptable to point out the flaws and foibles than to embrace the ambiguity or appear naïve.  We confess that we do prefer to cling to our certainties than admit the “I don’t know-ness” of life.  We are not only travelers on the road together, honestly, God we are still wandering in the wilderness like Moses and your people in Exodus.  We grumble and mumble for bread and water, not feeling like there is ever enough, OR that we are enough.  We tremble at the unexplainable ways You arrive in our lives.  We still make idols of workshops, travel, zoom classes, and endless opportunities and new iphones that promise us our best life ever.  Help us, O God, for we cannot help ourselves.  We need You to interrupt us with truths that will baffle us but also delight us.  Continue to go with us in these days as we travel the wayless way and thank you, God, for Your presence and the companions who are with us.  Amen. 

Hymn of the Month

 

Yesterday, I asked you to look back on your life, look around, and look ahead at this month of May.  I pray you found ways to let your shy soul speak and sing.  One of the wonderful prayer practices is to pick a hymn of the month ~ a theme song.  Pro tip: this doesn’t have to be a church hymn; it could be music of any genre.  What is a melody that is playing in your heart right now?  I believe that our hymnal is our prayer book and theology textbook.  What we sing on Sunday shapes us more than any sermon could.  Sometimes what we sing sets our souls soaring and sometimes the words weigh us down or feel like sandpaper to our souls.  What strangely warms your heart in a hymn might cause the person next to you to feel like they are stranded on an iceberg in the arctic all alone.  The hymn that is hovering and humming in my life right now is The Servant Song by David Haas.  I invite you to read the words slowly and prayerfully:

 

Won’t you let me be your servant; Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace; To let you be my servant too.

We are pilgrims on the journey; We are travelers on the road.
We are here to help each other; Walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ light for you; In the nighttime of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you; Speak the peace you long to hear.

 

I will weep when you are weeping; When you laugh, I'll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow; Till we've seen this journey through.

 

Won’t you let me be your servant; Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace; To let you be my servant too.

 

I love the sense that we are partners on a journey, fellow travelers who share the twists and turns.  I love the challenging call that relationships in church are a two-way street.  Sometimes I am the one who serves and sometimes I need to have the grace to receive what you are sharing.  I love the theology that we are all image bearers of Christ.  I wonder if there is a hymn, popular song, or piece of classical music that is guiding and grounding your life?  How might that become a soundtrack in the weeks to come as you return time and time again to the words, melody, and music?  Please share with me a hymn that touches your heart right now.  Amen.

A Blessings for May

 

Happy May Day everyone!!  As we enter a new month, it can be a bit like a blank canvas. I wonder what prayers are stirring and swirling within you?  Is there something unresolved from April still lingering?  A new month doesn’t always wipe the slate clean, the canvas can come marred with moments from the past days or years.  The first day of a month is a time to take a deep breath and be.  To look back on what was, look around at what is, and look ahead to what will be.  What word(s) describe April?  What word(s) stir when you look back on the first four months of 2024?  What is a word for today and what is that prayer that your shy soul longs to share for the coming 31 days of May?

 

For me, one word for April was change.  We celebrated our Minister of Music stepping away after 35 years and we began conversations in our diverse church about how to continue in our vibrant music ministry.  We started dreaming dreams of where there might be new possibilities.  Changes as seasonal friends flew north to escape the encroaching humidity that leaves extra space in the pews.  Changes in relationships.  The constant change can be exciting and exhausting, both a fountain and a drain.  For me, April felt like the disciples when Jesus appeared on Easter eve and asked for some fish ~ there has been joy and disbelief.  This didn’t get resolved when I turned the calendar to a new month.  As I look around, the prayer I have for the month of May is openness to the Spirit.  I pray the values of welcome, worship, justice, faithfulness, belonging, and caring will be more than words, but find flesh and breath and life in each of us.  I pray for God’s love to feed and fuel my life, even as I know that the narratives (gospels) of domination and us versus them continue to be what is talked about and trending on social media.  I pray for another way that can feel as foolish as if every day is April Fool’s Day.  I pray for courage to let the baffling; bewildering ways of God infuse and inspire me.  I pray on this first day of May; you might breathe and be.  I pray you will listen to your life, which is how God often shows up ~ not with neon signs or ALL CAPS texts.  But in subtle, subversive ways that cause us to wonder and wander through this wayless way called faith.  May you encounter and experience love, shalom, joy, presence, and peace each day this month.  Amen.